LADIES' AGES.

Thames Star, Volume VII, Issue 2172, 20 December 1875, Page 3

LADIES' AGES.

By M. or N.

It is a very remarkable fact that the younger a, girl is the older she tries to make herself out, while the older she really grows the younger she endeavours to appear. This may probably be.accounted for by the strong instindive desire which women of all ages feel to be prepared* at a moment's notice to enter themselves as competitors in the great Tace for matrimony. There is a certain age before which they cannot expect to be married, and to reach this they are satisfied to skip a year or two of their young lives; and there is also a certain age beyond which they are popularly supposed to have no chance, and this age it is their policy to make as uncertain as possible after they have turned ( the one-and-twenty up, to which every girl will own. And this is just as much the case with married as with unmarried women. There is the possibility of widowhood always to be taken into account, and if spinsters leave no stone unturned in their condition, it may be safely be said that the widow must unturn rocks or mountains to regain with another man the happiness she once. knew. Married ladies, indeed, take greater pains to conceal the ravages of time than the unmarried. Marriage is, no doubt; a high and holy estate j it is the goal to be striven for, tne prize to be won by the ma:d or widow who will make herself most fascinating to those who hold in their hands the power of proposing ; but, at the same time, it ages one rery much. A. course of 10 years of married life is more injurious to the symmetry of the female form, and more destructive to the appearance of youth, than twice that time spent in the pursuit of a husband. It is, therefore, necessary that married women should call in art to repair the damages done by nature, if they hope ever again to become candidates for the hand of man. 'i hey must either be prepared calmly to confess that they are 30, 40, 50, or such other years as nature has written upon their forms, or by painting and powdering, lacing and padding, hair dyeing, stuffing and falsefronting, new-toothing and enamelling, seek to bring back the charms of their young days. Unthinking persons are apt to sneer at ladies for. thus endeavoring to retard the action of time, apparently considering that there is something morally wrong in their efforts to appear younger than they really are. But dispassionately considered it is really more a virtue than a rice. It is all done with the amiable jndtif c of pleasing, and though that idea may not be Tery successfully carried out, we should at least credit them with their good.intentions. There is certainly deception in their thoughts when they seek to make the fading hair, teeth, and complexion of more than mature womanhood pass for the same natural adornments of a person between 20 and 30; but as no one is deceived by it they cannot be accused of. actually imposing on society . The ostrich, when he finds escape from the Iniuter impossible, rushes to the nearest sandhill, covers his head up and fondly hopes that, as he can't see his enemies, they will be unable to see him. This is aj^the deception a woman of advancing jeo&*dies. Time, slower but surer than tfhy mortal hunter, is tracking her steps, and though she knows he is close upon her heels and near enough to use .the scythe at any moment, she covers her head up with a wig, paints her face, and tries to persuade herself that the great enemy will pass her by. Nature doubtless intended, that every girl borne into the world should marry at least once before she dies, and by a beneficent law, has decreed that years shall not begin to press heavily on her till she gets her chance. It is very woudorful to a man to see how some girls wear. Women marry and have children, and grow old and matronly in appearance, while girls, older it may-be, remain year after year precisely the same as when we knew them first. Age cannot wither them, time cannot write wrinkles on their aged brows. Men may come and men may go, but they go on for ever. It makes a bald-headed, grey-bearded: tnan feel a boy again when he sees a girl that he knows to be as old as he is passing herself off on the world as young enough to be his daughter. The secret of her age, though it is known to many, is generally as well kept as she is herself. The very name of "girl," by which she is known while she remains unmarried, keeps up the delusion. We don't call a bachelor of 40 a boy. He has ceased to be a" boy from the=time he was 16 or 17, but the girls who were girls with hini in that' far remote past are still girls . when he is a stout elderly gentleman.; It is another proof that constant self-assertion

will in the end be successful. If we say often enough, or have it said for us, that we are wise, or good, or honest, the world will take us at our own valuation. Girls insist with all the energy of despair that they are young as long as they remain unmarried, and society is too indolent and too careless to dispute their estimate.

I can imagine nothing more contemptible than the feeling that actuates some, people in seeking to penetrate the hidden mystery of ladies' ages. Who steals their purses steals trash -— unmarried ladies are seldom worth the attention of a professional pickpocket —and even he who filches from their good name, robs them only of that of which many are too careless ; but he who goes about saying that one girl was born in '34, and another to his certain knowledge was once engaged to be married in '54, robs them of that chance which not enriches him, but leaves them poor indeed. A gentleman talking to me the other day said, " I know a girl who for the first 18 years of my life used to j assume a calm superiority over me because she was exactly two years my senior. I can remember as if it was yesterday how she used to boast of her advantages, and lecture me as though she were my mother. Now she is the contemporary of my two girls, and, if anything, rather younger than they. She speaks of me as ' poor papa's old friend,' she calls herself ' my god child,' and I'm hanged if she hasn't somehow made me believe that I was once a rival with her father for the hand of her mother. I'll do her '.he justice of saying that I believe she utterly forgets she came into the world two years before me."

This is the true explanation of the matter. Ladies forget. They have no head for figures, and are unable to perform the arithmetical problem of substracting the year in which they were born from the year in which thay live. They hate coldblooded calculations, and have no patience with those who make them. They are, besides, by nature, more trustful and confiding than men. They believe almost everything that is told them, and cannot understand our want of faith. One of the articles in the faith of every woman is, that she is a girl till she is married; a girl is young; therefore every woman is young till she is married. A man might be able to detect a flaw in the reasoning, but the woman would answer triumphantly that she feels and leaves the reasoning to him. And if she feels young no logic in the world will ever persuade her that she is old. ......

I have no desire in writing this article to fix the ages of ladies. The subject is a tender one for members of both sexes after a certain lime, and it is perhaps better to leave it in its present uncertainty. ■No matter whether we are man or woman, the older we grow the more tolerant we are of the youthful assumptions of our friends. If my grandfather were alive, and wished to pass as a youth of the perisd, I, for one, would be content to let him disown the relationship. We can all tell tales on one another, and the worst of tell-tales is he or she who will divulge a friend's age. Youth is a treasure which we all spend fast enough. We waste it like prodigal sons in riotous living; in promiscuous flirtations; in vain transitory pleasures, which we are ashamed to recall in our mature years. The more youth is wasted the faster it wears; and we would respect those who have saved up enough of it in their young days to let it last them on inte middle life. The feeling of youthfulness is almost the only possession thai; an unmarried woman can treasure up : let her make the most of her little all.—Australasian.