Los Angeles daily herald., 1889-12-24
WOMEN AT 30 TO 80.
The Age ut Which They Are Said 80
he Most Entertaining.

The Age ut Which They Are Said to
lie Most Entertaining.
Time was when to be sixteen was the
best thing that could happen TO young
girl. 1t was the age of dewy freshness,
of innocent impressioility, and of all the
other delightful but rather verdant vir-
tues which have won the heart of the
poet to song and wood the mind of the
sage to something better than his phil
osophy. But. sweet sixteen is in short
dresses today and still under tho rule of
her governess. Her affections have not
vet departed FROM her dolls and she
treats the few young men of her acquain-
lance with the simplicity of child. 1t
was good thing once to be eixteen; it is
q good thing now TO be twenty; to be
twenty-five is better still, but to be
twenty-eight is to be blest
"There is no time in woman's life
when she is so delightful (married or
unmarried, but particularly the latter),"
said an observing man yesterday, "as she
is from % to 80. She still has the en-
thusiasm OF youth, and much of the toll
Grant sense of middle life. Her judg-
ment is mature, and her opinions carry
weight. The shynees and timidity of her
girlhood have passed into poise of man
ner and a gracious dignity that places
her friends at once at their easy best. She
has had experience, and that experience
has given her clear understanding of the
world as it really is, and of herself with
out illusions. Therefore her estimates
and criticisms of life are sharp and sure
and usually to be trusted, because she
has no theories to bolster up and no illd-
sions to perpetuate."
"But there is something to be said on
the other side," said woman of 26, who
heard him. SIT may look very like
smooth sailing from the outside, but one
can have little idea how much tact it
takes to steer straight in the narrow
path of the five years that lie between
rs and 30. In the first place, q woman
at that age hardly knows where to place
herself, She is neither young nor old.
She 10 what Julian Hawthorne calls
still young and the little adjective adds
ten years at q stroke. If woman who
is only still young takes the coy and
kittenish role, she makes herself i'm
MORALLY ridiculous, and deservedlv so.
She has sometimes even to fear letting
herself be spontaneous and natural, lest
some one will dub her the 'girlish old
girl TO be older than her years makes
q prig of her at once, and men and gods
will shun her.
"To the very young man she must be
grandmotherly without hurting his dear
little vanity by superior wisdom and pa
tronage. To the middle-aged man she
must respond with a maturity of judg-
ment that matches his own, and yet she
must continually suggest the innocence
of 16. To the man between the two, she
may perhaps be nearest her natural self,
and yet even with him she has continu-
ally to remember that she must never
assume the equality of knowledge or
experience or judgment which che is
sure she really possesses. She is oftener
truer in her Judgments and wiser in
her conclusions than he is; he must
never suspect it. She may be cleyerer
than he, but she must be clever enough
to conceal it, She must follow him al
waye, but, like little Iulus, it must be
with unequal, footsteps or bis vanity is
wounded. From rs to 80 q woman has
the most difficult part of her life to live
She has TO dis .emble in the present,
remember from the past and borrow
from the future. She may be delightful,
but she is far from being delighted. Do
you begin to realizs itT"-[ Woman About
Town in New York Sun.