University of Virginia Library

THE CONTRAST.

There is another type of womanhood in Congress Hall—a
patrician type which comes from cultivation and generations of
good blood. She wears no bright colors. Her eyes delight in
subtile symphonies—symphonies in music and color, too. She
does not wear yellow, and blue, and scarlet—but she mingles
them together as the painter mingles his paints on his palette,
and produces a warm symphony in brown or drab—perhaps the
lovely pongee. If she wears blue, she puts white in it, making
it look like the sky, or darkens it to the blue of the ocean. If
she wears scarlet, she tones it down with blue till it becomes
maroon. If she wears chrome yellow, she tones it down with
white till it becomes straw color—always a symphony.

Her shoulders are proudly erect, like the Venus de Medici,
and her arms rest in nature's attitude, like the arms of Thorwaldsen's
Graces—palms to the front. Her hair is gracefully
dressed, high up on the head, to show the beautiful curves of the
neck; and not stuffed or swelled into a clumsy globe, to
hang like a dead weight down upon the back. In the end she
“stuns” people in a civilized way—with grace, style and purity;
while the plebeian stuns with picturesque colors, deformed shoulders
and flopping hands.

There is a young lady at Congress Hall so graceful, so very
stylish, and yet so plain in her attire, that when she walks across
the room she is the centre of attraction. I venture to say that
she knows more of art, of sculpture, and of the true beauty of
form and style and color than all the plebeian girls in the house.