The fashion papers, which are authority on the styles, claim that ladies
with large mouths are all the fashion now, and that those whose mouths are
small and rosebud like are all out of style. It is singular the freaks
that are taken by fashion. Years ago a red-headed girl, with a mouth like
a slice cut out of a muskmelon, would have been laughed at, and now such a
girl is worth going miles to see.
It is easier to color the hair red, and be in fashion, than it is to
enlarge the mouth, though a mouth that has any give to it can be helped by
the constant application of a glove stretcher during the day, and by
holding the cover to a tin blacking box while sleeping. What in the world
the leaders of fashion wanted to declare large mouths the style for, the
heavens only can tell.
Take a pretty face and mortise about a third of it for mouth, and it seems
to us as though it is a great waste of raw material. There is no use that
a large mouth can be put to that a small mouth would not do better, unless
it is used for a pigeon hole to file away old sets of false teeth. They
can't certainly, be any better for kissing.
You all remember the traveling man who attended the church fair at
Kalamazoo, where one of the sisters would give a kiss for ten cents. He
went up and paid his ten cents, and was about to kiss her when he noticed
that her mouth was one of those large, open face, cylinder escapement, to
be continued mouths. It commenced at the chin and went about four chains
and three links in a northwesterly direction, then around by her ear,
across under the nose and back by the other ear to the place of beginning,
and containing twelve acres, more or less.
The traveling man said he was only a poor orphan, and had a family to
support, and if he never came out alive it would be a great hardship upon
those dependent upon him for support, and he asked her as a
special favor that she take her hand and take a reef in one side of the
mouth so it would be smaller. She consented, and puckered in a handful of
what would have been cheek, had it not been mouth. He looked at her again
and found that the mouth had become a very one-sided affair, and he said
he had just one more favor to ask.
[Illustration: "GET THEE TO A NUNNERY!"]
He was not a man that was counted hard to suit when he was at home in
Chicago, but he would always feel as though he had got his money's worth,
and go away with pleasanter recollections of Kalamazoo, if she would
kindly take her other hand and draw the other side of her mouth together,
and he would be content to take his ten cents' worth out of what was left
unemployed.
This was too much, and she gave him a terrible look, and returned him his
ten cents, saying, "Do you think, sir, because you are a Chicago drummer,
that for ten cents you can take a kiss right out of the best part
of it? Go! Get thee to a nunnery," and he went and bought a lemonade with
the money.
We would not advise any lady whose mouth is small to worry about this new
fashion, and try to enlarge the one nature has given her. Large mouths
will have their run in a few brief months and will be much sought after by
the followers of fashion, but in a short time the little ones that pout,
and look cunning, will come to the front and the large ones will be for
rent. The best kind of a mouth to have is a middling sized one, that has a
dimple by its sides, which is always in style.