The Jersey City News

EYE AN INDEX OF THE SOUL

The eye is the most honest and the most daring feature of the face, and sometimes it is the most beautiful. It is the window through which the soul looks. If it is a dauntless soul, we recognize it and see it as plainly as a face reflected in a mirror, for character flings its banners to the world from this human oriel.

The eye cannot be taught the restraint and dissemblance to which the mouth can be trained. Should you doubt a woman's words look in her eyes—they are certain again betray her if her speech be false. The utmost they can do is to assume cool indifference, and that is a flimsy mask for deceit.

Beware of shifty eyes that seek to evade your questioning glance. It would be a waste of time to listen to the tongue's denials or excuses after they have hung out the signal "Untrustworthy."

This expression cannot be taken for timidity. There is a world of difference between the two. Timid eyes are deprecating and entreating, questioning the world, which is their apparent bogie. In reality they are self-oppressed, more afraid of their own feelings than of the folk surrounding them, and they need encouragement.

Eyes are even more democratic than their owners. They wait for no introduction and invade the most carefully guarded privacy with insistent, searching glances. Women need an expression of amiable indifference as a safe armor as they mingle in the crowds of a great city. In their days of domestic seclusion the caution dinned into the ears of Eve's daughters, "Have a guard upon your lips," was well enough justified by the mode of life and its narrower interests, but to fit it to present-day needs it should read "eyes" instead of "lips." Many a young girl, by her too frank and familiar glance, invites the advance which offends and sometimes even insults her. One should not take the public too readily into one's confidence, and the "speaking glance" does this, often involuntarily.