Clergyman — 'For Women To Be Ugly Is Nearly Sinful'

1909

BE WINSOME, GIRLS

Clergyman Says It's All Right For You to Paint and Powder

Young women of the First M. E. church in St. Louis may now use the powder puff, likewise the paint brush and the brow pencil, without any compunctions of conscience. Their pastor, the Rev. Philip Cone Fletcher, says it is all right.

Lecturing recently on "Love, Courtship and Marriage," he told them that beauty was a duty and that if they had not been born that way it was incumbent upon them to powder and paint and pencil themselves beautiful.

"If I were a young woman, I would try to be winsome," he said. "Beauty is a duty. Young women ought to strive to appear to the very best advantage, mentally, physically and morally. If by the use of the powder puff, the paint brush and the brow pencil you can make yourself more winsome, you have my consent to use them freely. It is all right to supplement the works of God. To be ugly in an age like this is but little short of a sin against God and self."

Things To Learn in Life

1907

Learn to laugh. A good laugh is better than medicine.

Learn to attend strictly to your own business — a very important point.

Learn how to tell a story. A well-told story is as welcome as a sunbeam in a sick room.

Learn to stop grumbling. If you cannot see any good in this world keep the bad to yourself.

Learn to keep your own troubles to yourself. The world is too busy to care for your ills and sorrows.

Learn to greet your friends with a smile. They carry too many frowns in their own hearts to be bothered with any of yours.

Learn to hide your aches and pains under a pleasant smile. No one wants to know if you have the toothache or headache.


Bread and Lilies

The Chinese have a saying: "If you have two loaves of bread, sell one and buy a lily. It is not the body alone that needs to be fed. Mind, heart and soul grow hungry, and many a time they are famishing when the larder is full. There are homes where the lilies are entirely crowded out by loaves, where there is no room for beauty or enjoyment, or even for love, to grow, because of the mad scramble after wealth. Fewer loaves and more lilies — less of the rush after material good, and more time for the gracious and beautiful things God has placed within reach of us all — would make happier and nobler lives.

Pastor Has Pretty Girls for Ushers: Attendance, Giving Up

1897

Girls Fill The Church

Pretty Ushers Prove a Paying Move at Trenton, N.J.

Rev. Maurice Penfield Fikes, of the First Baptist church, Trenton, N. J., has astonished religious circles by introducing in his church a novel feature in the form of girl ushers, whose business it is to take up the collections as well as to show church attendants to seats.

Mr. Fikes advertised the fact that there would be girl ushers in the church, and it was incidentally announced that in selecting care would be taken to pick out half a dozen, of the prettiest maidens in the congregation. The announcement was sufficient to draw to the church recently such an attendance of young men as was never there before.

Every seat in the church was filled long before services were begun, and it was necessary to set chairs in the aisles to accommodate the crowd. As ushers the girls were a grand success, but their best service was given when the time came to take up the collection. Pastor Fikes, prior to the time for starting the girls out with the contribution boxes, announced that the Lord loves a cheerful giver and said that he who gave to a church invested his money in an institution that was better than a savings bank. "Give freely and cheerfully," said he, "and the Lord, as well as these good girls, will appreciate it." The contribution was the largest ever taken in the church.

—Dubuque Daily Herald, Dubuque, IA, Dec. 4, 1897, p. 7.