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Show ALONG LIFE'S TRAIL By THOMAS A. CLARK Deun of Mm, 1'iiiTurnily of Illinola. (, 1924, Western Newspaper Union.) CHANGING CUSTOMS r HAVE seen a good many statements witliia the last few months to the effect ef-fect that our young people are degenerating, degen-erating, that the moral standards of girls especially are lower than they were, and that youth is going to the dogs generally. I have seen as many young people as the next man, and I don't believe It. It is simply that girls are more frank than they were a generation ago ; they are more open, they conceal less they, in fact, conceal very little, either physical or emotional. The older generation gen-eration of women may have had a good many questionable things go through their minds, but they were discreet; they thought under the cover of darkness dark-ness ; they seldom gave anything away. 1 In our grandmothers' day the mysteries mys-teries of life were never discussed ; they were aot nice. The privacies of the feminine toilet were inviolate and beyond the knowledge and the experience experi-ence of man. Things are different now. I In a public restaurant early one morning not long ago, while waiting for a train, I sat near a young girl and her fiance, as I gathered from the conversation con-versation that'drifted to me. She was a pretty girl, tastefully gowned. Her voice was soft and her speech correct and refined. It was early morning, as I have said, and she was to take a train, as I was. She had had aone too much time, I presume, for arraying herself properly. The male member of the combination, combina-tion, true to type, addressed himself pretty completely to his bacon and the morning paper. The young woman, attention to her toilet, with as little embarrassment as a careful chauffeur starting on a journey might' have gone over his car to see that the battery had water In It, that there was oil in the differential, gas In the tank, the carpet brushed and the body of the car properly prop-erly polished. From a bag of tools, which all careful care-ful young women now carry with them wherever they go, she got out the paraphernalia para-phernalia for putting her nails Into condition. There is nothing more irrigating irri-gating than a dangling hang-nall. Then the lip-stick was generously applied and the edges of the rouge blotch on her powdered cheek softened a little. I should not have been surprised or shocked nor would her companion, J think if she had given her teeth the once over, and screwed on a pair of earrings, or adjusted a transformation dragged from the recesses of her tool box. But her friend had finished his breakfast at this stage of the proceedings pro-ceedings and she had no time for further fur-ther details. As I said, I don't believe that young people innately are particularly particu-larly different from what they were In our grandmothers' time. It is just that customs are changing. |