THE AGE OF BEAUTY.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 5220, 23 December 1927, Page 1

THE AGE OF BEAUTY.

THE PRESENT GENERATION.

REFUSAL TO GROW OLD.

The refusal of this, generation to grow old has been the subject of much discussion by moralists and men of science. The; professions are crowded with sprightly youths of three score and ten. The age of a woman has became impossible to guess, and indeed a matter of mere statistical interest. Grandmothers dazzle ns with the shape and the complexion of, ingenues, and if, by compensation, the engenue knows as much as her grandmothers, no doubt that also is evidence, of the progress of humanity. Oncei upon a time our elders used to sigh, “ Si la jennesse savait, si la vioillesse pou yait I” Now there is nothing which youth does not know, and hardly anything which age does not think it can do, But, as usual, they have gone further than this in America (says the London Daily Telegraph). Their last ponent of the theory and practice of being beautiful is a Venus of 103. Madame Marie Charlotte Davenport came to the United Stated from Russia 50 years ago. Ever since, or for the greater part of, the time, for she began by rearing her 11 children, she has been lecturing on thei pursuit of beauty. Yet, we are assured, she remains a shining example of her precepts, and might be “taken for a woman several score years younger.” A certain vagueness as to how many score may be in such a case permitted to the dazzled eyes of the reporter. We o .re to confess that this seems likely to be another American record. We hardly know which to admire the more, the endurance of Madame Davenport or America’s appetite for lectures. Where shall, she find her rival ? Poets have dreamed that Helen of Troy was ever’ young and ever beautiful. Rider Haggard’s heroine enchanted generation after generation. But that was art magic. The books say that Ninon de I’Enclos was as beautiful ,at 70 as at 17, and had at her feet the sons of those whose fathers had been her lovers. But Ninon died when she was a mere chit of 90. . We must give the apple tp Madame Davenport. Happy is America in beiing taught by such a professor how to keep young and how to grow old beautifully.