YOUNG WOMEN OF SIXTY

New Zealand Times, Volume LIII, Issue 12609, 20 November 1926, Page 10

YOUNG WOMEN OF SIXTY

NUMEROUS IN MODERN DAYS

I met recently a very charming young woman. She told me her age—sixty three!

Nevertheless, she is a J'oun" woman in everything except years. Her eyes are bright, her complexion fresh and clear as a June rose, her mind witty and alert, her heart warm, generous and full of boundless optimism (writes Vicountess Molesworth in the London “Daily Mail”). A few years ago, a description such as I have tried to convey would have given an entirely wrong impression to nine readers out of ten. They would have visualised a pathetic picture of tuously womanhood masquerading fatuously in the unsuitable garb of meretricious juvenility—a kind of “Lady Tippens” sketched so vividly in ‘‘Our Mutual Friend.” But in these days people who are old in years rarely make such desperate efforts to be young. A large jjercentage of them are young—young in heart, mind, and spirit. Numbers of my friends and acquaintances who are over that borderline known as middle-age possess the eternal spring of youth within their breasts. They will never be old in heart, r.o matter what ravages Time may make on their complexion, hair, and joints. These happy folk are too numerous in modern days to be regarded in the light of strange phenomena and their numbrs, X think, are increasing rapidly. Let us, therefore, look to it that we may be included in that wise and joyous band.

And the reason for it all, I think, is this; more and more people." a te awakening to the fact that decrepitude is largely a question - of self-hypnosis. The mid-Victorian woman of fifty, with grey hair and mittens, who knitted m the chimney corner with a senile placidity, unconsciously adopted this role, because it was expected of her. Habit is overwhelmingly powerful. • - Her modern, prototype, would play tennis and golf, join her daughter’s clubs, cultivates a resilience ox mind and body, while at the same time keeping a wise and watchful eye on her infant grandchildren. She recognises that old age is .a' bogey; and in these days bogeys are beginning to lose their influence.