(From the Autobiography of Helen Winship.) No. 2 Union Square, December 14.
I am the most beautiful woman in the world!
I feel like a daughter of the gods. Bewildered, amazed, at times incredulous of my good fortune--but happy, happy, happy!
There is no joy in heaven or earth like the joy of being beautiful-- incomparably beautiful! It's such a never-ending surprise and delight that I come out of my musings with a start, a dozen times a day, and shudder to think: "What if it were only a dream!"
Happy? I have no faith in the old wives' fables that we are most miserable when we get what we want. It isn't true that the weak and poor are to be envied beyond the powerful. Ask the fortunate if they would change! I wouldn't; not for the Klondike?
I'm so happy! I want to take into my confidence the whole world of women. I want them to know how the gift was gained that they are some day to share. I want them to know that there are still good fairies in the world; and how I was fated to meet one, how he waved his wand over me and how my imperfections fled. Every woman will read the story of my life with rapt attention because of the Secret. I shall tell that last of all. Now it's my own.
Is it true that I have longed for beauty more passionately than most women; or is it only that I know myself, not the others? I can remember the time, away back, when the longing began--when I was---Incredible! Was I ever an ugly little girl, careless of my appearance, happiest in a torn and dirty dress; and homely, homely, homely? Oh, miracle! The miracle!
They say all girls begin life thus heedless of beauty; but none get far along the road before they meet the need of it. So it was with me; and now I love to recall every pitiful detail of the beginning of the Quest of Beauty, the funny little tragedy of childhood that changed the current of my life--and of your lives, all you women who read.
It was one day after school, in the old life that has closed forever-- after the prairie school, dull, sordid, uninspiring, away in the West-- that a playmate, Billy Reynolds, was testing upon me his powers of teasing. I remember the grin of pleasure in his cruelty that wrinkled his round, red face when at last he found the dart that stung. His words--ah, they are no dream! They were the awakening, the prelude of to-day.
"Janey's prettier'n what you be," he said; and of a sudden I knew that it was true, and felt that the knowledge nearly broke my heart.