The Love Affairs of an Old Maid | Page 3

their leader. We will sometimes follow
our neighbor's line of insular prejudice, when worlds could not bribe us
to copy her grammar or her gowns. Dull people admire youth. They
excuse its follies; they adore its prettiness. That it is only a period of
education, and that real life begins with maturity, does not enter into
their minds. The odor of bread and butter does not nauseate them. Dull
people, I say--and God pity us, most of us are dull--admire youth. Men
love it. Therefore we all want to be young. We strive to be young, nay,
we will be young.
I am no better than my neighbors. I, too, am young when I am with
people. But there are times when I am alone when the strain of being
young relaxes, and I luxuriate in being old, old, old, when I cease being
contemporary, and look back fondly to the time when the world and I
were in embryo.
And yet I wonder if extreme age is as repulsive to everybody as it is to
me. Forty seems a long way off. I fancy people at forty become very
uninteresting to the oncoming generation. Fifty is grandmotherly and
suitable for little else. Sixty, seventy, and beyond seem to me one
horrible jumble of wrinkles and wheezes and false beauty and general
unpleasantness. Oh, I hope, if I should live to be over fifty, that I may
be a pleasant old person. I hope my teeth will fit me, and the parting to
my wave be always in the middle. I hope my fingers will always come
fully to the ends of my gloves, and that I never shall wear my
spectacles on top of my head. But I hope more than all that it isn't
wicked to wish to die before I come to these things.
Before I entirely lose my youth--in other words, before I become an
Old Maid, let me see what I must give up. Lovers, of course. That goes
without saying. And if I give them up, it will not do to have their
photographs standing around. They must be--oh! and their letters--must
they too be destroyed? Dear me, no! I'll just fold them all together and

lay them away, like a wedding-dress which never has been worn. And
I'll put girls' pictures or missionaries' or martyrs' into the empty frames.
Martyrs' would be most appropriate.
Now for a box to put them in. A pretty box, so that one who runs may
read? Not so, you sentimental Elderly Person. Take this tin box with a
lock on it. There you are, done up in a japanned box and padlocked. I
would say that it looks like a little coffin if I wasn't afraid of what my
Alter Ego would say. She seems cross to-night. I wonder what is the
matter with her. She must be getting old. I should like to hang the key
around my neck on a blue ribbon, but I am afraid. "What if you should
be run over and killed," she says, "or should faint away in church?
Remember that you are an Old Maid." How disagreeable old maids can
be! And I've got to live with this one always. I'll put the key in my
purse. Nice, sensible, prosaic place, a purse.
How late it grows! I have only a little time left. I believe that clock is
fast. Dear, dear! Do I want to just sit still and watch myself turn? I
meant to have old age overtake me in my sleep. I think I'll stop that
clock and let my youth fade from me unawares.

II
I COME INTO MY KINGDOM
"There is no compensation for the woman who feels that the chief
relation of her life has been no more than a mistake. She has lost her
crown. The deepest secret of human blessedness has half whispered
itself to her and then forever passed her by."
I have become an Old Maid, and really it is a relief. I feel as if I had left
myself behind me, and that now I have a right to the interests of other
people when they are freely offered. My friends always have confided
in me. I suppose it is because I am receptive. Men tell me their old love
affairs. Girls tell me the whole story of their engagements--how they
came to take this man, and why they did not take that one. And even

the most ordinary are vitally interesting. Before I know it, I am rent
with the same despair which agitates the lover confiding in me; or I am
wreathed in the smiles of the engaged girl who is getting her absorbing
secret comfortably off her mind. It seems to comfort them to air their
emotion,