Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1919-03-06

ouppOSS YOU are IWeHIy-HVe anu
unmarried.
Suppose you are even older.
Are you looking at your life with
its thrilling rainbow possibilities,
it's unfailing everyday opportunities
as a rational woman should, or are
| you victim of that panic that
1 am sorry to say, often besets fool
| ish young women who believe that
! if they are not safely married by the
time they've reached certain
birthday life becomes tragedy?
/ There are girls who do believe
this. And l have been astonished
| to find that in our emancipated day
there are SO many of them.
These unfortunate girls grew up
| with the belief that though
woman may pretend to be inter
| ested in her education, her frlends
her career or occupation, her only
real absorption is in getting mar
ried."
The idea was, though they didn't
always put it to- themselves so
| badly. that a woman's only real
| Job is to find husband, and that
she can do this successfully only
when she is young-very young.
So with one eye on the calendar
of their years and the other on
| that door through which the pos
sible husband may at any moment
enter, they-wait.
But things go wrong. Ihe pos
sible husband doesn't come TO the
right door. Or, having come, there
are Observation-Disclosures, broken
engagement. And the birthdays 30
by without any wedding bells.
Old Maidenhood Arrives
Co the day comes-the day OF
their own appointing-when they
| believe themselves face to face WIN
| sninsterhood. Hope has deserIeo
! them. They are going to be Ola
maids" The future is nightmare
Twenty-five-or even thirty, as tne
case NAV be-and life a shametul
| failure. ,a
Don't YOU see how mistaken and
: foolish it all sounds? Don't you re-
! gret, for your own part ever nay
| ing Welded to any such oeileI IN tne
/ slightest degree? Cant you pIace
yourself, from now on 10 resist age
| panic? [..l,o IN
berifance passed down through
countless generations of women. by
an inheritance / mean an lnherlteo
| way of looking at things. :,
For there was a very long perloo
| when women had to marry-lt
| didn't so much matter whom-and
marry Young. If they failed to
! and it was understood that they
! failed only through being insut-
ficiently attractive-they not oniy
became highly unpopular with their
immediate relatives, but they found
| themselves very much in the way.
rTbev cluttered up the social system.
l. Girls had to watch the calendar
in those days. There was no avoid
ing age-panic.
But ours is a different time and
in this respect at least better
one.
There is no reason whatever why
a girl should fancy nowadays that
she is obliged to marry merely for
marrying's sake.
Every girl of the present gen.
Grafton ought to understand that
marriage will be mistake, and
sometimes it can prove pretty
grave one, unless she meets the
righ man" and falls wholehearted-
ly in love with him.
Why Marry at Twenty?
And she should understand that it
isn't in the least tragic If she
hasn't found the perfect lover by
the time she is twenty. Perhaps
she won't find him until she is
| thfrty-five. And she ought to be
able to get her mind on something
else in the interval. 1t isn't right
that any period of life, but youth
| in particular should ever be al
lowed to become a mere period OF
waiting for destiny to make up its
mind.
of early marriages. And perhaps
inst as much may be said in praise
of late ones. Probably there isn't
anv fright age" or "best age" for
n woman to marry. The sensible
| girl of today knows this, and en-
cages in no desperate struggle to
announce her engagement before
she is nineteen.
She even faces the possibility
which her grandmother would have
found so intolerably humiliaung-
that the perfect lover may never
present himself at all. Well-there
are other careers than marriage,
she tells herself. Often happy and
glorious ones.
She knows that she ought to con-
Germ herself with other things than
these imaginary twin horrors of
age and spinsterhood.
She knows that, married or sim
gle her life won't have any real
meaning unless she begins early to,
make the most of herself, to de-
velop her intelligence and her char
acter and any gift or talents she
may have. She wants to count in
the world, whether she spends life
as a stenographer or a teacher. or
as the busy mother of big family
of children.
Many girls of today have the
feeling-a natural. wholesome feel
ing, it seems to me-that they pre-
fer not to marry until they have
tried themselves out so to speak in
the world of real activities. until
they have been actual doers and