The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1893-02-22

IL regard TO woman are
year by year growing fewer in number,
and it is safe to predict that in the not
distant future her social and intellectual
rights will be everywhere as freely ac-
knowledged as are her brothers.
In all ages and countries where WON
en- have been regarded as intellectually
inferior to men and relegated to the ami
NAL plane their charm has been consid-
cred as thing exclusively of youth. In
eastern lands girls are mothers at
twelve, fourteen and sixteen years of
age, grandmothers often at thirty or
younger and old and passee at thirty-five.
That woman could possess any per-
sonal attractiveness after she had passed
her teens would be beyond the compre-
hension of the oriental mind, and until
the last quarter of century the west
ern world has been hardly less material
in its estimate of feminine character.
The heroine of the original novel was the
fourteen-year-old. "Sweet sixteen" and
blooming eighteen" were the favorite
ages less than half a century ago, and it
was not until the multiplication of col
leges for woman kept her from society
until past twenty that the world of fic-
tion-usually fair reflection Of world
of realities-discovered the possibilities
of sweetness in the early twenties.
The increase in the longevity of girl
hood is the result of woman's broader
life and wider recognition of her ca
liabilities and possibilities. Among the
better classes the girls need of education
and right to it are as readily conceded to
her as are the boys privileges to him.
The old time fallacy that girls mature
more rapidly than boys no longer serves
as reason for thrusting upon the u1de-
veloped maiden of sixteen cares for
which she is no more ready than is the av-
erage boy Of that age. Up to twenty-one
End later the young woman of the period
is busy with her books and educational
interests, and instead of being a mother
at eighteen, as her grandmother was be-
fore her, she is now what she should be
at that age-a happy, unfettered girl.
Nor is the tag, cold maid" affixed to
the unmarried woman at as early an age
as formerly, when twenty-five was de-
nominated the ''second corner" and thir-
ty marked the age OF forlorn spinster-
hood. A study of marriage statistics
in fashionable society will show that
more girls marry after twenty-five than
younger, and further study of modern
society will reveal the fact that its bellies
are quite as often women in the thirties
as in the twenties.
The girl of eighteen has the charm Of
youth, and the world will always pay
tribute to her innocence and freshness,
but size no longer poses, as in the earlier
century, as the divine creature who can
compel all knees to bow before her. In
deed the debutantes of modern society
often complain that the alteration which
should be theirs is borne off by the young
matrons and bewitching widows, and if
this is SO it only compliments the good
sense of society.
Men demand more of women than they
once did, and this the woman of the
world soon learns IF she is more inter
esting at thirty than she was at twenty
it is because she has learned the impor-
lance of being as well as looking attract
i've. Indeed it may be argued that the
wise woman of modern times is learning
the lesson of history, which is that the
secret of lasting charm is found in the
culture of something more than youth
full grace.
Cleopatra was no longer a girl when
she subjugated the heart of Marc An
tony, and it is difficult to believe that
the secret of her inexhaustible attract
iveness, whose Infinite variety age could
not wither nor custom STALE" was found
in the play of shapely limbs or the fash
of beautiful eyes. Josephine had passed
the boundaries of girlhood when she won
the heart of Napoleon, and the leaders
of the French salon were women of years
as well as of intellect.
Who remembers to inquire how old
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was when
reading of her triumphs as the most bril-,
liant woman of the reign of George II?
Who ever thinks of the beautiful
Mime. de Recamier as a woman 'well on
in years." or associates thought of age
with Nine. de Stael?
And in our own country and day are
not the women most honored in society,
in literature, in the world, women who
have studied life, and whose faces ofteneI
showed lines OF though. Liam liam cheeks
ablooin with the glow Of youth?
The Ciarissas and the Lucys and the
Marianas have had their day. A new
type Of foznininity has arisen, and the
combination of angel and idiot formerly
idealized in poetry and fiction no longer
exists. The artificial, dollhouse specimen
of girlhood, in whose nature FL sponta
neity was depressed, is now rarely me-
with.
Girls are encouraged TO be natural anC
unaffected, and educated .ess liz stiltei
,,i-as of pioprlcry rnan they were wher
the innocence Of youth was marred b.
enforced teaching upon the necessity O
securing home and providing ones sci
with a husband. The instincts and de
sires of youth are rot crushed out as the,
we're under the old regime, and the life
physical AID mental, develops more il
accordance with natural laws.
The mothers of the present have dis
covered that enfeebled constitutions an
impaired vital powers are the RESULT O
the prudish ideas of past generations o
women. In consequence girls of toda-
ARE encouraged, as are their brothers, j
sii athletic sport and out of door exs1
else, and in the better circles Of societ
early marriages are no longer desired b.
intelligent parents, who are learnin
physiological truths which tae Spartan
respected and recognized when the
made laws forbiddirgy their semales I
marry under twenty-five or their male
under thirty.
Nor do women marry, as formerly, 70