The faces of old beauties have no charm beyond that of feeling. Look at the women who were reputed the belles of our large cities twenty years ago. They may be well preserved; but in most cases they are mere masks in discolored wax. The pearly teeth, the small Grecian features, the soft, fine hair and regular eyes are left, but the brow has learned neither to weep nor smile, the lips are composed, and might be mute for all the expression that replaces their lost crimson. One could adore the wasted beauty of the Duchess of Devonshire, “worn by the agitations of a brilliant and romantic life,” for the sake of the fire and kindness that lit even its death-pillow; and the Josephine of Malmaison, with eyes always eloquent of tears, wins more devotion than the empress at Saint Cloud, confessed the loveliest woman of France. Let no woman fall into the mistake of preserving her beauty by refraining from emotion, for all she can keep by such costly pains will be the coffin-like shapeliness of flowers preserved in sand. Laugh, weep, rejoice, or suffer as life provides. Only feel something natural, worthy and vivid enough not to leave your face a blank. There is a time between twenty-five and thirty-five when the struggle of life, mean or lofty as it may be, oppresses women sorely. Fret and care write crossing script on their faces, which grow yellow and pinched till they despair of comeliness. This is when they are learning to live. Ten years or so make the lesson easy, and it is one of the thankfulest things in the world to see such faces going back to the blossom and sunny sweetness of their spring. Many a woman is handsomer at thirty-nine than she was at thirty. Nature responds wonderfully to the reliefs afforded her. The only counsel is to let Nature go free. Do not think, because trial has bent spirit and frame together, that they should stay so a moment after the heavy hand is off. If you feel like singing, sing, not humming low, but joyful and clear as the larks, that would carol just as gayly at ninety, if larks lived so long, as the first summer they left their nests. The worst of English and American systems of manners is the constant repression they demand. It impairs even the physical powers, so that in training a singer the first thing great artists do is to teach her to feel, in order, as they say, to “warm up” the voice and give it fullness. Women need to cultivate pleasure and amusement far more after they are thirty than before it, I mean romantic pleasures, such as come from exquisite colors and sceneries in nature or their homes, from poetry and the loveliest music. They are twice as impressible then as they are in youth, if they know how to get hold of the right notes. They leave themselves to fall out of tune, and forget to respond.