St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1894-03-18

complexion; the softer smile the tenderer
eyes, the perfect harmony, fair in its order.
as the most buxom youth. And a really
lovely old lady always knows how to make
picture of herself, by profusion of soft
lace and tender greys. She shades her white
hair with whittier laces, and covers her neck
with a snowy kerchief, and Grapes her
form in soft dark colors, and throws around
her final grace, that light lace or Grape
shawl, which the French call &c le drapeau de
vieiue Jfensme."
Such an aged woman is in perfect harmony
with her years, and she affects all our senses
pleasantly She never rouses criticism and
dislike, as do those bewigged, befrizzled,
painted wrecks, whose grasp on a life that
has passed away, makes them hideouS. The
lovely old lady is wise enough to renounce
the world, before it renounees her; for she
has too much respect for her own grey
hairs, to carry them to theatres, and ball
rooms, or into places where only the young
and the frivolous have any right to be. But
in her home she holds a far nobler court
she becomes there the classic matron of
the Romans or better still, the Mother in
Israel whom all the young people of her
acquaintance honor. For them she opens
the book of her life-she shows them the
marks of her tears, of her struggles and her
victories, and makes them welcome to the
strength and the wisdom, she has gained in
her many experiences. And this is the natural
condition, the best relationship of youth
and age; for youth cannot enjoy life ration
ally, without some flavor of age in its seeth-
ing must. Or if youth be brilliant flame,
then age must steady it, or we may expect
it to flare out, and burn wildly, and do
mischief to itself and others.
The world is truly and very reasonably
impatient with mere length Of days. An
aged woman who has learnt nothing in her
seventy-fve years, and done nothing with
them, and who has no more wisdom and
patience than very child, must not blame
others if they feel her to be a cumberer of
the ground. These are the women TO whom
the adjective old" may De rightly applied.
They have always been mere children of
larger growth they have never cultivated
their understandings and they must expect
to sink into an unloved, and unlovely old
age.
But no healthy mind, in reasonably healthy
tired Of living and no woman with her heart
and hands full, is tired of living It has
indeed been said, that long life comes TO US,
Immortality did to Tithonus-at the wrong
end. But this is not true, for though youth
soon passes, and middle-age quickly lapses
into age, and then the years in which &c the
foolish say-'I have no pleasure in them
appear to lengthen indefinitely out; it need
not be q cherries vista, unless a woman's
only hope and business, had been in her
own charms and pleasures. II she had been
loving, busy, cheerful woman, these quail
ties grow; they grow to maturity, and they
remain mature; for in them there is no in
mere 1eshly beauty.
busy affec5ionate woman never grows
old. The springs OF reverence, imagination,
and love lie too deep in her, to be dried up.
Nourished by the dews of her heart, her in
tellect grows fresher and richer. She lives
among things unseen" and having kept
well in practice all the thousand strings of
the harp of life, she enjoys her tarrying in
the House of Old Age; feeling thankful to
know the while that in a long old age, she
is becoming, as it were purified of the sins
of the body. So with
tsNo fears to beat away, no strifes to heal,
The past unsighed-for and the future sure"
to that day, when she win become of age, to
claim eternal youth
= AMELIA E. BAEa-