Los Angeles herald., 1906-07-15
CHOOSING HUSBANDS YOUNGER HAN THEMSELVES
Eastern Old the Faster and Hence
Activities Earlier
From the Nw York

II Retire From y
! From the NJ
While at luncheon the other day
| thr wptGeu talking idly of the spring
weddings finally concentrated their at
tcntion on the question: Should w5m-
en- marry men younger than them
selves?
An elderly woman started it. Said
SIZE:
Lilies fance is eight years young
er than she is"
The other women didn't even look
| surprised.
There seems to be no particular rule
| observed about age any more com
II ented one.
How different from the old iay7,"
unused the first speaker. I'm the small
town where / was brought up If Il inan
got engaged to woman five or ter
years his senior the sewing circle and
the church circle trembled with eX-
element, most of the members sEHk-
iNg their heads as much as to say
What a mistake they will never he
happy and for some reason or other
everybody pitied the man.
Nowadays a man may marry the
Ncman who brought him up, wh1 is
O'G enough to be his mOther--it nar-
of getting excited The only comment
IS a shower of wedding presents. Nc
ore wastes pity on the man"
That's So" said the third womlu
I'm fact there Is a good deal more
criticism when a young girl matries
IL man old enough to be her father than
when a young man weds a woman old
enough to be his mother l wonder
what has caused the change?
Probably the growing dsinclination
Of women, who themselves have no In.
tention of getting old, to be hamporei
with old men. The New York woman
temperament is the cause of the
charge.
mot long ago l read in a newspaper
of a wife of 81 who in court eloquent'Y
warned young women in general neTcr
to marry an old man-the old man III
her own case being only 40. After d.n-
ner she complained, instead of getting
ready to do escort duty her husband
settled himself in an easy chair witt
newspaper or a book and his pipe.
THE young wife. firing of that, began
accepting the escort of other men,
which soon precipitated a row hetWeo
herself and her husband and visi! 10
court.
Nov, in the town 1 referred to, it
was considered safe. sane, altogether
admirable thing for young girl to
marry a man 40 years old. The happi-
ness of both was assured, most people
thought, and if during the latter part of
his life the wife had to sit up nights
nursing her husband and spend her
evenings in company with an easy
chair and the gout or rheumatism when
she secretly longed for the sewing bee,
that was just as things should be-
1T was the place of every wife to
nurse her husband; that was one reason
why midle-aged men married young
girls, thought the community So far
as | know the same belief still holds in
almost every small community. Nat
urally, in New York it is quite differ
ent.
Il don't see why locality has so
much to do with it," put in the second
speaker.
why, to my mind, that is easily eX-
planned" rejoined the other. Take
New York, for instance.
The women here look, act, think
and live differently from women in
country village. Their idea of the
pleasures of married women is alto
gether different from that of the coun-
try woman, as different as their views
on the clothes question.
In well-to-do New York circles the
time honored theory that woman
grows old fIster than man is de-
funct, for the reason that the evidence
Is against it. In ruraldom old age gets
in it's fine work on men and women
equally. The theory referred to can
easily be substantiated in any New
England town.
tainly can't be proved in the prosperous
circles of New York, and all the world
agrees that a woman is no older than
she looks, that a man is as young as he
feels. The reason man is judged by his
feelings, friend of mine recently
pointed out is that at 60 or there
abouts few men have any looks worth
speaking about.
THAT may be. of course, because