The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1921-01-13
Dorothy Dix Tails
The Time-LImit ON YOUTH

The Time-Limit ON YOUTH.
Now really the woman wasn't bag
a. all. She really wasn't old. If she
had been dressed appropriately to her
age, and had had her honest gray
hair. she would have impressed every
one as a pretty rniddle-aged woman.
But when she tried to look like flap
per, she only succeeded in looking like
the witch of Endor..
Something like that happens to
every woman who tries to look like her
own granddaughter. She only makes
herself ridiculous, for youth is one of
the things that cannot be initiated.
1 once heard a hair-dresser trying to
dissuade a. woman from having her
gray hair dyed.
"Oh, yes. he said, IT can dye your
hair the color of a girls, but 1 can't
give you a girls young face to wear
under it, nor the look of a girls young
eyes. Your eyes have seen too much,
and life has written its story in the
lines on your face"
And if women make a-mistake in
trying to paint themselves up. and
loIl themselves up, SO that they look
younger than they are, sthey are guilty
of a still more objectionable folly
in trying to act like debutantes long
after they are old enough to know
better.
Nothing could be more disgusting
than a withered old crone who insists
on dancing, while her aged bones
creak like rusty hinges. and who ogles
men, and tries to flirt, and talks about
her beauX, and conquests. and who
gurgles, and shippers, and affects the
airs of an ingenue, while she is tot
tering on the brink of the grave.
The trouble with women is that they
do not realize that there is one glory
of the sun, and another-of the moon,
and another of the stars, and that
, there is one beauty of the springtfme.
and a splendor of the summer, and a
fascination of the autumn, and that to
each season its peculiar charm is given.
But you can't bring one delight over
to the next season.
No one will gainsay the loneliness
of a young girl, or the splendor of a
woman's maturity, but her mellow
autumn time has its peculiar charm ii
she has intelligence enough to keep it
and make the most of it, instead oil
pretending that it is May with her and
not October.
| She cannot successfully simulate
sixteen at sixty. but many woman al
sixty is better looking than she was al
sixteen. for life frequently chisels d
rough-hewn face into lines of beauty
and often just the sheer goodness in
| the face of ap elderly woman, who
has lived life that has overflowed
| with kindness and sympathy. makes
| it as beautiful as an angels.
More than that, every woman who
has lived to be sixty years old. and
who is not an abject idiot, has seen sc
| much. has experienced so much, has
| learned so much, that she is more in
| teresting than any young person car
possibly be-
| To the woman who asks how Ions
she should keep up the struggle to ap-
pear young, 1 would say: You have
tho choice between being an old
young woman, or a young old one.
think the later is the better choice
| For when a woman gives up the strug-
gle to cease to be younger than she is
| it gives her the privilege Of doing al
| the things that she wishes to do anC
leaving undone all those which she
| does not wish to do.