MIDDLE-AGED WOMEN.

Evening Post, Volume LXXIV, Issue 138, 7 December 1907, Page 13

MIDDLE-AGED WOMEN.

HOW TO GROW OLD. I Among the papers read at the resumed conference of the National Union of Women Workers at Manchester, England, one stood out conspicuously from the mass by reason of its grace and charm. It Aras reserved for the concluding session in the evening, and was by Mrs. Cieighton, her topic being "Growing Old." Everyone would agree, she thought, that chaim arid beauty belonged to youth and old age, but that middleage Avas singularly deficient in both. Sha hud heard two men talking about the difficulty of distinguishing between middle-aged ladies, because they were all alike, and nil equally unattractive. Later she had been cheered by hearing someone else say that they admired the faces of the middle-aged more than those of the young, because there Avas so much more character in them. There AA-as something to be said for both ideas. Did they not all knoAv those Avho were comfortably stout, avlio used )o wear mantles and bonnets Avith nodding plumes? She would not despair of her fclioAv creatures yet, though the modern girl, with her 3ggressiA T e independence and capacity, did not appear to set much value upon charm. Middle-age, said Mrs. Croighton, was the working period of life, and she Avas inclined to think it Avas happier than youth. People differed as to Avheu middle-age began, or the exact period when it became old age." Hoav often, when a post avos. advertised, it Avas added that no one over forty need apply. Why, if a woman Avas Avortb anything, she ought to bo just getting to her best at forty for actual work, and stay there, it might be hoped, till sixty. When a man of forty^ Avas made a bishop or a- Cabinet Minister he was regarded as very young f6r the post, bat a woman .of forty avos regarded as too, old to bo headmistress of a school or matron of an institution. She could only suppose that this wns a survival from days when women took to caps au.d an armchair by the fire soon after forty, and spent tho i-est of _their days in genteel seclusion, doing fancy Avork. One of the great difficulties of growing old, was to know AA'hat Aye should give up. and Ickqav Avhen wo should give it up. "WilOn Should -we cease to dance, to sit on committees,- to go on the tops of omnibuses, or give up public speaking? Sir George Humphrey had' said that if avo only greAV old harmoniously, the desire to do anything would disappear with the capacity to do it. But there Avas also the righting view held by thoso avlio maintained that to give'in AA-as fatal; that ono must go on struggling and do as one had always done until one dropped. Wisdom consisted in the regulation of one's limitations, and the discipline of life Avould make the effort and acceptance of limitations almost instinctively part of one's A*ery nature. Women, too, should cultivate the capacity to be alone, for it was a great gain to themselves and to others. The habifc of grumbling should be checked,, though, on tho ether hand, that .unreasonable cheerfulness which professed to like bread-and-butter cut Avith an oniony knife might be equally trying. Mrs., Creighton's conclusion was, "that loneliness must come and . must deepen. " Yet it need never be complete, for it was filled Avith memories, and those very memories may be revelations Avhich life could never have given. There need be.no loneliness of soul or heart. Those ■ who had' learnt to be alone Avould find the hours of solitude more peopled than hours spent in company, the. past voices .'would be even Clearer than the present, not because they wero past, but because they call on into tho future. ' '