when I came close to
her and saw the old, bleared eyes in the midst of that beautifully
enamelled face, the shock had in it something akin to horror. It was as
though Death himself was peeping out triumphantly through the painted mask.
And in that moment I seemed to see all the pitiful years of struggle that
this unhappy woman had devoted to the pretence of never growing older. Her
pink and white cheeks were not a thing of beauty. They were only a grim
jest on herself, on her ambitions, her ideals, her poor little soul.

Why should we be so much afraid of wrinkles and grey hairs? In their place
they can be as beautiful as the freshest glow on the face of youth. There
is a beauty of the sunrise and a beauty of the sunset. And of the two the
beauty of the sunset is the deeper and more spiritual. There are some faces
that seem to grow in loveliness as the snows fall around them, and the acid
of Time bites the gracious lines deeper. The dimple has become a crease,
but it is none the less beautiful, for in that crease is the epic of a
lifetime. To smooth out the crease, to cover it with the false hue of
youth, is to turn the epic into a satire.

And if the painted face of age is horrible the painted face of youth is
disgusting. It is artistically bad and spiritually worse. It is the mark of
a debased taste and a shallow mind. It is like painting the lily or adding
a perfume to the violet, and has on one the unpleasant effect that is made
by the heavy odours in which the same type of person drenches herself, so
that to pass her is like passing through a sickly fog. These things are the
symptom of a diseased mind--a mind that has lost the healthy love of truth
and nature, and has taken refuge in falsities and shams. The paint on the
face does not stop at the cheeks. It stains the soul.

ON WRITING AN ARTICLE

I was putting on my boots just now in what the novelists call "a brown
study." There was no urgent reason for putting on my boots. I was not going
out, and my slippers were much more comfortable. But something had to be
done. I wanted a subject for an article. Now if you are accustomed to
writing articles for a living, you will know that sometimes the difficulty
is not writing the article, but choosing a subject. It is not that subjects
are few: it is that they are so many. It is not poverty you suffer from,
but an embarrassment of riches. You are like Buridan's ass. That wretched
creature starved between two b