ettiness. 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 shoul