It's very sweet to us to recall
that such women as Alice and Phoebe Cary, Helen Hunt, Mrs. Browning, and
Jean Ingelow were able to express in words such beautiful thoughts as
could arise only from beautiful souls; but it is dearer yet to remember
that women, whose numbers cannot be counted, are living those thoughts
by daily acts. Learn to lift the cover from the casket of a woman's soul
and you shall see jewels that never yet have been exposed to the glance
of one who looks for them in sparkling eyes, in glowing cheeks, and
radiant hair. If there is any thing most sweet and lovely, any thing
which ought to distinguish one girl from another, it is character.
I wish, as a favor to your friend who now talks with you in print,
since she cannot speak with you face to face,--I wish you would read
an essay on "The Beautiful," to be found among the prose works of
Whittier. There is such delicate admiration of womanliness in it; there
is so much encouragement, so much love of that beauty which shows itself
in character, rather than in form and presence; there is such an
emphasis put to the truth that from the purity of our own minds and
hearts come our knowledge of the beautiful, and our ability to find the
beautiful everywhere. "'Handsome is that handsome does!--hold up your
heads, girls!'... Be good, be womanly, be gentle, generous in your
sympathies, heedful of the well-being of all around you; and, my word
for it, you will not lack kind words of admiration.
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