Public ledger. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1865-1893, 1870-03-19
sIlvER.HAIRED LADIES.
Fashionable Old Ladies' and Moth
erIy Women = How they Dress
and Reveal Character.

veterans, and above all it is unjust to its
/ ancient females Everywhere, and from
all time, an old woman has been used to
express the last stage of usefulness and
exhaustion; and while a meeting Of
bearded dotards goes by the name of a
council of sages, and its deliberations
respected accordingly, congregation Of
/ palsied matrons is nothing but a congre.
CATION of old women, whose thoughts
and opinions on any subject whatsoever
have no more value than the chattering
of so many magpies. sarrr.f .sffg
The fact is the poor old ladies have a
hard time of it; and if we look at it in
its right light, perhaps nothing proves
more thoroughly the coarse flavor of the
world S esteem respecting women than
this disdain which they excite when they
are old. And yet what charming old
ladies one has known at times-women
quite as charming in their own way at
seventy, as their grand-daughters are at
seventeen, and all the more so because
they have no design now to be charming,
because they have given up the attempt
to please for the reaction of praise, and
long since have consented to become
physically old, they never drifted into
unpersonableness or neglect HIf
While retaining the intellectual viva
city and active sympathies of maturity,
they have added the softness, the mel
lowness, the tempering got only from
experience and advancing age; they are
Somen who have seen and known and
read great deal, and who had suffered
much. but whose sorrows had neither
hardened nor soured them, Rather have
made them more sympathetic with the
sorrows of others, and 'pitiful for all the
Young. They have lived through and
lived down all their own trials, and have
come ont into peace on the other side;
but they remember the trials, OF the fiery
passage, and feel for those who have still
to bear the pressure of the pain they
have overcome. These are women not
much met with in society; they are of
the kind which remain at home and let
the world come to them.
They have done with the hurry and
glitter of life, and they no longer care to
carry their gray hairs abroad; they re-
tain their hold on the affections OF their
kind; they take an interest in the his
tory, the science, the progress OF the
day, but they rest tranquil and content
by their own firesides, and they SIT to re-
ceive, but do not 60 out to gather. The
fashionable old lady who haunts the
theaters and drawingrooms, bewigged,
befrizzed, CHASTITY in her vain attempts
to appear young, hideous in her frenzled
ciutch at the pleasures melting from her
grasp. desperate in her wild hold upon a
life that is passing away from her so
rapidly, knows nothing of the quiet Dig
nifty and happiness of their ancient Sis
ter who has been wise enough to re-
nounce before she lost.
In her own house, where gather
small knot of men of mind and women
of character &1ore the young bring their
perplexities and the mature their deeper
thoughts. the dear old lady of ripe ex-
perience and loving sympathies and cul-
tivated intellect holds a better court
than is known to any of those miserable
old creatures who prowl about the gay
places Of the world and wrestle with the
Young for the crowns and garlands--
those wretched simulacra of womanhood
who will not grow and who can not be
come wise. She is the best kind of old
lndy extant, answering to the matrons OF
classic times-to the Mother OF Israel
before whom the tribes paid obeisanee in
token of respect; the woman whose book
of life has been well studied, closely read,
and kept clean in all its pages.
She had been no prude, however, and
no mere idealist. She must have been
wife, mother and widow; that is, she
must have known many things of joy and
grief and have had the fountains of life
unsealed. However wise and good she
may be, as spinster she has had only
half a life; and it is the best half that
has been denied her How can she tell
others, when they come to her IN their
troubles, how time and healthy exist
enee will have wrought the same clrcum-
stances. TheOretic comfort is all very
well, but one word of experience goes
beyond volumes of counsel based upon
general principles and lively imagina-
ton. TIE very dress of old ladies is in
itself study aud a revelation of eharac-
ter.
There are the beSutiful old women who
make themselves ike old pictures by
profusion of soft lace and tender grays;
and the stately old ladies who affect rich
rustling silks and somber velvet; and
there are the original and individual old
ladies who dress themselves after their
own kind, like Mrs. BAIL Montagu and
Miss Jane Porter, and have a cdchet Of
their own with which fashion has nothing
to do. And there are the old women
who wear rusty black stuff and ugly heb
met-like caps; and those who affect una
formity and going with the stream when
the fashion has become national; and
these have been much exercised of late
with the chignons and the new bonnets.
But Providence is liberal and milliners
are fertile in resources In fact, in this
as in all other sections of humanity,
there are those who are foolish aud un-
lovely; those who make the best of Things
as they are, and those who make the