The daily morning journal and courier., 1904-06-25
ARE WE OLD AT THIRTY?

Presbyterian General Assembly Has | Put That Limit on Youth. l When you are thirty you are no long, CT young, according to a decision reach ed by the United Presbyterians in gen. eral assembly in Pennsylvania a day or two ago. Following this ruling, all persons over thirty years of age were requested to withdraw from the ''ycung peoples societies. of the church. This lis gloomy intelligence for Presbyteri- ans, and withal interesting to the un- Iregenerate
 To be old at thirty, shelved before the crucial third of century, recognized the world over as life's prime, suggests to all of us the plaintive inquiry If I was to be so soon done for, why was I ever begun for?" It is dreadful, but with all due respect to the lurking lshade of Calvin be it asked, Is it true? IA question the present generation is lapt to ask itself about anything too uncomfortable to be believed in.
 So far as the country of which the Istatement was made is concerned, it is Icertainly ridiculously untrue for at the age of thirty the average American lman-at least in the eastern states-is tapt to consider himself as just mar lriageable and to be so considered by 1.-the mothers of eligible daughters.
 Nor is the American woman of thirty, If still unmarried, ready to be classed las an "also ran" in the matrimonial Sweepstakes. It seems, indeed, that lare numerically lessened after she breaches thirty, she is then apt to marry better from worldly point of view, if she marries at all, than if she had been lied to the altar from the schoolroom. IThe sensationally successful marriages ithat one reads of daily in the news Ipapers ar erarely entered into by Iyoung girls-a statement which, though lit is generally heard from ladies who Iare no longer young, is nevertheless Itrue.
 The American woman seldom reaches full. mental and physical maturity be- lfore the age at which the fiat of the Pennsylvania Presbyterians would rel Iegate her to the dead past And the American man before thirty-well, real | ly, he can scarcely. be considered as Iquite grown up.
 l In extreme southern countries where lwomen were reigning belles or even mothers at sixteen, they are apt to be old at thirty. And the South American Tor Spanish or Italian husband of that age is often a plodding patient, spirit less creature, with tendency to cor Ipulency and an excessive interest in the meals.
 But precisely in these countries,
 where the curfew of youth is sounded at thirty and where the Presbyterian fiat might do some good, the shade of Calvin has never penetrated, And so the shapeiess, mustachioed ladies of the Latin race may go on feeling young Ijust as long as they like, and the Amer Iican woman, just reaching the full
 bloom of her beauty, nut be shelved.
 Not only does the woman of Anglo Saxon race attain a physical perfection at thirty which she has never before known, mentally and temperamentally ISIlG IS SOlLCI dllQ lIlOIC IOuIlQGOs HI France poets, novelists and artists have always been unanimous in recognizing liner supreme charm. And in recent : wears she has successfully invaded American and English fiction, previ- lously dedicated to celebrating the
 charms of the sweet young thing.
 Nevertheless, the sweet young thing Ineed not worry. The bud of sixteen can always be thirty-there is lots of
 time-but the siren of thirty can never, never be sixteen. She doesn't want to be? Oh, yes, she does. Why, else, the mania she so often develops for six teens sweet simplicity of attire-for tthe muslin and blue ribbons that when
 she wears them suggest that somehow they are never so becoming as when they have ceased to be appropriate?
 For the woman of thirty can wear even
 these and make them appear charming. I-Nnw York World