Explore "The Island of Stone Money" by William Henry Furness on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
A desire to add to Nature's scanty endowments of beauty, seems to be one of our earliest endeavours, after we have shed our fur and abandoned the arboreal abodes of our four-handed and conservative brothers. Whether, or not, we have in every instance, succeeded in improving on Nature's unadorned charms must remain pretty much a matter of taste.
The fashion of elaborate tattooing, which seems to have been prevalent among the men of the past generation in Uap, is at present decidedly on the wane. There are still some few middle-aged men who proudly display a complete suit of tattooing, but I am afraid that they are looked upon by the dandies of the day somewhat in the same light as the wearer of a frilled shirt-front and lace cuffs would be regarded by the exquisites of our own day, -- just a tinge of respect for old age but a devout thankfulness that such fashions are not the demand of this enlightened and superior era.