WHAT THE EYES TELL.
The color of the eyes has hitherto chiefly concerned the novelist and the poet, but lately the cold-blooded statistician has been looking into them. It is announced that, taking the average of Europe and America, 44.6 per cent of men have light eyes, including blue and gray. The proportion of women having blue or gray eyes is 32.2 per cent. In other words, blue eyes are decidedly rarer among women than among men, says the London Express.
Men have light eyes oftener than women, but in the intermediate shades between light and dark the percentage of the two sexes is very nearly the same.
In this intermediate category are brown and hazel eyes. The percentage of these among men is 43.1, and among women 45.1.
The percentage of black eyes is larger among women than among men, being 20.7 per cent for the women, while among men it is 12.3.
Blue eyes are considered to possess great attractions. This was the case among the Greeks and Romans of classic times. Upon the Goddess of Minerva was bestowed a surname to signify the blueness of her eyes.
Gray eyes have ever been the ideal of all great novelists; among the number Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, Wilkie Collins and Charles Reade. Most of the heroines in up-to-date fiction are gray-eyed maidens.
Of the living great, as well as the famous dead, most have eyes of gray blue.
Shakespeare had eyes of gray; so had nearly all the English poets. Coleridge's eyes were large, light gray, prominent and of liquid brilliancy. Byron's eyes were gray, fringed with long black lashes.
Charles Lamb's glittering eyes were strangely dissimilar in color, one being hazel, the other having specks of gray in the iris. Chatterton's brilliant gray eyes were his most remarkable features. Under strong excitement one appeared brighter and larger than the other.