October 27, 1914

There is so much beauty in the world. In sorrow, in sordidness, in poverty there is beauty. For example I saw a little girl selling newspapers down on Tenth street. Auburn hair which was trained, not by precise brushing and combing, but which seemed to have curved as it did because it had been brushed back by the child’s hand. Blue eyes with a child light in them, a baby mouth already moulded interestingly by the unsmoothness of life, and an outstretched hand with a paper in it. A little life crying for Life—the outstretched hand and the appealing look and the paper being only its mediums or weapons or tools or whatever you may wish to call it. I mean one did not get the idea that she was trying to sell you a paper but that she wanted to live.

One has to feel beauty as well as see it.

~ Wanda Gág