The Grenada gazette. (Grenada, Miss.) 1885-18??, 1886-11-20
PLEA 70 OLD MAIDS.
Their Faults Merely Those OF
Other Mortal Females.
Fashionable and Cruel Snecrs at Women
WHO Have Remained Unmarried
ola Maids Who Welded Them
selves to Good and Great Works.

Tie period of life at which rirlhood
ends and old-maidenhood begins is
very unsettled and d~iscordant. Misses
of twenty are apt to consider all their
unmarried lady friends who have
passed their thirticth year as abso-
iutely old maids, those of thirty sup
pose the era begins at about %forty-tiyc;
and ONE women Of fifty lose no OPP
%portunity Of indicating that they are
still girls, by which it is to be assumed
that old-maidism is postponed indeti-
nitely, as least in their cases. But it is
fair to suppose that when a single
women has passed her fortieth year.
she may be considered as standing, if
not within the gates, at least on the
threshold whichdivides youth from age.
But it is also true that years have very
little to do with it. Some persons APP
. pear to have been born old. while
others seem to have in them the springs
Of perpetual youth. Ninon de Len
clos, who was bell at eighty, with
scores of admiring knights at her feet.
kept in her heart as well as in her face,
the freshness and sprightliness OF
youth, and never grew old, despite her
crow of years. An old young maid
is most depressing sight, while a
young old maid, provided she does not
affect iniantiIe skittishncss, is quite the
reverse.
1t is, and to have been since
the earliest years, the fashion to direct
the sting; and arrows of ridiculc and
criticism at ''old maids" That grave
Injustice is often done the sisterhool,
there car be no doubt. Curiosity. the
love OF gossip, acridity, and sourness Of
temper and numerous other undeSir-
able qualities are attributed to them
often without the shadow of excuse.
The fits of temper and the habit OF
tlttlc-tattlc 50 often INDUCED in by mar
rid women are forgiven, ornot thought
Of at all, while the same failings in the
maiden, Of uncertain years are set down
to the acerbity engcndercd by her life
Of single blessedncss. Now, l am not
prepared to say that undrtc interest in
the affairs Of other people is not Il pre-
vaiiing characteristic of old maids. Il
would indeed be very remarkable if it
were not so, on the principle that the
mind Is so constituted that it must be
employed. The married woman has.
or is supposed to have. duties that en-
gross more or less of her attention,
while the spinster has no such refuge.
BE that as it may, each one must an
swcr for her own faults and shortcom-
ings, and if she makes society suffer for
them, society will unrcseryedly mete
out just punishment.
The old maid who atlirms that she
never wished to marry pronounccs the
sevcrest of satire against her own
heart. A female who never felt at any
period of her life a desire to engage in
the duties or share in the delights of
that state to which all human beings
are drawn by force of nature and
reason, must be utterly devoid of tender
ness and the Heavcn-born instinct with
whi2h all creation is rightfully en-
lowed. do not expect that this sen
timcnt will meet with unqualified in
dorsement from the s%pinsterhood; but
certain it is that in every true wom-
ans eye there peeps out q longing to
have a home, and a husband, and
babies ofher very own; and it is no less
true that thousands Of old maids would
have made most excellent wives and
mothers. That the instinct is strong
within theta is shown by the unaffected