The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1904-04-10
WOMEN AT THEIR BEST.

1t is as trite as the eternal hills to
say that there are no longer any old
maids The old maid, says an ex-
change, has gone-gone with last years
SHOWS and with the art of fainting
when a proposal of marriage was re-
| ceived. she is as much out of it as the
scoop bonnet of 1910, one sees her only
| in time pictures and hears of her in
the "reminiscences of the aged-that is
| all. Modern life has no Use for her.
! She made herself necessary to a past
generation by knitting socks and sew
| ing lace on the edges of nightcaps, but
neither socks nor nightcaps need her
| longer, and she no longer exists except
| in isolated sections of the country
where the men folks are still voting for
Andrew jackson for the presidency.
The unmarried woman of to-day does
not even call herself the bachelor maid
for that distinction has become fla
gravity obnoxious. She does not feel
called upon, apparently, to excuse her
self for her choice of life and career at
all, and the term bachelor maid was a
| transition word to carry her over a
chasm which has now become filled up.
She who accuses accuses, and she no
| longer excuses.
But there is still one subject to which
question occasionally whether she is as
free and independent as she pretends.
Whether she is not for all her vaunted
| superiority to tradition, still its slave;
| this subject is the subject of her age
The free and Independent woman of to-
day is just as averse to telling her ge
after she has reached and passed the
25-Year limit. as ever was her sister,
who looked upon marriage as the one
| aim and nhinof in lifn pFia6 her,
self to sleep every night-or would
have done so If she had not been afraid
| of spelling her eyes-when twenty
| years were passed and she had still no
| sutton in prospect.
The woman of 80 to-day-and 80 in
cludes the territory from thirty to fifty
lis, according to general acceptance,
the woman of greatest attraction in the
| world, not only the social world, but
that of art and letters as well.
| Trace this truth to its source ard it
may be found to yield the information
that achievement is for woman, as 1t
| has been ever for man, a necessary
| qualification for success. Some one. has
said that it is not enough to be good,
one must be good for something and
so it seems to be the dictum of our
progressive age that a woman must be
something more than a woman: she
must be a successful woman either in
| the social field, the realm of art, in lit
| erature, professions. Even the domes-
| tic woman, if she does not desire to
sink into the ditch of hopeless M edo
Gritty. must show that her house. 'hus-
band and children are better managed
than those of anybody else.
And TO achieve means of experience.
and experience comes only with the
years.
To be a debutante to-day means
nothing. The clever up-to-date man is
not long amused by the unlined mind,
although he may be attracted by the
| unlined face. He turns to the oman
| of experience, of the charm that comes
from the study of successive peraonali-
ties, of being in conflict with the social
conditions of the world. Sometimes he
| turns too late-after instead of before
the marriage ceromony-but he Iii sure,
| like the lane. to turn at last.
1t is to the woman of thirty that
George Moore, the realist of raalisis,
pays the compliment of calling her a
terrible malady."
"The disease is not extinct in these
modern days." says he, NOR will 1t
ever be so long as men shall yearn for
the unattainable, and the prosy bach
elors who trail their Inflated lives from
their chambers 70 their clubs know of
end they call their malady-the woman
OF thirty"