The Spinster Book | Page 9

again!
[Sidenote: Perennial Youth]
Still, age is not a matter of birthdays, but of the heart. Some women are
mature cynics at twenty, while a grey-haired matron of fifty seems to
have found the secret of perennial youth. There is little to choose, as
regards beauty and charm, between the young, unformed girl, whose
soft eyes look with longing into the unyielding future which gives her
no hint of its purposes, and the mature woman, well-groomed,
self-reliant to her finger-tips, who has drunk deeply of life's cup and
found it sweet. A woman is never old until the little finger of her glove
is allowed to project beyond the finger itself and she orders her new
photographs from an old plate in preference to sitting again.
In all the seven ages of man, there is someone whom she may attract. If
she is twenty-five, the boy who has just attained long trousers will not
buy her striped sticks of peppermint and ask shyly if he may carry her
books. She is not apt to wear fraternity pins and decorate her rooms in
college colours, unless her lover still holds his alma mater in fond
remembrance. But there are others, always the others--and is it less
sweet to inspire the love which lasts than the tender verses of a
Sophomore? Her field of action is not sensibly limited, for at twenty
men love woman, at thirty a woman, and at forty, women.
[Sidenote: Three Weapons]

Woman has three weapons--flattery, food, and flirtation, and only the
last of these is ever denied her by Time. With the first she appeals to
man's conceit, with the second to his heart, which is suspected to lie at
the end of the oesophagus, rather than over among lungs and ribs, and
with the third to his natural rivalry of his fellows. But the pleasures of
the chase grow beautifully less when age brings rheumatism and
kindred ills.
Besides, may she not always be a chaperone? When a political orator
refers effectively to "the cancer which is eating at the heart of the body
politic," someway, it always makes a girl think of a chaperone. She
goes, ostensibly, to lend a decorous air to whatever proceedings may be
in view. She is to keep the man from making love to the girl. Whispers
and tender hand clasps are occasionally possible, however, for, tell it
not in Gath! the chaperone was once young herself and at times looks
the other way.
That is, unless she is the girl's mother. Trust a parent for keeping two
eyes and a pair of glasses on a girl! Trust the non-matchmaking mother
for four new eyes under her back hair and a double row of ears
arranged laterally along her anxious spine! And yet, if the estimable
lady had not been married herself, it is altogether likely that the girl
would never have thought of it.
[Sidenote: The Chaperone]
The reason usually given for chaperonage is that it gives the girl a
chance to become acquainted with the man. Of course, in the presence
of a chaperone, a man says and does exactly the same things he would
if he were alone with the maiden of his choice. He does not mind
making love to a girl in her mother's presence. He does not even care to
be alone with her when he proposes to her. He would like to have some
chaperone read his letters--he always writes with this intention. At any
time during the latter part of the month it fills him with delight to see
the chaperone order a lobster after they have all had oysters.
Nonsense! Why do not the leaders of society say, frankly: "This
chaperone business is just a little game. Our husbands are either at the

club or soundly asleep at home. It is not nice to go around alone, and it
is pathetic to go in pairs, with no man. We will go with our daughters
and their young friends, for they have cavaliers enough and to spare.
Let us get out and see the world, lest we die of ennui and neglect!" It is
the chaperone who really goes with the young man. She takes the girl
along to escape gossip.
[Sidenote: Behold his House!]
It is strange, when it is woman's avowed object to make man happy,
that she insists upon doing it in her own way, rather than in his. He
likes the rich, warm colours; the deep reds and dark greens. Behold his
house!
Renaissance curtains obscure the landscape with delicate tracery, and
he realises what it might mean to wear a veil. Soft tones of rose and
Nile green appear in his drawing-room. Chippendale chairs, upon
which he fears to sit, invite the jaded soul to whatever repose it can