"WHAT TIME THE ALMOND BLOSSOMS."

Otago Witness, Issue 2762, 20 February 1907, Page 65

"WHAT TIME THE ALMOND BLOSSOMS."

We hear much from certain schools of thought regarding the physical ills which, civilisation has brought woman — the migraines, the neurosis, the derangements which follow in the wake of her evolution as a house-dweller. The argument, pushed to a full conclusion back and forth, does not stand on a firm footing. The bloom of life, if vigorous, was brief for the savage woman ; in most cases she was old at thirty, though a lifetime of loveless labour and sorrow might still be before her. Nothing, in fact, emphasises the contrast between savagery and civilisation more than the double improvement in the modern woman's lot in regard to old age. In the first place, she pushes the foe back successfully for a

* whole score of years after the other has succumbed, in appearance at least, to the onslaught of the years. In our day, though not necessarily retaining tho coquettish soul and the unconquerable loveliness that attracted lovers to Ninon de L'Enclos at eighty, a fair woman may remain fair even to the allotted span, changing only the character of her charm. In the second place, even when old age means the extinguishment of beauty, it still means a season of honour and peace. Alone among pagan nations. Japan offered to her daughters a domestic peace in age which they never could hope for in their narrow laborious prime. The little brown house-mother, weighted under a thousand family cares and social obligations, openly longed for the day when she should retire, as the Go Ink'yo San, into an Indian summer of placid enjoyment under her son's roof. But for the most part it is only Christian civilisation that < makes age tolerable to women ; paganism I has little more than sufferance for it at I the best, unless the terror of witchcraft or the dreaded curse of the gods intervene to protect the victim of Time from the worse cruelty of man. • I But, whatever the compensations of age 1 in our time, its recognised on-coming is j a solemn and soul-proving experience for I the best of women. We do not live in the lachrymose days of Clarissa Harlowe ; it is more than probable that from most the first grey hair does not draw the tear sung by a minor poet of the closing eighteenth century — 'Ts not the tear of vanity for beauty on jhe wane — Yet, though the blossom may not sigh to bud and bloom again, It cannot but remember with c, feeling of regret The spring for ever gone — the summer sun so nearly Eet. Yet the first cold breath of life's winter must needs touch a woman sooner, deeper, and keener than it touches any man. So much of woman's power lies in transient and surface things that the "blossom of the almond" must needs wake for all a slow ache more lasting than tears — though an ache that finds its cure in steadfast self-mastery and faith in the Power that beautifully turns the sensitive green leaf to mellow gold before it returns to earth. Man, whose grasp on life is so much more close, firm, and tangible than woman's, has less of himself to lose in that day. He is not, therefore, tempted to the little artifices that women often stoop to in order to i conceal the prints of Time — artifices that, J if we did but know it. are more pathetic than they are cunning, being rather a desire to deceive one's self than to deceive others. Few can profess the "majesty of wrinkles" with the nonchalence of Madame Blavatsky — a woman, one may judge offhand, who was majestic in little else. The beautiful lines of [ Longfellow spring, indeed, to mind :—: — I Time hath laid his hand Upon my heart, gently, not smiting it, j But as a, harper lays his open palm Upon his harp, to deaden its vibrations. But these lines speak of a peace achieved long after the day of which we speak. The Day of the Almond Blossom, indeed, is like a tidal bore in the river of life. The straitened, impetuous currents of youth rush down to do battle with the cold, conquering waters of the open sea beyond, and the traffic of the soul must needs pause till the struggle is over. Strange to say, it is not always the woman who has been Fortune's favourite who feels the change most, but rather the unfavoured, the unflattered, the unJ loved, who cling to the last chances of I life with the fierce tenacity of the winter tree battling for its last brown leaf. So, it has been asserted, have the odds of battle been calmly faced and accepted by men whose lives had been all prosperity i and ease, while starving wretches who had never known one day's comfort hel' on to their miserable lives with tigerish determination. It is the latent unfaith of humanity that cannot trust the Giver of Good to make up the account hereafter that to human eyes fell short here. Who can forget the passionate sympathy of Wendell Holmes with the Unloved, and the expression of his robust faith that somewhere, some time, there waited for them a full recompense for woman's lost kingdom here ? The Almond Blossom is receiyed in so many different ways. "It is difficult to grow old gracefully," said Madame de Stael ; and small women prove the saying by innumerable petty artifices and petty angers before the hated conclusion can be driven home that they are visibly past the prime. Hostesses find these unwilling victims of Time a difficult factor in their house arrangements. How to make place among the girls for the passee who refuses to take her rightful place among the dowagers is a searching problem for a sensitive friend with a humoious leaven latent in her. The old contests between woman and goddess, as Arachne and Minerva, might well have been suggested by this unequal battle with the hours that is waged so often and so long. On the other hand, there is the proud woman — a rare bird, perhaps — who insists on meeting time more than half way and putting off with a kind of bitter bravado every green leaf from the yet unstripped autumnal tree of life. This, too, is pride run wild, that stiff bloom without which the garden of the womanly graces is not complete, and which yet may spread, to the choking of fairer things. There is a mean of gentle and courteous surprise at the silver token that is attained by few, but which is surely the divine plan of growing old. But there is another aspect, another peril, that is more insidious and lasting than either. This is the unconscious change of temperament that lies in wait for the day of the Almond Blossom. How often do we hear some sister or friend say, "I can't understand why Mary is so different now. When all her real troubles seem over her little worries are choking her to death." And so it is. Mary was once openhanded to a fault ; now 'she cannot sleep for devising little cheese-paring economics

that drive her household to distraction. Once she was tolerant and long-suffering; now the slightest appearance of neglect or opposition rouses her to peevish remonstrance or wilful misconstruction. Once she could have surveyed the ruin of half her worldly goods with equanimity ; now she spends a day lamenting the loss of a hat pin. To account for these changes wholly would necessitate a deeper knowledge of the subtle marriage of body and soul than we possess. Sometimes it would seem that the powers of darkness, having bombarded a woman's soul in vain during her vigorous prime, chose the hour ot weakness, of parting vitality, for a final onslaught, not now witJx thte artillery of great sins, but with a hail of earthly pettinesses that cracks Ihe eastward windows through which she should be- looking towards the fadeless day. What is the remedy against pettiness ? Is it not the active contemplation of grandeur — the laying Aold of omnipotence ? Easier said than done, thinks the worn woman who has fought her fight so gallantly till the failing day of the Almond Blossom. And be sure, however lightly the world may scoff or blame, omnipotence will part with gentle unerring fingers the tangle of wilful sin from, the suckers that spring from physical decay and weakness. And after — what then ? When the silver crown is no more a dreary surprise. and old age has paced long beside one as a friend ? Why, surely Sunset and evening star, And one clear call for me; And may there be no moaning of the bar When I put out to sea!