CHANGING FACES.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVII, Issue 4924, 11 January 1926, Page 4

CHANGING FACES.

EFFECT OF MODERN LIVING. JUNGLE DANGERS IN LONDON. Someone —I think it was Max O’Rell —s,aid once |tha ( t the English type oi woman’s face was moulded and the American type chiselled. This is very true. I wonder why. What is it that makes types so various ? Is it climate, or blood fusion, or mode of thought'! Occupation certainly seems to have something to do with it, for how often do you notice that people who pursue the s,ame avocations come to have the same cast of countenance ? (asks Lady Norah Bentinck, in the “Daily Mail”). Thus most seafaring men look the same ; so do most grooms, lawyers, actors, a,nd priests. So do butlers (how footmen ever develop into butlers is one of the minor mysteries of life !), gamekeepers, tramps, and gentlemen at large. People who live together for a very Long time quite often ge,t to look the same, and thus dear old Darbys and Joans in all walks of life are often as like as, two

Servants who have lived for years in the sa,me house come in the latter years to look exactly ilke their masters, and thus —in the old days, anyhow—old coachmen, old squires, and old butlers were practically indistinguishable. It is. of course, quite certain that the thoughts and habits of years are, as time goes by, photographed very clearly on the face. And one wonders whether the speed at which life is lived these days and the struggle for existence will in the end change the soft moulded face supposed to be characteristic of the women of England into a type more like the sharper a,nd chiselled one of America.

To cope with the daily rush of life in modern towns is a tremendous though perhaps unconscious strain on the nerves of most people. One cannot run for tubes, and omnibuses and dodge menacing vehicles without suffering some facial change, and one wonders whether we shall ultimately produce a race with quick, bird-like movements, sharp eyes like hens, and the movements and ,the instincts of the death-dodging weasel.

For death to the modern Londoner lurks at every street corner jus, t as ■menacingly as it lurks in the jungle. The motor-coach is th e elephant snorting and crashing; the taxicab is the coldly laughing hyena; the limousine is the lordly lion ; and the motor-cycle is the snake at your feet, unexpected and swift.

Oh, yes !' The dangers, of the jungle are not very far to seek in London, where human as, well as machinemade animals a,bound. The lion is there, and the shark, the hyena, and the snake. Just keep out of their way, but try not to let the process spoil your face.