( 193 ) 



BEAUTY IN THE COUNTRY, 



I. — The Making of Beauty. 



It takes a hundred and fifty years to make a 

 beauty — a hundred and fifty years out-of-doors. Open 

 air, hard manual labour or continuous exercise, 

 good food, good clothing, some degree of comfort, all 

 of these, but most especially open air, must play their 

 part for five generations before a beautiful woman 

 can appear. These conditions can only be found in 

 the country, and consequently all beautiful women 

 come from the country. Though the accident of 

 birth may cause their register to be signed in town, 

 they are always of country extraction. 



Let us glance back a hundred and fifty years, 

 say to 1735, and suppose a yeoman to have a son 

 about that time. That son would be bred upon the 

 hardest fare, but, though hard, it would be plentiful 

 and of honest sort. The bread would be home-baked, 

 the beef salted at home, the ale home-brewed. He 

 would work all day in the fields with the labourers, 

 but he would have three great advantages over them 

 — in good and plentiful food, in good clothing, and in 

 home comforts. He would ride, and join all the 

 athletic sports of the time. Mere manual labour 



