The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1917-06-23
Dorothy D1T Says
BY DOROTHY DIX
Worlds Highest Paid Woman Writer
How Old Is Ann?

Bible. How Summers, and, exc, how
many winters have passed over her
head is her own affair, and it is no
body's business whether che is as old
as she looks, or as young as she feels.
The greatest modern discovery, so
far as the fair sex is concerned is the
finding of the Fountain of Perpetual
Near-youth, so that the woman of to-
day who has drunk of it's waters is
anywhere from twenty to forty years
younger than the woman of the past
was at the same age.
At the time when her grandmother
1elt that she was thru with life and re-
tired to the chimney corner with her
knitting to prepare for the other
World, the modern woman just begins
to really live, and buys herself a cir
cular ticket around the globe, and
fares forth to see what this world is
like.
OF course there was never any
greater absurdity than to measure age
in terms of years. How many birth
days one has celebrated has nothing to
do With the case. Age is not a matter
of mathematics. 1t is a question of
mind and heart and temperament,
especially with women. There are
those who are eternally young and arc
debutanteS a. ninety.
Therefore, when you would know a
woman age, seek not to ascertain the
year of her birth, for that is of no
consequence. Judge not by crows feet,
Tor they may be but the fine print in
which experience has written the most
interesting chapter in her history; not
| by hating gait, for that may be rheu
matlsm which has all ages for it's own.
But judge of her age by the wrinkles
on her SOUL and the stiffness and lack
| OF elasticity of her mind. These are
| the real marks of old age
Also there be these signs which
never rail to tell how old Ann is. APP
ply them to the lady next to you and
see how they work out. Also and like
wise use them as a Binet test to really
find out how old you are yourself
Inc f1rst indication that a woman
gives that she is beginning to grow
ola is when she commences shying at
GATE as a nervous country horse does
at an automobile. After woman
| passes her thirty-fifth birthday
chronological charts cease to exist
for her and she never remembers any
thlns, no matter how interesting, that
happened later than last year.
A middle aged man will greet an old
friend rapturously and say, BY George,
Bill smith, is that you? Why,
haven't seen you in twenty years" Or
he Will recall that fifteen years ago
| he met Jones in Europe But Mrs
Smith and Mrs. Jones indulge in no
such discriminating "reminiscences.
Ihey indulge in glittering generalities
as to dates and content themselves
with an elusive reference to a long
time which commits them TO no spe-
cific number of years.
OF course, when woman abandons
| hope and becomes the Oldest Inhab-
liant she renewS her connection with
the calendar. Then she remembers
all about the cold winter of rs, or
! the hot summer of go but in the
interim wild horses couldn't drag
from her any date that would give
you line on how old she must be
now if she rem smbers all about the
soldiers starting for the Cuban war.
| When she refers to such matters, she
always says that she has heard her
me ther tell of them.
The second sign of approaching age
in woman is when she begins to
preface her statement with the re-
happened" and to confide to you that
her husband, if he happens to be fat
and bald. is much, much older than
she is.
good looking women, with grown and
married children, who have retained
their willowy figures and still have
their own hair and teeth. They new
er fail to relate at every opportunity
how they were married when they
were very, very young, and they give
you to understand that the gentlemen
been indicted by the grand jury for
cradle snatching.
AT this age unmarried women be-
come suddenly coy and kfttenish and
begin to speak Of themselves as I'VE
girls" and to exhibit a morbid and
unfounded fear of what Mrs. Grundy
will say if they are not chaperoned
in an inch of their lives.
1t is only young women in their
twenties who are daring and uncon-
Of no
themselves unprotected in the society
of men. air-and-forty is timorous
| creature who trembles to think what
lpeople would say if a young thing,
lSuch as she desires to be thought,
went out alone. without her mother.
The third sign OF age in a woman
is when she begins to be shocked at
everything she sees. and especially
when she is Mortified at everything
that young girls do. People who are
as young as the newest fashion, and
the latest dance, and the freshest
ideas, see no improperly in them.
They belong to their day and they
take them as a matter of course as
they do their ham and eggs at break
fast.
To sweet-and- twenty-three layers
of chiffon is as modest dress as rein
forced broadcloth was to her grand
mother; the fox trot as little sugges-
tive a dance as the mfnuet; she sees
nothing more indiscreet in showing
her ankles than her wrists, and she
discusses subjects with perfect pro-
priety that no perfect lady was even
supposed to know about thirty years
ago. That is because she belongs to
this age, and these things are done
now, and they were NOT done in hel
mothers or grandmother's time
Therefore when you see a woman
begin to hold up her hands in horror
at the way young girls dress, and the
way they go stalking around with
men, and the way they play golf, and
the books they read, and the bold
ideas they express, and the awful way
they go off after careers, why, you are
perfectly safe in setting the lady
down at half past fifty, or over.
Her ideals are those of her own
youth when her grandmother and