The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1923-02-23
BY DOROTHY DIX

A woman of thirty wants to know
if think she will be happy If she
marries man of seventy-five.
No. 1 don't think she will be
happy wife, but If the old man has
money, she'll be an extremely cheer
full rich widow, and whether the one
estate will pay for the other de-
ponds upon the price she sets on
herself.
The things that make a happy
marriage are love, romance, congeni-
ality of tastes, interest in the same
pursuits and pleasures, looking at
life from the same viewpoint. Youth
and age can no more have these in
common than the flowers of May
can blossom out of December SHOWS.
Figure it out for yourself, sister,
and see what chances of happiness
you can have married to man old
enough to be your grandfather. To
begin with, you have to eliminate all
thoughts of romantic love, and the
woman who does that casts into the
discard the most precious thing in
the world. You can admire an old
man for his brilliant mind and honor
him for his attachments. You can
reverence him for his goodness and
kindness and generosity. You may
hero-worship him ana consider that
he is a model of all that man
should be, but all of this is not love.
There is nothing in the touch of
his withered old hand that thrills
you. You don't wait with beating
heart for the sound of his shuffling
old feet. Nobody ever yearns for
kiss favored with false teeth.
Nature herself has set the time
limit on romantic love, and beyond
that age one can neither feel it one
self nor inspire it in others. The
fire has burned itself out. The blood
runs cold and sluggish in the hard
old arteries, and youth tries In vain
to light the flame once more and set
the pulse on a mad race again. There
is only one springtime in the year,
and the old mans springtime is
gone.
Say that you are willing to sub
stitute friendship for love, on what
plane of mutual understanding and
interest can thirty and seventy-five
meet? A woman at thirty is still
girl. She has the energy, the en-
thusiasm, the love of life, the de-
sire for pleasures of youth. She
wants to run around, to go to parties
and dances, to joyride, and to laugh
and make merry.
The old man wants to stay put.
He wore out all the pleasures Of
youth before the woman of thirty
was born. He has drunk his cup to
the dregs. He's had his fill of dane
ing and n.errymaking and philander-
ing, and now all that he wants is the
peace of old age.
He doesn't want to drag out to the
theatre of evenings; he wants to sit
by the fire in his easy chair. He
doesn't want to go to dinners, where
he will have to break his diet and
eat things that make his govt worse.
He doesn't want to entertain, be-
cause parties keep him up beyond his
bed hour, and the chatter and laugh
ter of youth bore him to tears. He
won't travel, because you can't get
in foreign countries the creature
comforts that you can in your own
Nome.
NIow can there be any real COM
relationship, any schumminess, between
thirty and seventy-five? The old
man lives in the past. His ideals are
those of the Civil war. The young
womans ideals are those of the Great
war. There isn't thing under the
sun that they think alike about or
an opinion that they hold in common.
Thissis bad enough this utter lack
of congeniality, but it is made worse
by the fact that age is invariably
egotistic and tyrannical. 1t is never
content to hold its own views; it is
bound to force them on others. 1t is
only youth that is broad and gen.
crous enough to live and let live.
Age never ceases to try to bend
others TO its will.
One must look forward to the fu-
ture. and what will thirty do when it
gets forty and when seventy-five is
eighty five? From thirty to forty
woman is at her prime. but from
seventy-five to eighty-five a man has
reached that part of the toboggan
slide where he goes down hill very
swiftly. There will be years OF fail
ing health, of dimming faculties, of
increasing senility. His wife must
put in these glorious years of her
maturity, when life beats fullest in
her veins. in cosseting a sick and
feeble old man, in rubbing aching
bones. in ministering to a capricious
appetite, in listening to querulous
complaints and hearing the same
stories told million times.
There is no adage so untrue a that
which advises woman to be an old
mans darling rather than a young
mans slave. The women who are
st~