p. 10 | HEART BEAUTY

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Aug 10, 1904

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 30, No. 32.

HEART BEAUTY.

“It is a pity that Margaret is so—well, is so horrid homely!”

“Margaret, homely! You would never say that if you knew her better.”

Mrs. Carter looked up in surprise.

“Certainly no one would call those irregular features anything but ugly! Poor girl, she must feel it when she is with her sisters, for their beauty is such a contrast.”

“You never think of her features when you are about her. She is so ready to do a favor, and is so kind and gentle in her ways. She has always a kind word for everybody.”

I heard a slight rustle behind me and glanced around just in time to see Margaret disappear down the steps; she must have been reading in her favorite

nook among the honeysuckles at the end of the

That night she came into my room, as usual, for a little chat before retiring, but she was unusually quiet as she sat on the stool at my feet and gazed at the fire in the grate, for the night was cool.

“I don’t know what you will think of me,” she said at last, and there was a tremor in her voice, “but I could not help overhearing what you said about me this afternoon, and I want to thank you for it. You see, I am so ‘horrid homely,’ as Mrs. Carter said, and I have always felt it, especially when people will compare me with Edith and Laura, and speak of their beauty. Don’t think that I am jealous; but I can’t help being sensitive about my ugliness. I used to get angry and fret because my hair wouldn’t curl and because my mouth was so large and my nose such an ugly shape; until I guess I was getting as ugly inside as I was out,” she said sadly. “One day an old woman came to the house selling laces, and when she went out of the house she fell. I ran down and helped her up and straightened the things in her basket for her. She put her hand on my shoulder and said:—

“God bless you, young lady, youse not got the beauty that’s skin deep. No youse not got the skin beauty, youse got the heart beauty; that’s inside. Youse got a kind word for an old woman. God bless you, child.”

“Well, that ‘heart beauty’ was a new idea to me, and I thought over it a great deal; and I made up my mind that I would try to have that if I could not have the ‘skin beauty,’ and if I was kind to everybody they wouldn’t think of my ugly face. What you said this afternoon—well, it made me feel that I was gaining a little at least. It was the first time I ever heard any one say that I was anything but plain and ugly.” She laughed, but there were tears in the gray eyes that looked into mine.

“Heart beauty! I shall try to have it if I can,” she said, half aloud, then gazed fixedly again at the —New York Observer.