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BEAUTY IN COMMON LIFE
I saw in an art gallery a group of well-drest people admiring a picture of some Spanish beggars. The beggars were unkempt, deformed, ugly, but the artist had seen beauty in the group, and his imagination made the scene appeal strongly to the passer-by. How many of those people, think you, would ever stop to look at a group of beggars, not in a picture, but in life? Would they have the imagination, apart from the artist, to feel the appeal of real men and women in real need and see beauty and grace of form beneath rags? And yet it is possible for all of us to be artists and see common life transfigured with a beauty and grace divine.—John H. Melish.
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Beauty, Insensitiveness to—See [Insensitiveness to Beauty].
BEAUTY PERVERTED
One of the most beautiful sights around Ispahan, in Persia, is a field of poppies—those pure white flowers—stretching away for miles. But the poppy is often the source of a curse and misery. Before the poppy is ripe the “head” is scratched at sunset with a kind of comb in three places; and from these gashes the opium oozes out. Next morning it is collected before sunrise, dried and rolled into cakes ready for use or market. Its growers are enriched by the traffic, but the ground is greatly impoverished. And the users of opium? Why, it is death to them.
Too often, as with the poppy, beauty becomes a curse, and blessing a bane. (Text.)
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Bed, Taking Up the—See [Bible Customs To-day].