The Looks of Literary Women

1874

Some one having revived the lamentable truism that literary women are seldom beautiful; that their features, and especially their foreheads, are more or less masculine, a recent writer points out some exceptions, among them Miss Landon, whose forehead was essentially feminine, and who was exceedingly pretty. Mrs. Stanton, likewise, is a pretty woman, but Miss Anthony and Mrs. Livermore are both plain. Maria and Jane Porter were women of high brows and irregular features, as was also Miss Sedgwick. Anna Dickinson has a strong masculine face; Kate Fields has a good looking, though by no means a pretty one, and Mrs. Stowe is thought to be positively homely. Alice and Phoebe Gary are both plain in features, though their sweetness in disposition added greatly to their personal appearance. Margaret Fuller had a splendid head, but her features were irregular. Charlotte Bronte had wondrously beautiful dark brown eyes and a perfectly-shaped head. Julia Ward Howe is a fine-looking woman. Laura Holloway resembles Charlotte Bronte. Neither Mary Booth nor Marion Harland can lay claim to handsome faces, while Mary Clemmer Ames is just as pleasing in features as her writings are graceful.


Man as a Leaf

Man is no better than a leaf driven by the wind until he has completely mastered his great, lonely duties. If he has no habit of retiring from all that is worldly, and of conversing face to face with his inner man, if he does not draw down upon his soul "the powers of the world to come," then he is no man yet; he has not found the life of man, nor the strength of man; he is a poor, unhappy man, sporting only with shadows, and affrighted before the real and the eternal. He owns a great house, a wonderful house, but it is shut up, and he lives outside with his fellow-cattle; the inside is wholly unknown to him, and he has lived outside so long that he is afraid of the inside. Think, my good brothers and sisters, of the great, high serene world, in which you might live and move and have your being.

Words of Wisdom

1878

Go among great folks for great sinners.

Love drifts into hate more easily than indifference into animosity.

He is no true friend who has nothing, but compliments and praise for you.

Sharp and intelligent rascals are more respected by the world than virtuous fools.

Many people find their only happiness in forcing themselves to be unhappy.

Ennui is a malady for which the only remedy is work; pleasure is only a palliative.

He who has no desire to improve upon his present condition, is usually one who most needs improvement.

Adverse criticism is cheaper than noble attempts to improve upon existing models.

We could not endure solitude were it not for the powerful companionship of hope or of some unseen one.

It is not difficult to do good for the means are constantly clustering about every man's lips and hands.

Pride is like the beautiful acacia, that lifts its head proudly above its neighbor plants, forgetting that it too, like them, has its root in the dirt.

We shall never learn to feel and respect our real calling and destiny unless we have taught ourselves to consider everything as moonshine compared with the education of the heart.

The great blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach, but we shut our eyes and, like people in the dark, we fall foul upon the very thing we search for without finding it.

Evils in the journey of life are like the hills which alarm travelers upon their road; they both appear great at a distance, but when we approach them we find that they are far less insurmountable than when we had conceived them.

Manners are the shadows of virtues; the momentary display of those qualities which our fellow creatures love and respect. If we strive to become, then, what we strive to appear, manners may often be rendered useful guides to the performance of our duties.

Among the many arguments, while others have been refuted, this alone remains unshaken, that we ought to beware of committing injustice rather than of being injured, and that, above all, a man ought to study not to appear good, but to be so, both privately and publicly.

It is resignation and contentment that are best calculated to lead us safely through life. Whoever has not sufficient power to endure privations and even suffering can never feel that he is armor proof against painful emotion — nay, he must attribute to himself, or at least to the morbid sensitiveness of his nature, every disagreeable feeling he may suffer.

Poetry Said Nourishment To Supplement Daily Bread

Ohio, 1940

A group of about fifty poetry lovers met at the Brumback Library last night to enjoy Rev. John H. Lamy's talk on "Standards of Poetic Excellence."

Rev. Lamy began by saying we need other nourishment than our daily bread and that is poetry. Without it our civilization would soon be at an end. We need not only to read poetry but we should write poetry as a form of self expression. The main value in writing is in what it does to us.

Poetry, according to Rev. Lamy's definition, is "Great thought expressed in artistic language." Verse, he said, is any thought that rhymes, while doggerel has no intention of being great thought. There are many possible standards of poetic excellence, depending on the approach, whether it is as a writer, a critic or an appreciative layman. A good way to judge a poem is to ask, "Is this one I would like to memorize?"

First, great poetry is great though, and Rev. Lamy listed and commented on six great poetic themes — aspiration, or the upward climb of the soul; nature, for beautiful nature does for us what human relations cannot do; home and country, poems that inspire patriotism and love of country, and here Rev. Lamy voiced a public protest against the silly parody on our great poems; courage, poems that make us want to draw in our chins and try again; mercy and justice, showing our responsibility toward our brother; and immortality.

Second, great poetry must be artistic in expression. Such poems make one see things; they paint pictures. All through his talk, Rev. Lamy illustrated his points by reading parts of his favorite poems, many of them learned when a boy, and he closed by commending the reading and memorizing of great poetry and the setting down of one's own thoughts.

—Van Wert Times-Bulletin, Van Wert, OH, Oct. 26, 1940, page 6.

Live For Today, Look Forward, Not Back to Past

1912

Heart to Heart Talks
By EDWIN A. NYE

LOOKING BACKWARD.

Do you remember the legend about that ancient Greek from whom Apollo took "the backward looking mind?"

All things became new.

The world was transformed to that Greek. For the first time he saw how beautiful was the world. Flowers he had not yet seen bloomed under his feet, new stars shone over his head and the changing moods of nature filled him with delight.

Why?

The change was not in the world but in the Greek. His mind had been turned backward to the happiness and the grief of the past. Now he looked outward and forward to the beauty and the joy all about him.

In our day is no Apollo to take away the backward looking mind, more's the pity.

But the symbolism holds.

Many of us need to have our mind reversed.

I know a woman who persists in looking backward and who always tells of a day when her people were rich and accustomed to many luxuries she is now denied. She is constantly deploring a situation she cannot help. She does not live save in a former day.

Worse than Lot's wife, who took a single look over her shoulder, she always faces backward.

I know a man whose constant theme of regret is the fact that he ever changed his business. He did well, he says, at the old place and was a fool to change. Certainly he is doing little good at his new place, largely for the reason that he is forever harking backward to the old.

He needs an Apollo.

Older persons are apt to foster the backward looking habit. Says grandpa from his chimney corner: "There are no days like the good old days. Now, when I was young" —

Poor grandpa!

He magnifies the past, minimizes the present and omits the future. He is dying, like some trees, at the top.

You cannot change the past, but you can discount the present and spoil the future by refusing to live in the one and to face the other.

To be successful, to stay young, to find happiness, cultivate the outward looking, forward looking mind.

Face the sun.

When you stand with your back to it the shadow is in front of you. When you face the sun the shadow is behind.

—The Janesville Daily Gazette, Janesville, WI, July 22, 1912, page 4.