Evening star., 1909-07-19
CONQUEST OF THE YEARS
WoMAN'S SUCCESSFUL WAR
AGAINST MIDDLE AGE.
No Longer a Dreadful Era Between
Rosy Youth and Gray
Antiquity.

From the London Express
1t is a delightful and happy truth
which no one with clear and retorspec-
tive mind can contradict. that we have.
in this world of women. banished that
dreadful era between youth and antia-
uity We have done away with middle
age.
There is no such drab and ugly thing
nowadays. We are young unless We he
ndisputably hoary, and even then 1t is
long and rose-streun path which leads
up to this last period of ones existence.
If my statement be said to be eAae-
gerated. Let the doubter seek any circle
of modern cultured womanhood. and l
contend that he will look in vain for the
elderly woman as we used to know her;
Come with me TO some smart socidl
function. and watch for half an hour tne
stream OF femininity come and 60 nat
tall, slight woman with the skin or ml'h
and roses which it is plain to see ooes
not owe its beauty to makeup. out 10
nature is the mother, not the sister, OF
the twenty-year- girl beside her "lie
the handsome young matron just coming
in attired in delicate muslin and picture
hat is grandmother And SO on
throughout the crowd Glossy Iesses,
beautiful figures. unWrinkled races III
women who have long ago passed what
used to he considered the borderland of
youth: nor is there apparently the silght-
est attempt at seeking TO stay the march
oil time i'll these fair and gracious speC-
mems of womanhood.
Girls they are not, but neither are they
in the slightest degree elderly; nor DO
believe, whatever strange evoiutlons tne
coming ages may bring, that this world
of women will ever revert to the sad and
depressing era of middle age again.
A Contrast.
Take the matter of years and contrast
the modern women Of thirty or forty with
a woman of the same age in our mothers
days The first might in nine cases out
of ten be to all outward appearances the
daughter of the latter.
Do we not all remember the heroines
of the fayorite novels of the earlier
Victorian era-the Emilys and Caro-
lines, who were always wooed and
welded between eighteen and twenty?
To have portrayed heroine unmarried
at this age would have awakened ad-
verse criticism from romantic public.
Marriage and motherhood meant to
the woman of those days the kneli Of
youth, and to consider ones figure. the
smartness of ones shoes or the oncom-
ing wrinkle was thought when once
married. an absurdity. and, what was
worse, almost an impropriety by their
contemporaries. The matron of the past
accepted. nay. even looked for. middle
age as the proper sequel to w1fehood
and motherhood, while the modern wom-
an rejects with enlightened sccrn the
elderly era. and, feeling young, looks
young. and is young a full decade
longer than was her mid-Victorian sis
ter. And what is the cause of this happy
revolution? To great extent the con-
quest of mind over matter.
Existence Too Short.
The woman of today leading
broader fuller life than was considered
possible thirty years ago. has realized
that existence is too short to accept
middle age and all its sacrifices before
life is half over. Then in hundreds OF
cases she is today a breadwinner, a
worker in life's arena, and knows that,
although she cannot achieve real sue
cess lacking maturity of mind, her
added experience also teaches her that
outward youth is a valuable asset In
obtaining good work and keeping 1t.
So she, too, has combated. and with
die age, and bachelor woman Or welded
wife. she views the vanishing summers
with equanimity.
The pretty but distinctly girly daugh-
ters' of the old colonel over the way
cannot pit their blushing roses of eight
cen and twenty against the finished
charms of the young matron, my next
door neighbor. who frankly owns to
having passed thirty-three. / notice
also that at any social entertainment to
which maid and matron are alike bid
den the cream of the precious mascu-
line element presents circles around
thirty-three and leaves eighteen and
twenty to the half-hedged species Of
the boy-man. Then in f1ctional life and
on the stage the girl heroine does not,
to put it yulgarly. get look in with
the woman. and even if she is portrayed
as sweet and twenty the romance of her
life will rarely begin until she is at
least we'll on in the twenties. This
happy state of things could never have
arrived if women had not awakened 10
the fact that middle age" was an un-
necessary phase Of their existence.