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destitute of common sense and common humanity. No gift from Heaven is so
general and so widely abused by woman as the gift of Beauty. In about
mine cases in ten it makes her silly, senseless, thoughtless, giddy,
vain, proud, frivolous, selfish, low, and mean. I think I have seen more
girls spoiled by Beauty than by any other one thing. "She is beautiful,
and she knows it," is as much as to say she is spoiled. A beautiful girl
is very likely to believe she was made to be looked at; and so she sets
herself up for a show at every window, in every door, on every corner of
the street, in every company at which opportunity offers for an
exhibition of herself. And believing and acting thus, she soon becomes
good for nothing else; and when she comes to be a middle-aged woman she
is that weakest, most sickening of all human things--a faded Beauty.

It has long since passed into a proverb, that homely women are good,
that plain women have strong common sense. An eminent writer asks, "Who
ever saw a handsome talented woman?" There is among us a class of
"strong-minded women," brave of heart and deep of soul, high of purpose
and pure of life, who are stirring the country from heart to
circumference by the sterling powers of womanhood which they possess,
and there is not "a beauty" among them. There is a large class of female
writers in every enlightened country, over the productions of whose
genius the world hangs delighted, but there is not "a beauty" wields the
magic pen. There are women engaged in great enterprises of benevolence
and piety, reformers, missionaries, teachers who labor and live for the
causes in which they are engaged, but scarcely a beauty can be found
among them all. But why? Is Beauty uncongenial to talent and worth? By
no means. But Beauty is a dangerous gift, and few beautiful women ever
seek to develop their minds--ever seek to be any thing more than they
are. Worth is _made_, not _given_; Beauty is _given_, not _made_. Women
who have no Beauty make worth. Those who have Beauty are satisfied with
that, and seldom make for themselves much worth. The world has paid
court to Beauty, and Beauty has foolishly become satisfied with itself,
and been willing to be wooed and petted till it has become the weakest
of all weak things. I heard of a man of brilliant talents who is said to
have been ruined by the possession of a beautiful head, adorned with a
beautiful covering of hair. He was a minister of the Gospel, an