Show PUSHING BACK OF OLD AGE less leo than a century ago a mart man was considered old zt t forty there Is no fact more striking than the 0 way modern life Is in pushing back the period of old age says a writer in the september strand magazine less leas than a century ago a man was old at forty you have only to pick up jane akstens Au novels to find gentlemen of thirty five described as middle age aged d at sixty they were gabbling babbling gab bling in their dotage lo tage and there Is mr pickwick that dead delightful benevolent old gentleman of forty five fifty years ago when a man reached the age of forty five ho he grew a beard under his chin bought himself a pair of drab gaiters and a white and spoke with anxious concern of the rising generation whose manners were so BO different from those he had known as a young roan man nowadays the popular notion of irresponsible irrepressible youth Is illustrated by colonel roosevelt who Is fifty two in our generation thirty two is outwardly indistinguishable from fifty two save in that the former has a slightly more youthful tint in its cheek and its waistcoat As for the fair air sex the genus old woman is all but em extinct the pretty vivacious matron you admire at a garden party may have seen twenty five or seventy summers As queen alexandra not long since said to alme adelina patti we two are two ot of the youngest gest women in england the illustrious royal example has been so sedulously followed that the women always young always active always in the height of 0 fashion may be said to laugh in the face of fath father r time |