A German writer has well said, “There are eyes which only need to look up, to touch every chord of a breast choked by the stiff atmosphere of stiff and stagnant society, and to call for tones which might become the accompanying music of a life.” “This gentle transfusion of mind into mind, is the secret of sympathy. It is never understood but ever felt; and where it is allowed to exert its power, it fills and extends intellectual life far beyond the measure of ordinary conception.”
A refined and sensitive person will be conscious of an instinctive shrinking from another, a dislike that cannot be accounted for except that something disagreeable is discovered in the eye. We may strive to overcome this feeling, if there person in question presents an otherwise plausible appearance; but the look will haunt us, and the eye will warn us to distrust such a false outside. We cannot repose confidence in such an one; we know that there is no affinity between us, that we do not belong to the same sphere. Perhaps all are not thus susceptible, indeed it may be only the finer spirits that can look through the windows of the soul into the mystery of the inner life. A woman may school her voice to a musical key; her smile be soft and fascinating, and her manners insinuating and bland; yet a single glance of her eye shall reveal that she is passionate and artful in the extreme.
Excerpted from ‘About Eyes’ by Miss M. A. H. Dodd, appearing in The Ladies’ Repository, volume XXI. Edited by the Rev. Henry Bacon, published by A. Tompkins, Boston, 1853.