re some simple readjustments are to be made, a period of a
little rest, a little letting up, a temporary getting back to the
playtime of earlier years and a bringing of these characteristics back
into life again, then a complete letting-up would not be demanded by
nature a little later, as it is demanded in such a lamentably large
number of cases at the present time.

So in a definite, deliberate way, youth should be blended into the
middle life, and the resultant should be a force that will stretch
middle life for an indefinite period into the future.

And what an opportunity is here for mothers, at about the time that the
children have grown, and some or all even have "flown"! Of course,
Mother shouldn't go and get foolish, she shouldn't go cavorting around
in a sixteen-year-old hat, when the hat of the thirty-five-year-old
would undoubtedly suit her better; but she should rejoice that the
golden period of life is still before her. Now she has leisure to do
many of those things _that she has so long wanted to do_.

The world's rich field of literature is before her; the line of study or
work she has longed to pursue, she bringing to it a better equipped mind
and experience than she has ever had before. There is also an interest
in the life and welfare of her community, in civic, public welfare lines
that the present and the quick-coming time before us along women's
enfranchisement lines, along women's commonsense equality lines, is
making her a responsible and full sharer in. And how much more valuable
she makes herself, also, to her children, as well as to her community,
inspiring in them greater confidence, respect, and admiration than if
she allows herself to be pushed into the background by her own weak and
false thoughts of herself, or by the equally foolish thoughts of her
children in that she is now, or is at any time, to become a back number.

Life, as long as we are here, should mean continuous unfoldment,
advancement, and this is undoubtedly the purpose of life; but
age-producing forces and agencies mean deterioration, as opposed to
growth and unfoldment. They ossify, weaken, stiffen, deaden, both
mentally and physically. For him or her who yearns to stay young, the
coming of the years does not mean or bring abandonment of hope or of
happiness or of activity. It means comparative vigour combined with
continually larger experience, and therefore even more usefulness, and
hence pleasure and happiness.

Pr