that would make life hideous if it were not so
ridiculously unnecessary.

As to beauty--we do not think of expecting it save in the rarely
exceptional case. Look at the faces--the figures--in any crowd you meet;
compare the average man or the average woman with the normal type of
human beauty as given us in picture and statue; and consider if there is
not some general cause for so general a condition of ugliness.

Moreover, leaving our defective bodies concealed by garments; what are
those garments, as conducive to health and beauty? Is the practical
ugliness of our men's attire, and the impractical absurdity of our
women's, any contribution to human beauty? Look at our houses--are they
beautiful? Even the houses of the rich?

We do not even know that we ought to live in a world of overflowing
loveliness; and that our contribution to it should be the loveliest of
all. We are so sodden in the dull ugliness of our interiors, so used
to calling a tame weary low-toned color scheme "good taste," that only
children dare frankly yearn for Beauty--and they are speedily educated
out of it.

The reasons specially given for our low standards of health and beauty
are ignorance, poverty, and the evil effects of special trades. The Man
with the Hoe becomes brother to the ox because of over-much hoeing; the
housepainter is lead-poisoned because of his painting; books have been
written to show the injurious influence of nearly all our industries
upon workers.

These causes are sound as far as they go; but do not cover the whole
ground.

The farmer may be muscle-bound and stooping from his labor; but that
does not account for his dyspepsia or his rheumatism.

Then we allege poverty as covering all. Poverty does cover a good deal.
But when we find even a half-fed savage better developed than a well
paid cashier; and a poor peasant woman a more vigorous mother than the
idle wife of a rich man, poverty is not enough.

Then we say ignorance explains it. But there are most learned professors
who are ugly and asthmathic; there are even doctors who can boast no
beauty and but moderate health; there are some of the petted children of
the wealthy, upon whom every care is lavished from birth, and who still
are ill to look at and worse to marry.

All these special causes are admitted, given their due share in
lowering our standards, but there is another far more universal in its
application and its effects. Let us look back on our littl