LATE NEWS WHAT MOUTHS EXPRESS

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 30, 5 February 1932, Page 9

LATE NEWS

WHAT MOUTHS EXPRESS

MONTAIGNE'S WARNING

Montaigne's warning, "God gave you your other features, but you make your mouth yourself," has of tea been quoted, but just as often lost sight of, by woman in her eternal search for the beautiful (says a writer in. an English exchange). The efforts of most women in this direction, the direction of self-beautification, are spasmodic, or, at best, periodic; they will faithfully devote themselves to care of the skin or to culture of the hair, for a little while they will concern themselves over the contour of the neck and throat, and seek every means to correct it, if need be, but the beauty of the mouth, to acquire which is a gradual and constant progress, will be ignored. Emerson says that "of all the features the mouth admits of the greatest beauty and the greatest deformity." It can be made a thing of beauty, a joy, so long as that beauty lasts, or it may be hard and ugly and indicative of all that is base in the human character, exquisitely curved and sensitive or gross, sensual, and selfish and hard. It may express purity of thought, contentment, peace, and courage, or it may betray its owner as a constant yielder to the lower impulses, self-seeking and impervious to the rights of others. LIPS BETRAY THOUGHTS. To know the man or woman—watch not the eyes, but the mouth. The expression of the eyes in duress may be controlled temporarily; but the expi ession of the mouth follows the inner thoughts, and is a faithful ally to but one thing only, the actual facts of the case. The size and shape of the mouth do not greatly matter in judging the degree of beauty which it' may possess, although obviously here, as elsewhere, moderation is best. A mouth neither too small nor too large, whoso lips are neither too thick nor too thin, will more easily lend itself tj the achievement of those expressions which will endow it with beauty. The lips are the centre of the nerves, surrounded by a network of muscles, whose action, changes with every thought. They register every change of feeling just as accurately and as immediately as a barometer registers every change in the weather, and the expression which the lips will most frequnetly display is the one which is brought to them the oftenest, the one which indicates the thoughts and feelings most frequently indulged in. As a man or woman thinketh, so is he, or she, so far as the lips are concerned. Bitter, stern thoughts, cruel or deceitful ones, will write their message in the lines of tne mouth; the thought of love and hope will celestialise it and keep the lines beautiful.