OLD MAIDS.

Otago Witness, Issue 1861, 22 July 1887, Page 32

OLD MAIDS.

This is a term that is too often used in a slighting, if not contemptuous, tone. If the story of many an old maid were known we should hear of lives of self-denial and heroism that would make us blush to think that we have ever lightly said, " Oh, she is an old maid ! "

In many a home the maiden aunt is the second mother to the children, their patient counsellor and unwearying playmate. "Auntie" it is who tells the stories, and binds up the wounded finger ; who nurses the baby when it is cross : who fills in the household the position of friend and drudge ; and who oils the creaking machinery and makes the domestic wheels ran smoothly. This is one class of old maids — a class the members of which you will generally find have been as pretty and sweet in their youth as their married sisters, and who could, if they would, tell you a tale of sorrow and love, perhaps of trust betrayed ; and at all events, in many instances, of love and trust unbroken, save by death. I remember an old maid of this description, and should she happen to read these lines she will see that I remember her still with love. Every young heart trusted in her. Her busy hands were ever at work for neice or nephew or young friend. , All our joys and sorrows were her joys and sorrows. Our picnics and parties were her delights, and boy and girl lovers were her especial care. One day a party of

fiis" (girls) tfeflre sitting with Her, and one* i said: " Auntie 1 ,- you tase so much interests 'in loving couples, why did you not geb, married yourself ?' I suppose you. had lovers, once? Come now,- was- there, ene in particular that another- tosk 111 1 ' The girls were laagliingly awaiting thet answ&rybut over the face of the " old maid "* i came si v&y tender look. Her wrinkled! hands paused for a moment in her work,, and she lifted hefft^ad and answered simply ( " God took him ! " j How quiet we then were". We drew a little i closer, and each was anxious" to' render her ("sortie litifle service, for the first time we fcact jcaughtf a glfth^se of the faithful heart, the , reflection Cf whidh had brightened so many young lives: " God* took him ! " That waa the story of her 1 love and sorrow. She bad! not flirted her lovers away; she had not been passed' by or been jilted — there was nobroken faith — but a 1 strength and truth in her heart that people slighted, and: shamed i with the sneering appellation "old maid I" None other had taken his place. It was & love'that had sanctified and humbled; and she* believed" all love as true as hers, and the life-, that would have blessed her husband had he- 1 lived to become* hers, was devoted — a willingr service — to brighten the lives of others. How often beneath the old-fashioned dress, and the whimsical crotchety ways, there lies a. tender heart that the world should have; known in its youth. . Spare them the unseeming jest, or cold, slighting' treatmentWrong and sorrow may have beess bravely fought, or lo^'e regarded as too sacred to bestow a second time.

There are, of course, other kinds of old maids. Keligious devotees, who withiu a convent spend their lives ; strong-minded women with masculine ambition, to whom the trammels of wife and motherhood would be unbearable; disappointed sowed souls who in spring time flitted from flowe? to flower, and found at last "It is not always- May " ; or women who, for some sensible reasom or principle of their own, quietly determined to pass their lives in the unmarried state, and steadily adhered to* this resolution. We cannot make rules, for the vast variety of temperaments,, and the hundreds of thousands of different lives and say, " this should never be " cc " that must be." No matter what the sphere the big world has a use for each member, of a community. Just as not even a leaf or grain of dust is wasted in Nature, so likewise, has every existence its use. History and the; present age furnish us with numerous instances of the useful lives that have beem lived by unmarried women. The sick havefound nurses ; the young, teachers ; art,, students ; literature, works ; benevolent institutions, patrons ; the poor, friends, that, matrimony would have robbed the world of.. Hundreds of useful and noble lives have been lived by old maids, and many a one has had cause to honour and bless their existence. Yet in spite of all this it ssems to me that a woman's highest mission in Bio lies in the words wife and mother.

(To he contimted.')