Upon the whole, those who shaved and were smooth looked worse than those who did not, for they thus exposed the angularities of their chins and jaws.
They wore such horrid hats on the top of these roughly-sketched faces—sketched, as it were, with a bit of burnt stick. Some of them had their hats on the backs of their heads, and some wore them aslant, and some jammed over their brows.
They went along smoking and puffing, and talking and guffawing in the vulgarest way, en route to swill and smoke and puff and guffaw somewhere else.
Whoever could tell what they were talking about? these creatures.
They had no form or grace like a woman—no lovely sloped shoulders, no beautiful bosom, no sweeping curve of robe down to the feet. No softness of cheek, or silky hair, or complexion, or taper fingers, or arched eyebrows; no sort of style whatever. They were mere wooden figures; and, in short, sublimely ugly.
There was a good deal of truth in Amaryllis' reflections; it was a pity a woman was not taken into confidence when the men were made.
Suppose the women were like the men, and we had to make love to such a set of bristly, grisly wretches!—pah! shouldn't we think them ugly! The patience of the women, putting up with us so long!
As for the muscles on which we pride ourselves so much, in a woman's eyes (though she prefers a strong man) they simply increase our extraordinary ugliness.
But if we look pale, and slim, and so forth, then they despise us, and there is no doubt that altogether the men were made wrong.
"And Jack's the very ugliest of the lot," thought Amaryllis. "He just is ugly."