San Antonio daily light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1886-1907, 1890-11-21

society to condemn even tacitly elder
ly ladies to inaction for the mere
reason that they are no longer young.
The old lady played very important
physical part in the medieval life;
and, although she might appear to be
almost bent double beneath the bur-
den of years and infirmities, popular
credulity ascribed to her under certain
circu instances the possession of
an amazing amount of bodily
strength, nimbleness and endur-
ance. Shakspeare's witches, at whom
we have already glanced, performed
wonderful gymnastic feats. They
could kill swine; they could sail to
Aleppo in a sieve; and they could
dance hand in hand the most mystic
rious of fandangos. At least a hun
dred years after the poets death
there was a widespread belief that
old women of malevolent disposition
could ride rapidly mounted OH broom
sticks through the nocturnal air to
hold high revels with the fiend at
some appointed trysting place. In
vain the poor old creatures pleaded
that they were crippled by rheuma-
ignorant or bigoted public insisted
that they were witches, and they
were burned, hanged or dragged
through horse ponds accordingly.
When the national conscience was
sufficiently aroused to make US aware
of the wickedness, as we'll as the stu
pidity, of prosecutions for witchcraft
old women were no longer mQlested,
tortured or butchered because they
were ill-favored; but they were still
LETT for many generations to be vic
Tins of the negative cruelty of neglect.
Then grew up, not only among the
people, but also those whose privi-
lege it is to teach the people -
namely, the poets, the story-tellers
and the painters-an ungenerous i'm
preston that all an old woman had
to do if she were poor was to sit by
her spinning wheel or cover in the
chimney corner; or, if she were rich,
to loll in her easy chair and share her
aIl-too lengthy leisure between listen
ing to the reading of good books and
talking scandal. A better tone of
thought has of late years begun to
make itself felt among the intelligent
classes. The old maid:is not 1.-THE so
much laughed at as she was thirty
years ago, because it has been
discovered that the spinster not
in her first youth can be direct,
benefactor of her sex and of the other
sex also, as an instructor, guide and
a social worker. She has the oppor-
tunity of speaking her mind and CIV
ing action to her plans in a hundred
spheres of activity which were for
merly closed to her. AS for the young
lady and the young girl, they enjoy
first of all the advantages of the
prestige which is never denied to
youth tor youths own sake; and,
next, there is no solution of contin-
uity in the efforts which are being
made, both in public and in private,
to render feminine youth physically
and mentally happy. The elderly
lady, at the same time, has not re-
ceived all the social attention to
which she is entitled. 1t did not Oc
cur to any physicians of note be-
fore Mrs. Garrett-Anderson made
public her sensible proposal that the
advances of age might be modified in
their rigor by judicious physical re-
creation and exercise. 1t is as FEAST
BILE to grow old from inactivity as
from actual age; and old men with
normally sound constitutions and
mental faculties yet unimpaired often
wage stand-up fight with Father
Time, and, although they know he
must master them in the end, ward
off the sweep of his terrible scythe by
systematic diet and exercise and re-
creation as regular. Nobody derides
an elderly gentleman for playing at
billiards. Why should not an elder
ly lady play ball.