128 BKOWX BEAUTIES 



lack an advocate ? He comes of good stock ; 1 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, m body or mind ; but the ai)ongines 

 of Mexico have kept their fine })hysique, their good looks, 

 and their amiable character; they have had no chance 

 whatever to gain in intelligence, though they do not lack 

 mother -gumption. 1 hardly think 1 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 trjdng 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 appetitlich 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 liis 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. 1 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 tiiat I, too, stand midway between the 

 King of Dahomey and the European connoisseur in 

 beauty ? 



