Divides threefold to show the fruit within.”
But why be beholden to poets, who, after all, are but the interpreters of nature? Does not Scotland to this day own many a fair complexion, and tresses which Venice cannot match for sunny splendour; and are not the dark, flowing locks of the Lancashire witches working as secret charms as ever enthralled the courteous knights of old? It is certain that, in regard to the hair, the ancients had no monopoly of beauty.
Concerning grey hair, we may remark that the term is a misnomer applied to single hairs; for the greyness merely arises from the commingling of white and dark hairs. When the secretion of the colouring matter in the pulp ceases, all succeeding growth from the bulb is colourless. Every one feels some little anxiety about grey hairs. To the moralist they are Death’s blossoms—the solemn warning to adjust the mantle e’er we fall. With some, grey hairs will even intrude upon the pleasures of youth; with others, they are but as the ripening of the corn—when wisdom gathers her full harvest against the time of declining strength; again, in others, they wait upon old age, like a wreath of snow on the brow of winter; and some enjoy life to its fullest span, and there is no sign of “the sere and yellow leaf:” so various are the conditions of life which produce the change of constitution which accompanies grey hairs. It is amusing to notice the special theory which each one contrives to account for the presence of these tell-tales. “Ah!” said Louis XII., as he looked in the mirror, somewhat astonished at the number of grey hairs, “these are owing to the long speeches I have listened to, those especially of M. le——, have ruined my hair.” It was mere folly for the Teian bard to tell the girls how prettily the white hairs of age contrast with the rich tresses of youth, like roses and lilies in a chaplet, or milk upon roses; for at his time of life, the old Sybarite ought to have known better. We remember to have felt deeply for the unfortunate bridegroom, when we first read the tragical story, in the Encyclopædia Metropolitana, of the gentleman, “who, at his marriage, when about forty years old, had a dark head of hair; but, on his return from his wedding trip, had become so completely snow white, even to his eyebrows, that his friends almost doubted his identity.” Even the curled Anthony must needs make excuses to the fair Egyptian for his grey hairs:
“What, girl? though grey
Do something mingle with our younger brown;
Yet ha’ we a brain that nourishes our nerves,
And can get goal for goal of youth.”
How sudden grief and consuming care will blanch the hair is known to all. Memory recalls the lone prisoner in the castle of Chillon, and the lofty queen who passed from a throne to a prison and the scaffold, to teach heroes how to face death. And by these truthful signs, these silver hairs, may oftentimes be traced the story of a broken heart—of hope too long deferred—of fallen ambition—of blighted affection, or of man’s ingratitude. What more sacred than these secret sorrows; who would seek to pry into them with idle questionings? The leaf is withered, for the worm is at the heart of the tree:
“This white top writeth mine oldé years;
Mine heart is also mouldered as mine hairs.”