THE WOMEN OF FORTY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIX, Issue 8842, 2 April 1892, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE WOMEN OF FORTY.

At forty, if ever, the ladies know how to make the most of themselves, which is untrue of the vast majorities in the twenties. Perhaps at no other age is the best type of woman more strikingly beautiful. She understands how to exercise her gifts and charms in the most effective fashion.

The grace of perfect self-possession, often wanting in young women, is hers. If she was diffident, awkward, and inexperienced, contact with society has removed those imperfections. If she was gushing, emotional, affected, and too talkative, she has corrected these faults and is warily winsome, where before she was positively wearisome. In the normal evolution of taste she has acquired the rare art of dressing faultlessly, and so avoiding the detracting infelicities of earlier years. Her selections of style, colour, and material harmonise with her figure, complexion, and the occasion, and she doesn't look a day over thirty. The woman of forty is infinitely more attractive to men than she will be in later life when her fine complexion fades, wrinkles leave their year marks across her brow, silver threads her glossy hair, her eyes lose their lustre, and her i>tep its sprighttiness. She may always be agreeable, but never again so fascinating. The woman of forty ! She is distracting, delightful, divine ! Her society is a solace which robs remembrance of all remorse and poverty of all pain. The spell of her dark, depthless eyes wakens latent emotions into ecstatic life, while tho music of her voice thrills and fills the soul with joy unspeakable. Grace, goodness, and gentleness supplement the rare and ravishing beauty of face and figure, and her welcoming smile is a precious prize, beside which wealth, and learning, and kingdoms are but dross. Luxuriant Nature, in the infinite plentitude of her blessings, has bequeathed to man nought else so intoxicating and incomparable as a woman of forty.