The Washington herald., 1918-03-25
KEEPING YOUNG
By yDOROTHYDIX
THE WORLDS HIGHEST PAID WOMAN WRITER.


!. or all the idiotic and mischlevous
cults that were ever foisted upon a
eredulous world the worst is the
Perpetual Youth cult. ~
We've made the preservation of
our callow and crude salad days
an occupation, a faith, a religion.
Everywhere you go you are adjured
to keep young. The street cars
shrek at you. from advertisements,
to preserve your youth in So and
Sos massage cream. Physical cul-
ture instructors advise you how to
keep q boyish, or girlish figure by
means OF their particular system of
exercise. Books, papers and maga-
zines devote columns to urging you
10 keep young by continual study.
The propagandists OF new and op-
tfmisttc creeds assure you that you
can keep young by thinking young
thoughts, and refusing to let your
mind dwell on the passing years.
It's youth, youth, youth! Every
body is on a personally conducted
Ponce de Leon excursion to the
sources of the fountain of perpetual
YOUTH You would think from the
popular attitude on the subject that
age was crime. to grow elderly
the ultimate misfortune and to be
old the crowning disgrace of life.
Particularly is this the case with
woman. The poor .dears have been
made to feel age is a greater re-
flection on their character than any
other scandal could be; that no hus-
hands love could be expected to
stand the strain of his wife having
had fifty birthdays and that when
a woman can no longer conceal the
shame Of having gray hairs and
crows feet that she is done with
the joy of life and had better be
dead.
1t is pathetic, but true, that women
believe so blindly in this superstition
that youth is their one best bet
their only bet-that they actually
make themselves old and haggard
before their time trying to look
younger than they are.
Never was there a more mistaken
idea in the world than that youth
is the time of supreme happiness.
1t is not. 1t is time Of sensitive
ness, of mOrbidness. of acute suf-
fering. 1t is the season of tempes-
tuous emotionalism when our very
soul is torn to tatters with griefs
and disappointments that we would
not give a second thought to after
we have got our second wind and
truer perspective on life.
As for a woman, youth. and particu-
larly the neaT-youth period between
% and 40. is a time of striving, strain
and struggle-a time of doubts and
fears and despair when she is trying
to harden herself to meet the fate
that has been allotted to her instead
of having the fate of which she has
dreamed.
NOswoman really ever has any peace
of mind. or body. or even tastes the
full flavor of unallOyed bliss until she
is past 80 and doesn't care who knows
it. Real happiness only comes to her
after she accepts age. and gives up
the struggle of trying to make people
think she is Is years younger than
she is.
Think OF the relief a woman expert
ences when she doesn't have to be
massaged for wrinkles any more be-
cause she has arrived at the time OF
/ life when woman is expected TO
have wrinkles. and when they are
simply character marks, and beauti-
fol instead of being blemishes!
Think of the bliss of not having to
maintain a waist line any more by
means of fasting. prayer and exercise.
because you are an old lady and it
doesn't make a bit of difference
whether you have a 4s-inch belt meas
Irre or ar 1S-inch onel