well to become acquainted with one's self at all hazards, and as I
am going to be my own partner in the rubber of life, I can do nothing
better than to study my own hand. So, to harrow up my feelings as only I
dare to do, I write down that it is really true of me that I passed the
first corner five years ago, and to-morrow I shall be 30.

What a disagreeable figure a 3 is; I never noticed it before. It looks so
self-satisfied. And as to that fat, hollow 0 which follows it--I always
did detest round numbers.

30; there it goes again. I must accustom myself to it privately, so I
write it down once more, and it laughs in my face and mocks me. Then I
laugh back at it and say aloud that it is true, and for the time being I
have cowed it and become its master. What boots it if the laughter is a
trifle hollow? There is no harm in deceiving two miserable little figures.

Let me revel in my youth while I may. To-night I am a gay young thing of
twenty-nine. To-morrow I shall be an Old Maid. I have very little time
left in which to make myself ridiculous and have it excused on account of
my youth. But somehow I do not feel very gay. I have a curious feeling
about my heart, as if I were at a burial--one where I was burying
something that I had always loved very dearly, but secretly, and which
would always be a sweet and tender memory with me. I feel nervous, too,
quite as if I did not know whether to laugh or to cry. I remember that
Alice Asbury said she was hysterical just before she was married. I wonder
if a woman's feelings on the eve of being an Old Maid are unlike those of
one about to become a bride.

My cat sits eying me with sleepy approval. I always liked cats. And tea.
Why have I never thought of it before? It is not my fault that I am an Old
Maid. I was cut out for one. All my tendencies point that way. Please
don't blame me, good people. Come here, Tabby. You and Missis will grow
old together.

After all, it is a sad thing when one realizes for the first time that
one's youth is slipping away. But why? Why do women of great intelligence,
of intellect even, blush with pleasure at the implication of youth?

There are fashions in thought as well as in dress, and the best of us
follow both, as sheep follow 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 pr