loved, or pretty enough to be admired as once they
were admired. For women of a certain position have so little wholesome
occupation, and so little ambition for anything, save, indeed, that
miserable thing called "getting on in society," that they cannot change
their way of life with advancing years; they do not attempt to find
interest in things outside themselves, and independent of the mere
personal attractiveness which in youth constituted their whole pleasure
of existence. This is essentially the case with fashionable women, who
have staked their all on appearance, and to whom good looks are of more
account than noble deeds; and, accordingly, the struggle to remain young
is a frantic one with them, and as degrading as it is frantic.

With the ideal woman of middle age--that pleasant woman, with her happy
face and softened manner, who unites the charms of both epochs,
retaining the ready responsiveness of youth while adding the wider
sympathies of experience--with her there has never been any such
struggle to make herself an anachronism. Consequently she remains
beautiful to the last, far more beautiful than all the paste and washes
in Madame Rachel's shop could make her. Sometimes, if rarely in these
latter days, we meet her in society, where she carries with her an
atmosphere of her own--an atmosphere of honest, wholesome truth and
love, which makes every one who enters it better and purer for the time.
All children and all young persons love her, because she understands and
loves them. For she is essentially a mother--that is, a woman who can
forget herself, who can give without asking to receive, and who, without
losing any of the individualism which belongs to self-respect, can yet
live for and in the lives of others, and find her best joy in the
well-being of those about her. There is no servility, no exaggerated
sacrifice in this; it is simply the fulfillment of woman's highest
duty--the expression of that grand maternal instinct which need not
necessarily include the fact of personal maternity, but which must find
utterance in some line of unselfish action with all women worthy of the
name.

The ideal woman of middle age understands the young because she has
lived with them. If a mother, she has performed her maternal duties with
cheerfulness and love. There has been no giving up her nursery to the
care of a hired servant who is expected to do for twenty pounds a year
what the tremendous instinct of a moth