Page:Personal beauty how to cultivate and preserve it in accordance with the laws of health (1870).djvu/36

 made up by high heels, a judicious costume, and a perruque of magnitude. If we learn nothing else about him, it is worth while to know this, for it illustrates how readily a diminutive person can conceal this defect of nature.

It is not so easy, one might think, to veil unusual height. In sooth it is a more serious problem, though it is not wholly discouraging. Those who have visited the galleries of the Louvre in Paris will recall an ancient and celebrated statue known as the Venus of Milo. We know not whether others have had the same experience, but for ourselves we sate before that marble wonder for hours studying its perfect outlines, its matchless drapery, its depths of expression, and it never occurred to us that the height was extraordinary. Our astonishment was great on seeing in some guidebook that it measured six feet two inches. The faultless proportions prevent any impression of excessive size in this

"Daughter of the gods, divinely tall, And most divinely fair."

The same is constantly observable in life. Persons whose forms correspond closely to the artistic model rarely appear either too tall or too short, and those who have from nature these defects in growth should devote unusual attention to the symmetrical development of the body by gymnastic exercise, and practise those modes of costume adapted to their size.