“Her eyes!” They were invariably deep and liquid. They had to be pretty deep to hold all the odds and ends that were hidden in them; sunlight and shadow, mischief, unsuspected possibilities, assorted emotions, strange wild yearnings. Anything we didn’t know where else to put we said was hidden in her eyes. “Her nose!” You could have made it for yourself out of a pen’orth of putty after reading our description of it. “Her forehead!” It was always “low and broad.” I don’t know why it was always low. Maybe because the intellectual heroine was not then popular. For the matter of that I doubt if she be really popular now. The brainless doll, one fears, will continue for many years to come to be man’s ideal woman—and woman’s ideal of herself for precisely the same period, one may be sure. “Her chin!” A less degree of variety was permissible in her chin. It had to be at an angle suggestive of piquancy, and it had to contain at least the suspicion of a dimple. To properly understand her complexion you were expected to provide yourself with a collection of assorted fruits and flowers. There are seasons in the year when it must have been difficult for the conscientious reader to have made sure of her complexion. Possibly it was for this purpose that wax flowers and fruit, carefully kept from the dust under glass cases, were common objects in former times upon the tables of the cultured. Nowadays we content ourselves—and our readers also, I am inclined to think—with dashing her off in a few bold strokes. We say that whenever she entered a room there came to one dreams of an old world garden, the sound of far-off bells. Or that her presence brought with it the scent of hollyhocks and thyme. As a matter of fact I don’t think hollyhocks do smell. It is a small point; about such we do not trouble ourselves. In the case of the homely type of girl I don’t see why we should not borrow Mr. Pickwick’s expression, and define her by saying that in some subtle way she always contrived to suggest an odour of chops and tomato sauce. If we desire to be exact we mention, as this particular author seems to have done, that she had an “elusive expression,” or a penetrating fragrance. Or we say that she moved, the centre of an indefinable nuance. But it is not policy to bind oneself too closely to detail. A wise friend of mine, who knows his business, describes his hero invariably in the vaguest terms. He will not even tell you whether the man is tall or short, clean shaven or bearded. “Make the fellow nice,” is his advice. “Let every woman reader picture him to herself as her particular man. Then everything he says and does becomes of importance to her. She is careful not to miss a word.”