And why not? What instinct is more deeply implanted in womanhood than the immemorial insatiable lust for pretty things? It has resisted the immemorial insatiable lust of preachers and satirists for insulting it, of economists and hardworking men for denouncing it. It has been called every contemptuous and cruel name in every language. Laws have been made against it innumerably, in vain. And it has flourished as unconquerably as violets in moss, as perfume in hyacinths, as bright plumage in birds, and ornate sunsets in western skies. The weavers of silk and the needlers of laces, the designers of gowns and of hats have kept up their beautiful careers despite the thunders of self-styled virtue and the slanders of all times. Poets and prosers and painters who have turned less beautiful lines and have married less beautiful colors, and the critics who have celebrated their achievements, have looked down with disdain on those who have devoted their inspirations and their toil to the creation of felicitous decorations for the living body. But the women have known better. They never have despised the artists who improved them and enhanced them; and by hook or by crook they have kept those artists alive and blessed them with fame. And again why not? The pietists and the Puritans who cannot forgive women for trying to be beautiful, do they not belie their own gods in their own barbaric praise of ugliness? “O Justice, what crimes are committed in thy name!” And, O Beauty, what crimes in thine! Yet beauty shall not die nor the love of ornament, and those who hate them cannot prove their right to cast a stone. Frightful extravagances and cruelties are the result of the hunger for beauty and the feeding of that appetite, but this is true of every other religion and law and ideal. If everybody who dressed plainly and lived without luxury, gave all he saved or she did not spend to the poor, their miserliness might be justified, but everybody knows that this is not so. Beauty is generous. She who is pleased with herself is already hospitable, and until the millennium is here those who have not the energy or the wile to get fine clothes and wear them well may content themselves as best they can by watching the well-bedecked go by. And who is he so mean of soul that he would decree the extinction of the custom women have of making themselves as pleasing to the eye as possible? And what benefits would the vandal confer on bedulled mankind? Momma at least at last was not of that humor. She had become a girl again at heart. She could never be again the gracile nymph who had turned the heads of Carthage swains with her flesh of apple-blossom hue, her fleecy hair in its ribbons, and her gay body in its winsome fabrics. But she could be a splendid white-haired matron; and that age has a nobler beauty and a grander charm than even youth can give, youth so common and so helpless in its grace.