The Alaska citizen., 1914-11-23

into thinking that they possess few less years than they do, has become more than fad with them It is a religion on whose altars they offer up their pleasures, thelr colii' forts. their health. and even theH lives.
 Everywhere We see women grow ing old before their time by tr!lhs to keep young, for the pursuit oi youth is strenuous undertaklhS' made up of bitter self-sacrifices ana hard work and a mental concenlra. ton on one subject that is bound to tell on even the most robust phyS- ioue, Unfortunately. the consutu- tions of few women have been punt strong enough to withstand the labor entailed by attaining perpetual JuV- enility and so, everywhere, We are called on to mourn the ravages that the worship of youth has made on its devotees.
 When you observe a woman with haggard face and a lean and hungry look and pained expression. or when you note, with pity, that one walks as if she had some malforma- ton of the hip joint, think not that the hand of affliction has been laid heavily upon her and that she is the victim of some fell mental or physl- cal malady She Is merely trying to keep young She is reducing. She is encased in a straight-front instrument of torture. She has be- come a monomaniac obsessed by one idea. the idea of trying to look in the early thirties instead of the late forties
 Weep for her. for her sufferings are great Her table groans with food and yet in the midst of plenty she is enduring all the bangs of starvation. She prepares delicious dinners for her family and friends. She goes to banQuets where her mouth waters for the rich foods and yet she sits up and heroically nibbles along on a bit of zwieback and a mess of loathsome spinach that are guaranteed not to be fattening. For fat is synonymous with age.
 Nor does starvation end the agon- ies that are endured by these pilgrims to the sacred font of youth. The mseries they undergo in the form of exercise no tongue can tell, for the way to the Fl Dorado where a
 
 five years old, and can wear a one piece lingerie gown without looking as if she needed to have public guardian appointed for her. IS hard one to travel.
 It Is the Via Crucis; but women tread it without a murmur. If you could peep into the bedroom of nine tenths of the fat, grizzle-haired, mid l1a behold them, with the light of a heroic endeavor and cold cream on their countenances. painfully and pantingly, with suffering untold. do ing their exercises to keep young just as religiously as they say their prayers.
 Why any woman who has arrived at the age of discretion should see and undertake to understudy her, is one of the mysteries of femlninity that nobody can fathom There is nobody on earth who is more of a bore than a properly brought up young girl You can amuse your self with her for half an hour, watch ing her little tricks as you would dangle ball before sprightly 
 those who must endure her society," Sweet sixteen has no conversation, no knowledge of the world no back ground-nothing but hard, tasteless, flayorless youth.
 Still the fact remains that woman regards youth as her trump card in the gamble of life and the one thing that she stakes all of her oP 11,jrp pjn hof c why the coming of her first gray hair is a tragedy to her and every inch that is added to her belt mea- sure is bedewed with her tears.
 Now. there are two pathetic things about this frantic struggle that women make to keep young. The first is that it can't be done, The second is that in trying to ap- pear young. when she is no longer youthful, woman misses the joy of youth that she cannot bring back and the peace and happiness of age that she refuses to accept She literally falls between the stools.
 The more fool she for middle age is the golden period of a woman's life, if only she has intelligence enough to know it. Not youth nor Ocduly ID So lHuSH lo oC Sh'iSN e'' the state of the woman who has emancipated herself from the fear of age and who is frankly. honestly, and unashamedly fifty years old and wants everybody to know it.
 It is a time of privileges, of sur cease from struggling, of freedom i; time when ones age justifies one in doing all those things she wants to do and excuses her from not doing the things she doesn't want to do. It is time to be wished for, longed for, bragged about, instead of being dodged and lied about for twenty years: and why women do not hug the blessing of being fifty to their souls instead of making a piteous effort to stay thirty-five, passes comprehension.
 Just as a mere illustration of the joys 1t offers, take the matter of physical comfort; for we are so material that we can never be really happy until all is we'll with our bodies The woman of fifty, if she is wise, passes into state of physi- cal ease that no younger woman ever knows, for she can please her self about her clothes. instead of trying to please some man, which is the chief end of woman up to tho time that she ahandOns the