128 BROWN BEAUTIES 



lack an advocate ? He comes of good stock ; I have, in 

 many qualities, rarely seen a finer subject -race than the 

 Mexican Indian. I do not think the Spaniard on Ameri- 

 can soil has thriven, in body or mind ; but the aborigines 

 of Mexico have kept their fine physique, their good looks, 

 and their amiable character; they have had no chance 

 whatever to gain in intelligence, though they do not lack 

 mother - gumption. I hardly think I have ever seen a 

 greater percentage of pretty women than in Mexico, among 

 the peasants. One must, to be sure, conjure away dirt 

 and some rather trying habits ; but then beauty, abstract- 

 ly speaking, may no doubt reside beneath a grimy exte- 

 rior. I do not refer to that peculiar quality of beauty 

 neatly called appetiilich by the Germans. To evoke one's 

 appetite requires cleanliness rather than the thing we call 

 beauty, and I do not know that I ever saw a Mexican 

 Indian girl whom I would care to embrace ; but they are 

 well-grown, plump, straight, have -fine eyes and teeth, and 

 in their unsewn garments of dirty cotton cloth, with a 

 xerapa loosely thrown about head and shoulders, they are 

 certainly fine specimens of womanhood, and graceful be- 

 yond the corseted beauty of civilization. 



But the skin ! say you. Well, the skin is brown, but it 

 shows the red blood gushing heartily beneath ; and let 

 us see even so good a judge as the King of Dahomey 

 preferred his lustrous, black-skinned, fattened beauties to 

 the most exquisite of pale-face women. And let me con- 

 fess to a weakness for a brown skin. I am sure that 

 three out of four of my travelled, susceptible male friends 

 at least, if they will be honest about it have grown to 

 like the brown skin of the maidens of the Orient. Ought 

 I to acknowledge that I, too, stand midway between the 

 King of Dahomey and the European connoisseur in 

 beauty ? 



