The Birmingham age-herald., 1913-06-03

Does one become suddenly philanthropic
and decide to have ones life insured for
the benefit of collateral relatives with no
gratitude in them, the first thing the
agent asks is:
what is your age?"
"Is that necessary" says the victim.
Certainly" replies the agent You
see, it makes a difference in how much
You have to payr'
"Ohl' calculates the victim.
'1n that case you will have to pay
little more" says the agent, and turns
to another part of his book, and it may
be remarked just here that there is no
surer cure for incipient benevolence than
just this.
Does one make up her mind to go
abroad?
She spends large part of her summer
telling her age.
She has to write it before she lands on
the other side, and before she comes back
to the United States.
She enters foreign town at night and
before breakfast gendarme strolls
around to inquire casually the number of
her years
The young woman who declared that
she had lied about her age in five differ
ent languages and six different coun-
tries, seemed something of heroine to
those who heard her story.
II did 1t for the good of the race
she said. T'll teach them how to make
stastics of me. On the boat going over
| said / was "a. On the boat coming back
| declared | was %. l was 26 in Brussels
and % in Berlin and l hope sincerely
that all those officials who inquired into
my age, were struck dumb with perplex-
ity."'
The unlxindest cut of ALL however in the
matter of asking ones age, is when a
sick person goes to hospital and 1t is
demanded there.
Just as the patient is about to enter
this forbidding place. from which she
never never hopes to emerge, and after
trying to make peace with her God, and
with man, and trying to convince herself
that her life has not been entirely mis-
spent. in stalks a willy physician who
breaks into cursory conversation and
calmly ask her age
This disturbs her tranquility and up
sets her pacidity-in other words makes
her raging, towering roaring, mad
She meditates that if she tells the ply
sician a story about her age he will prob
ably treat her in an entirely different
fashion-aS if she were woman at least
five years younger, and such treatment
might result fatally.
Honesty" she medtates, lis the best
policy. if it is going to save your life,
and thereby she tells the exact number
of birthdays she possesses which adds
no little to the terror of the surgical op-
Grafton she is about to undergo.
Many people diagnose this age in which
we now live, as a commercial age"
material age" and all sorts of other in
explicable ages. but they have failed to
add that il is also an "nquisitive age
And the worst is yet to come.
mo doubt the day will arrive when
even the talkative book agent will
calmly demand the years of his victims
age and hearing that they are 10 viii
take from his nerveles grasp the copy of
Sentimental Tommy" he has bought aud
substitute for 1t Marcus Aureius," or
"The Philosophy of Chang Tsu.'
Or worse still
The perfectly good miliner hearing from
intimate friends of her customers, that
Mrs. SO and So has just turned So may
refuse her the rose colored bonnet of her
hearts desire. and insist upon her cap
ping herself with purple tints.
Who knows?