-flowing, hidden sluices.

Out of such a life, inherited from a race which had lived in conditions
not unlike her own, beauty, in the common sense of the term, could hardly
find leisure to develop and shape itself. For it must be remembered,
that symmetry and elegance of features and figure, like perfectly formed
crystals in the mineral world, are reached only by insuring a certain
necessary repose to individuals and to generations. Human beauty is an
agricultural product in the country, growing up in men and women as in
corn and cattle, where the soil is good. It is a luxury almost
monopolized by the rich in cities, bred under glass like their forced
pine-apples and peaches. Both in city and country, the evolution of the
physical harmonies which make music to our eyes requires a combination of
favorable circumstances, of which alternations of unburdened tranquillity
with intervals of varied excitement of mind and body are among the most
important. Where sufficient excitement is wanting, as often happens in
the country, the features, however rich in red and white, get heavy, and
the movements sluggish; where excitement is furnished in excess, as is
frequently the case in cities, the contours and colors are impoverished,
and the nerves begin to make their existence known to the consciousness,
as the face very soon informs us.

Helen Darley could not, in the nature of things, have possessed the kind
of beauty which pleases the common taste. Her eye was calm, sad-looking,
her features very still, except when her pleasant smile changed them for
a moment, all her outlines were delicate, her voice was very gentle, but
somewhat subdued by years of thoughtful labor, and on her smooth forehead
one little hinted line whispered already that Care was beginning to mark
the trace which Time sooner or later would make a furrow. She could not
be a beauty; if she had been, it would have been much harder for many
persons to be interested in her. For, although in the abstract we all
love beauty, and although, if we were sent naked souls into some
ultramundane warehouse of soulless bodies and told to select one to our
liking, we should each choose a handsome one, and never think of the
consequences,--it is quite certain that beauty carries an atmosphere of
repulsion as well as of attraction with it, alike in both sexes. We may
be well assured that there are many persons who no more think of
specializing their love of the other sex u