The Hawaiian star. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu]) 1893-1912, 1901-08-05
ROSEMARY AND VIOLETs.'

Sometimes one finds gem of thought
when least expected. When one does
one likes to share it with those who
enjoy thought Such a passage occurs
in a little story by Thomas Nelson
Page, entitled THE Gentleman in the
Black Stock" The story is a charming
one, light as a feather, but breathing
the heart beat of true humanity or
"humanism" is perhaps the better
word Page is better known by his
celebrated tale of Red Rock" a
story of the reconstruction period, and
it is a grand story, but it is not of Page
as a story writer, but to Page as the
artificer of a beautiful idea that atten-
ton is called.
If one look through the literature of
the past, the old age of womanhood is
seldom, if ever treated with gentleness
and rarely with reverence. Even the
Greek has little to say in favor CT
elderly womanhood. One cannot put
a finger on a passage where there is
true kindness expressed. There may
cause the age woman is the mother of
a warrior, but i, is only on that ac-
count, and not because of any inherent
attributes of her own.
Cicero took up the subject, and in his
treatise DE Senectute" or dissertation
upon old age, strove to show that there
were calm joys belonging to the de-
clining period of life, which compen-
stated in some dim measure for the
fever of headstrong youth of the Ro-
man times, and it was undoubtedly
somewhat rapid according to our stan
dards But Cicero mas little or nothing
to say of the aged matron.
The moderns have very little in their
literature in favor of the aged woman.
Scott gives us many old female charac
ters, like Norma of the Fitful Head
in THE Pirate" Meg Merrilies, in
Guy Mannering," or Urfried in Ivan
hoe" Dickens old women are either
repulsive as Mrs. Brown in "Dombey
and Son" grotesque as Sarah Camp in
Martin Chuzzlewit," or foolish as the
two Aunts of Dora, David Copperfield' s
child wife. Turn to Thackeray and
you find the wicked Lady Kew, the
evil genius of the "Newcomes," or Mrs.
Mckenzie in the same volume, while
you get the most pitiable of old women
in Mrs General Baynes in The Ad-
ventures of Philip"
For the latest of our writer's it must
be said that they have given pretty pic
lures of womanly old age, or of women
of a certain age. Nothing can be pref
tier than the sketch of the counting of
Salemina in Miss Virgins recent story
of Penelope's adventures in Ireland.
And now the reader shall have
Nelson Pages views on old women
which have struck the writer and he
hopes they will strike the reader too.
Mr. Page is describing the life of a
young lawyer in country town. He
says:
During these years l had come to
know many elderly people, among them
several old ladies. They fill a
place in life which would be quite bare
without them. There is a certain some
thing about them quite indescribabe.
They make much of the mellowness of
life and not little of its fragrance.
Some of them have a beauty with which
the beauty of the most radiant belle
cannot compare.
But it is not of this beautiful class
only that | speak Even when they are
faded and worn, when all tints have
vanished and all lines have subsidized,
with Age which is content to acknOwl-
edge itself graciously as Age, and does
not pretend to be belated Adolescence,
there is a charm all it's own. There is a
fragrance of rue and rosemary, as well
as of roses and violets, and thyme and
laVendar have their sweetness no less
than hearts ease and lilies"
Here are beautiful ideas couched in
the most poetic of prose, and upon
subject, which must touch all hearts
whether young or old. There are few
places on the globe outside of these
Islands where there are SO many gra-
cious and kindly women who have
learned the art of growing old graceful
ly. With them it is no Grabbed age"
which the Elizabethan song writer said
could not live together with youth.
huence which makes youth the brighter
and happier with the knowledge that all
beauty and all happiness do not belong
to the early season, but that there is
quieter beauty still to come. Though
Thomas Nelson Page is a prose writer,
he is a true poet,