Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1918-04-27

| Are Discussed
BY MRS. WILSON WOODROW

read an article the other day
written by a woman who signed her
self "A Superfluous Old, Lady. In
it she asked of the public in general:
will you not help us to come
out of our corners and be part
of the great world again Is there
really no important work for us 10
do We are all mortally tired of
the corners, of being bossed around
hy our dear. grownup children, of
being dead while we are still alive. ~
Her words began to haunt me.
l found my mind reverting TO them
again and again. l could not imag-
inc the woman who had written
them being either "bossed around
or. as she says later, belonging to
that army of old ladies so squelched
and sat upon by their superior chill
dren that their unhappiness is
enough to break ones heart"
Even as a child l had a horror of
old age, its decrepitude, its ugliness,
its weight of woe. 1t is so difficult
TO understand. Nature offers no
counterparts for it and no symbols
of it. Autumn wraps herself in the
splendors of scarlet and gold, and
Winter offers a contrast of sombre
mysterious beauty.
But this horror of old age was
obliterated for me by gradually ac-
Quiring a mental picture gallery of
women who were old in years but
who possessed in full measure the
only real youth there is, the youth
of the heart.
No one could have called them
superfluous nor have granted them
the patronizing and grudging right
n live They had TOn much 70
give. and they gave royalty. They
were too busy to be decrepit or
feeble; too mellow, too finely tenn
pered, too tolerant for harsh criti-
Cism or censure; too wise and too
philosophical to be cowed by any
Circumstance or crushed by any
grief. They were women who had
proved under fire that they were
still the masters of their fate and
still the captains of their souls.
Some of the most potent and
molding forces in my life have been
elderly women who never dreamed
of being molding forces of eXertins
an active influence, but, neverthe-
less, could not fail of doing so be-
cause of what they were and what
they stood for.
1t should be the gift and the
grace of elderly women to inspire
the younger generation, not so much
the extremely youthful perhaps, be-
cause extreme youth rightly wants
TO explore to find its own way and
enjoy it: but they should be lamp
to the feet of the women in the late
twenties and the thirties and the for
les who are perpleXed in the confus-
ing mazes of life and worn with its
struggle.
firmly believe that this idea
that youth is the seed-time and
old age the harvest is a pernicious
and false and foolish one. 1t is
commonly accepted that youth is
the only period of enjoyment and
achievement, and that old age is
the season when from an arm chair
in a chimney corner one may alter.
rate between contemplation of past
errors and mistakes and the ladel-
ling out of platitudes and sage ad-
vice. That is not age at all; it is
senility.
The chimney corner existence be-
longs to those who have allowed
their minds to rust and their bodies
TO decay. If you sit and think
rheumatism and Bright's disease
and arterio-sclerosis all day YOU will
probably have one of those troubles.
Why is a doormat? Because it
laid itself down for other people