Beauty

Jared got a library of classic books for Christmas and he and I are really enjoying reading them. One of the books is Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe. This pre-Civil War novel chronicles some of the terrible things about slavery. The author makes some great insights into human character and I have found that I just can't read the book without a pencil in my hand to mark favorite passages. In one place, the author is describing a good woman. She says:


"She might be fifty-five or sixty, but hers was one of those faces that time seems to touch only to brighten and adorn. . . . Her face was round and rosy, with a healthy downy softness, suggestive of a ripe peach. Her hair, partially silvered by age, was parted smoothly back from a high placed forehead, on which time had written no inscription, except peace on earth, good will to men, and beneath shone a large pair of clear, honest, loving brown eyes; you only needed to look straight into them, to feel that you saw to the bottom of a heart as good and true as ever throbbed in woman's bosom. So much has been said and sung of beautiful young girls, why doesn't somebody wake up to the beauty of old women?"


This paragraph resonated with me because I have often thought this same thing. When I was a little girl, I thought my grandmother with her silver hair and twinkling smile was the most lovely person in the entire world. What is beauty? Isn't it manifest though a person's soul? Isn't it how she treats others and how she looks at them? The world would do well to dwell less on physical youth when searching for a beautiful woman and instead look to those who increase the beauty of their surroundings simply by being wonderful to others!

This is a photo of my great-grangmother, Johanna Banz Everts. Isn't she beautiful?