﻿Beauty 
 
First of all I must absolve myself of all intent to slight or belittle the constant, comprehensive, all-around beauty of mankind in general—and womankind, in particular—Having thus established my preamble, I will proceed to dwell upon a beauty little known and hence little understood—misunderstood. 

There is a rugged style of beauty, a concrete example of which is the lifelike photo of our present author and coal-heaver, Mr. T-Bone Slim. 

Then there is the animated spectacular style of beauty peculiar to the landlady when she stands, a quivering mass of scintillating personality, demanding last week’s rent. Te beggar maid in front of King “Copethua” was twice as hard to look upon, to paraphrase O. Wilde, the great poet. 

Let it be noted that we shall discuss only standard current beauty. The baby and doll-face, as well as kitten, chicken and tapper beauty, shall not be touched upon in this article if the editor and I —know the business of the reader. 

Now, Editor, let us be forewarned—let us proceed to disarm the rebel girls before it is too late. 

There is a vista of beauty—a sea of organized, well ordered, beauty which surpasses the wildest dreams of world “conoisseurs.” The mirage, lone beauty, of a scissorine, fades into insignificance alongside of the composite whole of feminine to hopes and fears outshining in a sea of skirts demanding justice where none grew before.—How’s that? 

To make two blades of justice grow none grew before. That is beauty. 

Now, in China just recently a seventeen-year-old ruler undertook to marry a sixteen-year-old girl whose face he had never gazed upon. Just think, fellow lumberjacks, he has never gazed upon the beauty of his “partner.” —How would you like to hitch up with a stranger whom you had not studied at least a few fleeting momenta—whose rare and sparkling beauty you were not permitted to drink in by the eyeful? 

Ah, slaves, you couldn’t do it—I couldn’t do it, and the editor wouldn’t do it (because Ed. is a reasoning creature, more so than either of us) . 

How many times, fellow lumberjacks, as we meandered down the avenoo (in our stags and tin pants) has our progress been arrested by a pair of heavenly eyes? 

And when the muscles of one of those eyes would contract in the southeast corner (most solemnly) how rapidly our hearts did beat—even so as when we finish falling the giants of the forest. —We would forget our stags, our name and everything, stand there riveted to the ground every bit as hollow as fir stump on Nature’s reservation. 

Was that beauty?—You know it wasn’t. 

That was only a mirage of the miraculous beauty of womankind organized to demand the exact full product of their toil on a basis of exact equality with man, in the day when that worthy takes it into his nut to can the boss. 

 Scenery! Oh, you manrvelous panorama of beauty—I stand on the banks of a beautiful creek in Northern Minnesota—The creek is dry at prsent, but that prevents me not from going into fits of ecstacy— 

In the midst of this great “Hush” I stand—on a logging-road trestle and a lumberjack points out to me the exact spot from where old Weyerhauser took his memorable plunge into the peaceful waters of the Cloquet River.— My eye wanders over the landscape and I swell like a foundered steer o’er the exquisite adjustment of Nature’s wonders which Weyerhauser’s plunge had failed to disutrb. 

Many a Coast logger will insist that this was beauty with emphasis — and that Weyerhauser should have remained in the creek, a crowning glory to the eternal fitness of things. But I shall deny them the right to intrude their views in this discussion and shall petulently declare a verdict of “not beauty.” 

What is beauty? Beauty is everything. 

The China woman married to a China man is “a thing of beauty and joy forever.”— (Keats.) A thing that startles NOT is a thing of beauty.— (Slim.) Therefore, fellow sufferers, when the Chinese ruler, brought up in all the harmony of color, tone and surroundings, attends the unveiling of the statue of his misfortune, if he becomes startled the thing is not art 

The shock (if any) in this ceremony, if it doesn’t kill the kid, will convince the young ruler of China that beauty (the thing we all love) should unfold itself gradually to our delicate consciousness and not abruptly, like the Cloquet did to Weyerhauser. 

We love to gloat over beauty. 
T-BONE SLIM.