The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1921-01-08
Dorothy Dix TALKS
BY DOROTHY DIX
Wesaa's Highesa Paid Woman WFisas.
The PERPETUAL Youth Fallacy-1.

The fountain of perpetual youth,
which has been the age-long question
of humanity, has been discovered at
last. And it isn't a fountain after all.
1t is a surgical operation. and the
Ponce de Leon who found it is no gay
adventurer, but a cold, hard scientist.
Anyway, it is quite true that now
a-days it is a perfectly simple matter
to have twenty-five or thirty years
Topped off your apparent age. If you
cumulated the wrinkles, and the
downward cast of countenance that
are inevitable to your years, all that
you have to do is to go to a doctor
who practices facial surgery.
He will cut a little slit back of your
ears and above your eyes, and take
out few cores of superfluous epider-
mis-, and run a few tucks in the mus
Giles. and execute a little picoting and
fancy embroid ering stitching, and,
VOLTA, there you are, young and beau
tiful again. Your eyes are not the
dropping eyes of age, but the wide
open, round, wondering eyes of youth
once more. Your cheeks are full and
plump, instead of sagging. Your skin
doesn't count, for in these progressive
made compilations, while as for your
hair, it is mere matter of the shade
you prefer.
The miracle has been wrought. Out
wardly, you are eer-and-twenty, in
stead of long way past forty. 1t is
only your soul that is old, for, alas, no
art can rejuvenate our weary spirits
and give us back the optimism, the
enthusiasm, the joy of living, the
keen appetite for pleasure that we
had when the heart was young.
So one wonders if the elderly wo-
man, whom science keeps perpetual
debutante in looks, does not find her
restored youth a boomerang instead of
a blessing. Without doubt it is con-
ISOLATION to her vanity to be young and
beautiful once more, and look the fit
companion of callow youths, an airy,
fairy creature whom one expects to
dance her satin slippers to ribbons and
spend hours spooning in the moon
light, but how such one with her
sophisticated soul, must W i behind
her hand at the twaddle of school
boysi How her rheumatic bones must
cry out for red f1annels and radiators
and easy chairs, instead of incoming in
damp placesi
We all sigh, "Oh, that we were
young again.'' but In reality there are
not many of US who would take the
gift OF perpetual youth If it were Of
fered to US on a silver salver. This is
as true of women as it is of men, tho
a woman's age is supposed to be her
greatest asset, and her worst handi-
cap.
IL Tie CuSlOiIl speak Ol youth
as a time of ineffable joy, of circling
wings. and golden glory, of laughter
and ache-freeness. This is not the
case, except with the very few who
are the darlings of the gods. To
most, youth is a period of fierce joys
and fiercer sorrows; of black despairs
and weary waiting, for to youth the
time between Christmas and Christ
mas is an eternity. 1t has no phil
osophy with which to console itself for
disappointment, and no experience to
teach it that sunshine invariably fol-
lows rain, and that the darkest day
has it's end.
1t matters nothing that the sorrows
OF youth are over trifleS. Not to be
invited to party to which all the
other boys and girls are going is to
youth a tragedy as great as to go
bankrupt in later life. To be held up
to the scorn of the world at fifty, is
no more blighting an experience than
it is to be a wallflower at twenty
Life hurts us so at every point before
we learn to laugh instead of cry.