modern Savonarola presiding over a new Bonfire of Vanities in Madison
Square, on which, to the droning of Moody and Sankey's hymns, shall be
cast all the fascinating Parisian creations, the puffs and rats, the
powder and the rouge, the darling stockings, and all such concomitant
bewitcheries that today make Manhattan a veritable Isle of Circe, all to
go up in savage sectarian flame, before the eyes of melancholy young
men, and filling all the city with the perfume of beauty's holocaust. At
street corners too will stand great books in which weeping maidens will
sign their names, swearing before high heaven, to wear nothing but
gingham and bed-ticking for the dreary remainder of their lives. Such a
day may well come, as it has often come before, and certainly will, if
women persist in being so deliberately beautiful as they are at present.

It is curious how, from time immemorial, man seems to have associated
the idea of evil with beauty, shrunk from it with a sort of ghostly
fear, while, at the same time drawn to it by force of its hypnotic
attraction. Strangely enough, beauty has been regarded as the most
dangerous enemy of the soul, and the powers of darkness that are
supposed to lie in wait for that frail and fluttering psyche, so
precious and apparently so perishable, are usually represented as taking
shapes of beguiling loveliness--lamias, loreleis, wood nymphs, and
witches with blue flowers for their eyes. Lurking in its most innocent
forms, the grim ascetic has affected to find a leaven of concupiscence,
and whenever any reformation is afoot, it is always beauty that is made
the first victim, whether it take the form of a statue, a stained-glass
window, or a hair-ribbon. "Homeliness is next to Godliness," though not
officially stated as an article of the Christian creed, has been one of
the most active of all Christian tenets. It has always been easier far
for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven than a gloriously
beautiful woman. Presumably such a one might be in danger of corrupting