s exhale sweet odors needs not tell us that
he has lingered long in the fragrant garden. But the face and form are
equally sensitive to the spirit's finer workings. Mental brightness
makes facial illumination. Moral obliquity dulls and deadens the
features. There never was a handsome idiot. There never can be a
beautiful fool. But sweetness and wisdom will glorify the plainest
face.

Physicians tell us that no intensity of disease avails for expelling
dignity and majesty from a good man's countenance, nor can physical
suffering destroy the sweetness and purity of a noble woman's. It is
said that after his forty days in the mount Moses' face shone. All the
great artists paint St. Cecilia with face uplifted, listening to
celestial music, and all glowing with light, as though sunbeams
falling from above had transfigured the face of the sweet singer.
Those who beheld Daniel Webster during his delivery of his oration on
the Pilgrim Fathers say that the statesman's face made them think of a
transparent bronze statue brilliantly lighted from within, with the
luminosity shining out through the countenance.

But the eyes are the soul's chiefest revelators. Tennyson spoke of
King Arthur's eyes as "pools of purest love." As there is sediment in
the bottom of a glass of impure water, so there is mud in the bottom
of a bad man's eye. Thus, in strange ways, the body tells the story of
the soul. Health hangs its signals out in rosy cheeks; disease and
death foretell their story in the hectic flush, even as reddening
autumn leaves foretell the winter's heavy frost; anxious lines upon
the mother's face betray her secret burdens; the scholar's pallor is
the revelation of his life, while the closely knitted forehead of the
merchant interprets the vexing problems he must solve.

Thinking of the pathetic sadness of Lincoln's face, all seamed as it
was and furrowed with care and anxiety, Secretary Stanton said that
the President's face was a living page, upon which the full history
of the nation's battles and victories was written. We are told that
when the Waldenses could no longer bear the ghastly cruelty of the
inquisitors, they fled to the mountain fastnesses. There, worn out by
suffering, the brave leader was stricken by death. Coming forth from
their hiding-places, the fugitives gathered around the hero's bier.
Stooping, one lifted the hair from the forehead of the dead youth and
said: "This boy's hair, grown thin and white through