Year: 1871

Nothing is more diStinctiv,
among women than the difference
of relative age between them. Two


women of the same number of year.


will be substantially of differ nj
epochs of life-the one faded il
person, wearied in mind, fossilizeG
in sympathy; the other fresh botf
in face and feeling, with sympathie:
as broad and keen as they were
when she was in her first youth, anG
perhaps even more so; with brair
still as receptive, a temper still a:
easy TO be amused, as ready to love
as quick to learn, as when she EN-
erged from the schOol-room to the
drawing-room. The one you sus
pect of understanding her age by
half dozen years or more when she
tells you she is not over forty. the
other makes you wonder if she has
not overstated hers by just so much
when she laughingly confesses to
the same age. The one is an old
woman, who seems as if she had
never been young, the other ':just q
lgreat gitl yet" who seems as If she
would never grow old; and nothing
is equal between them but the mum
Der of days each has lived.


This kind of woman, so fresh and
active, so intellectually as well as
emotionally alive, is never anything
but girl; never loses some Of the
sweetest characteristics of girlhood.
fou see her first as a young wife
and mother, and you imagine she
has left the school-room for about
as many months as she has been
married years. Her face has none
OF that untranslatable expression,
that look of robbed bloom, which
experience gives; in her manner is
none of that preoccupation so OBJ
servable in most young mothers,
whose attention seems wholly given
to the thing on hand, and whose
heart seems always full of secret
care or an unimparted joy. Brisk
and airy, Drawing all weathers, ready
for any amusement, interested in
the current questions of history or
society, by some wonderful faculty
of organizing seeming to have all
her time to herself as if she had no
house cares and no nursery duties,
yet these somehow not neglected,
she is the very ideal of happy girl
rowing through life as though a
daisy field, on whom sorrow has not
yet lead it's hand, and to whose lot
has fallen no Dead Sea apple. And
when one hears her name, and STYLED
for the first time as matron, and
sees her with two or three sturdy
little fellows hanging about her
neck and calling her mamma, one
feels as if nature had somehow
made mistake, and our slim and
simple hammered damsel had only
made believe to have taken up the
serious burdens of life, and was
nothing but great girl after all.


Then there are great girls of an
other kind, women who, losing the
sweetness Of youth, do not get in
its stead the dignity of maturity :;
who are fretful, impatient, undisci-
plined, knowing no more of them
selves or human nature than they
did when they were nineteen, yet re-
tanning nothing of that innocent
simplicity, that single hearted fresh
ness and joyousness ofnature, which
ones does not wish to see disturbed,
even for the sake of deeper knowl-
edge. These are the women who
will not get old, and who conse-
quently do not keep young; who,
when they are fifty, dress themselves
in gauze and rosebuds, and think to
conceal their years by a judicious
use of many paint-pots and the lib
erality of the hair dresser; who are
jealous of their daughters, whom
they keep back as much and as long
as they can, and terribly aggrieved
at their irrepressible six feet of SON
ship; women who have trick of
putting up their fans before their
faces as if they were blushing, who
give you the impression of flounces
and ringlets, and who fiirt by means
of much laughter and long sus-
tanned giggle; who talk incessantly,
yet have said nothing to the pur-
pose when they have done; and who
sImper and confess they are not
strong minded, but only '.an awfully
silly little thing" when you try to
lead the conversation into anything
graver than fashion and flirting.
They are women who never learn
repose of mind or dignity of man
ner; who never lose their taste for
mindless amusements, and never ac-
quire one for nature or quiet happi-
ness; and who like to have lovers
always hanging about them-men
for the most part younger than
themselves, whom they call naughty
boys, and tap playfully by way of
rebuke. They are women unable
to give young girls any kind of adj
vice on prudence or conduct, moth
ers who know nothing of children,
mistresses ignorant of the alphabet
of housekeeping, wives whose hus-
bands are merely the bankers, and
most probably the bugbears, of the
establishment; women who think it
horrible to get old, and who resent
the idea as personal injury, and to
whom, when you talk Of spiritual
peace or intellectual pleasures, you
are as unintelligible as if you were
discoursing in the Hebrew tongue.
AS class they are wonderfully
inept, and their hands are practically
useless, save as ring stands and
glove-stretchers; for they can do
nothing with them, not even frivol-
Gus fancy work; they read only
novels, and one of the marvels of
their existence is what they do with
themselves in those hours when
they are not dressing, flirting, or
paying visits.-Saturday Recfe,r.


German Proverbs.


One has only to die to be praised.


Handsome apples are somtimes
sour.


tits not enough to aim, you must
hit. .
High houses are mostly empty in