Social Moods.

Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, Issue 406, 18 February 1904, Page 2

Social Moods.

. HAPPINESS FOB OLD MAIDS. SFVEBHAPS there is no other class in clcjy the world upon which so much JB5?" misdirected sympathy is wasted as upon old maids. It is the fashion to speak of the Bpinster as of one who has drawn a blank in the lottery of life.

Married women, no matter what sort of a blistering affliction they may be personally enduring in the way of a husband, look upon her with compassion, and so universal and all-pervading is the pity by which -she is surrounded ' that the old maid catches the infection and is sorry for. herself without knowing why. It seems actually indecent to be happy and chirpy, when you are an object of sympathy, and so the unmarried woman of a certain age assumes an air of pensive melancholy—as a widow sometimes does a crape veil—to hide her inward joy at what she has escaped. Without doubt the chief source of sorrow to most women in being spinsters c insisted in being stigmatised as old maids. Happily, modern. progress ghas removed that objection. The girl bachelor ■has superseded, the old maid. Old maid was a term of reproach. Girl bachelor is the badge of independence. The old maid was a woman who couldn't marry. The girl bachelor is a woman who won't marry. The old maid was s a creature Of tea and toast, and tabby cats, who was always a fringe on the edge of somebody else's family. The girl bachelor is a connoisseur in fashions and sport, and is the backbone of the community in whioh she lives. %

Of course if ever; marriage were a Buccess, if every husband were a perfect being who continued to make love to bis wife with unabated fervour through life,, paid her bills without murmuring, and refrained from criticising her faults, any woman would be justified in sitting down and tearing her hair because fate had doomed her to remain single, ' \ Unfortunately, however, such is not "the case. The ideal marriage is just as rare as the ideal anything; else, and if the old maid has misßed the seventh heaven of earthly blisß, she may at least congratulate herself upon having alsO escaped purgatory. A compromise may not be brilliant, but it is generally safe. The .one trying time of an unmarried woman's life, and which she might avoid if she chose, is the bad quarter of an hour' before she quite abandons hope and reconciles herself to' the inevitable. She, is still in pursuit of a husband, and she' sees him eluding her, and it makes crow's feet round her eyes and streaks her hair with grey, but the moment she gives up the struggle and settles down into sisterhood, an expression of calm untroubled peace, such as no married woman ever wears, descends upon her. There are many reasons for this. She knows nothing of the nerve-wearing exasperation of keeping awake to see if. a prodigal husband come in at half-past two or a quarter to three. She doesn't have to compose curtain lectures with enough ginger in them to scorch wherever they touch. She doesn't hare to spend the long hours of the night soothing a baby's woes. She doesn't live on a perpetual strain trying to please a critic on the hearth, who expects one poor, weary, mortal woman to be a combination understudy of Venus, and Bussel Sage, and Bridget. On tie the old maid should get out and hurl bouquets at herself whenever she remembers it—she has nobody but herself to please. She is neither trying to catch a husband nor hold OHe's slippery affection, and she alone of all her sex has the precious privilege of being as ugly as nature made and as comfortable as she can.

Fat has no terrors foe her, and scragg'ness ceases to appal. She says what she thinkd, and believes what she likes and bo man edits her opinions, for even in this life she has passed into a terrestrial psradiaa ia which there is neither marriage nor giving in marriage. another source of perennial happiness to the old maid is the fact that whether her purso be light or heavy, it is as exclusively her own as her tooth brush. Nobody expects her to be a miracle worker who can make one pound go as far as five. Nobody questions her as to what she did with the cheque he gave her the week before last.She may squander her substance at sales, or buy diamonds when she seeds potatoes, without any subsequent recriminations. This is a pleasure which reconciles masy a woman to celibacy, because she knows it is a joy that few married women possess, and for which many a one would gladly give her wedding rng, With all these advantages to her credit it looks a good deal as if the old maid has been obtaining sympathy under false pre eacee, and the spinster who is inclined to repine at the loneliness of her lot should ask herself if she knows one single married woman with whom she would change places. For the old maid's husband is always the ideal man, chivalrous as Bayard, tender as Launcelot, patient as Job—never the plain Tom, Dick, or Harry of real lite who has lumbago and ways that a wife has to put up with, If the women novelists could have populated the world with their heroes, old maids would indeed have cause to rail at destiny, but, as matters stand, they are verj well off as they are. Even the old maid whose spinster hood is the result of unrequited affection and faithless love is not without her consolations if she looks at the matter aright. You cannot preserve your romance and have it tco, and a tender dream of what might have been, a faded rose and a packet of old letters, yellow with age, are not the worst things in life. More women's hearts have broken over the man they got than the man they didn't get. Sometimes illusions are better than realities.

As a matter of fact, instead of pitying herself, the old maid should regard herself as a shining mark for envy. She has the financial independence of a man, the social freedom of a married woman, and the privilege of remaining a girl until the end of the chapter. What more can womanaskP