A New Man With an Old Face

There seems to be a deeper significance in hair than meets the eye. Sons of Esau, whose beards grow high up on their cheek-bones, who are hairy down to their ankles, and to the second joints of their fingers, are generally men of a kindly and charitable nature, strong in what we call the human element. One remembers their stout hand-grip; they look frankly in one's face, and the heart is apt to go out to them more spontaneously than to the smooth-faced Jacobs. Such a man was Samson, whose hair was his strength,--the strength of inborn truth and goodness, whereby he was enabled to smite the lying Philistines. And although they once, by their sophistries, managed to get the better of him for a while, they forgot that good inborn is too vigorous a matter for any mere razor finally to subdue. See, again, what a great beard Saint Paul had, and what an outspoken, vigorous heart! Was it from freak that Greeks and Easterns reverenced beards as symbols of manhood, dignity, and wisdom? or that Christian Fathers thundered against the barber, as a violator of divine law? No one, surely, could accuse that handy, oily, easy little personage of evil intent; but he symbolized the subtile principle which pares away the natural virtue of man, and substitutes an artificial polish, which is hypocrisy. It is to be observed, however, that hair can be representative of natural evil as well as of good. A tangle-headed bush-ranger does not win our sympathies. A Mussulman keeps his beard religiously clean.