Page:Free Opinions, Freely Expressed on Certain Phases of Modern Social Life and Conduct.djvu/201



It would seem, according to the society press, that beauty is a very common article. Indeed, if we are to accept the innocent ebullitions of the callow youths who drink beer and play skittles in the Social-Paragraph line of journalism, and who in their soft guilelessness are taken in and "used" by certain ladies of a type resembling Miss Skeggs and Lady Blarney in the Vicar of Wakefield, we are bound to believe that beautiful women are as common as blackberries, only more so. In the columns devoted by newspaper editors to the meanderings of those intelligent persons, male and female, who sign themselves as Onlookers, Observers, Butterflies, Little Tomtits, and what may be called "I Spys!" generally, one hardly ever sees the name of a lady without the epithet "beautiful" tacked on to it, especially if the lady happens to have money. This is curious, but true. And supposing the so-called Beautiful One has not only money, commonly speaking, but heaps of money, mines of money, she is always stated to be "young" as well. The heavier the bullion, the more assured the youthfulness. If unkind Time shows her to be the mother of a family where the eldest sprout is some twenty odd years of age, the complaisant