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Show j Dorothy Dix Talks A WOMAN'S AGE i; By DOROTHY DIX, the World's Highest Puid Woman Writer. I A man writos mo that he has made I a ifrrible- discovery of his 'wife's du-I du-I plicity. He has found out that she 1. f two years okk-r than he declared her- self to hf in their marriage certificate, I and lie is horribly shocked at this rev-l rev-l elation of her perfidy, and he wants to know if she can be trusted, and if I a woman who deceives her husband I about her ase won"t deceive him about P othor thin;' . I Nonsense. Every woman tells rld-I rld-I dies about her ae. A woman who L would I"- burnt .it the -u.k fur the I 8;iko of truth lets go all hold on ver- I -city when it conies to a matter of her! birthdiivs, and Diogenes in search of' I an honest man had an eas task com-I. com-I. pa red with the -enilenan who starts' I out on a still hunt for a wife who does I not juu-le wi'h the number of years P that have passed over her head. TIk. 1 1 fnre because a woman yarns I about her age is no sign that she is not truthful Jane and that the bal- ante of her life is not an open book l it is merely that women consider that I their use is a private raattei w I which no one else has any concern, and they reserve to themselves the richt to be any age that they please. And. after all. what does it matter I. what ase a woman looks if she looks good to a man? Age isn't a matter of years. It is a question of health, of mind, of spirit, of soul There are people who are seventy vears old in the cradle, and there are others who, aro debutantes at seventy. A woman who Is narrow minded and "set" in hi r ways, who thinks her own little point of view the only possible way to look at a subject; who is sure that everj thing and everybody is wrong who differs from her; who has no enthusiasm and no interest outside of her own affairs and her small circle, is old no matter whether she is sixteen or sixty. I n the contrary, the woman who is vitally alive, who is interested in even ev-en new thing under the sun, whose sympathies are as wide as the world, and who is continually growing and 1 broadening in character Is young even when she becomes an octogenarian. Women know this. They also know that instead of age being a woman's deadliest enemy it is often her most beneficient friend, and endows her w ith charms and graces, and even with looks that she never had in her youth, and they would like to indulge themselves in the precious privilege I of frankh being as old as they are, ''if men would only permit then to do so. But they don't, for men are wedded to the ancient superstition that only youth is attractive in the feminine fem-inine sex, and that a woman may as well be dead as to be forty. This is a silly theory that experience exper-ience contradicts at every turn It ' only the most vapid and brainless of women who are at their best in their teens. A girl who has no more sense than a kitten and who is lithe, and slim, and gossj of hair, and Jump" about like a kitten, may have her little hour of charm in her kittenhood but the kitteO type of woman Is the lowest low-est ideal of the feminine sex. The real woman, and the woman worth marrying, Is the one who has intelligence, heart nnd soul, and it takes time for these to ripen and develop. de-velop. The woman who reads, studies, and thinks crows more and more interesting in-teresting year by year. The woman ; with a heart and soul becomes more lovable as experience broadens and mellows her, and to compare such a woman to a crude Ignorant girl is to compare new wine to old. Nor is the young girl invariably tho better looking There are women who were plain and homely In their youth whose features life chisels into beauty. beau-ty. There are other women who become be-come lovely through sheer beauty of spirit, and there are still other women wom-en who only needed the dignity and j background of their own homes to turn them from awkward, gawky girls in fo magnificent grande dames Therefore women have no need to fear age, or to lie about it, and they would not do so except that men still sine the praises of sweet sixteen, and expect women to cover the wisdom, and experience, and self control of ma-turitv ma-turitv with the camouflage of extreme' youth. That Is why a clever woman always says she is twenty-nine and slicks to it for the next twenty years. |
