Now fashion is a republic and the only arbiter is a bank balance or credit, and young things frisk it in diamonds, velvet, point lace and sables, and their old grandmothers shiver along in _mousseline de soie_ and chiffon, roses wreathe their golden locks, red locks, black locks, as the case may be, but never their grey locks, and the winds of heaven fan their ageing shoulder-blades. The art of growing old gracefully is so rare that no wonder we cling to the hairdresser and the dressmaker with pathetic hands, just to postpone the evil hour; sometimes we think we have escaped the evil hour altogether. How we do cheat ourselves!
It is perhaps one of the most blessed dispensations of our frail human nature that we do not really know how we look; that when we gaze into a mirror we do not see the sober disillusioning reflection, but rather some fondly imagined image of ourselves. No woman is heroic enough to look her imperfections squarely in the face, or why do we see such curious apparitions? Why does that worn old face hide behind that white veil dotted with black? Because, when she sees her mistaken old features in the glass, then she sees what she longs to see, and when her old heart cannot pump up sufficient pink she dabs on that ghastly rose which has never yet deceived anyone.
Ah, yes, the twentieth century is distinctly reserved for youth--old age is not in it! It is a bad fashion set by that spoilt child of the world--America. The world pays the same deference to America that the average American parent pays to his obstreperous child. Yes, the American child rules the roost, and America rules the world; therefore, what wonder that age grows more and more unpopular.
The other day I saw in several papers that in a certain industry no workman would be employed in future who was more than forty. Put yourself in the place of a man of forty who is shelved and knows of no other way of earning his living! If he becomes a criminal, who can blame him? Recently I read a curious paragraph about the increasing use of hair-dye among working men. Not beer and tobacco, mind you, but just hair-dye! Why? Because employers do not want old workmen. So the men ward off the crime of growing old with hair-dye. Was there ever a more comic tragedy?