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Gregory, Eliot, 1854-1915

"The Ways of Men"

The battle, given up by the men--who now accept their fate with equanimity--is being waged by their better halves with a vigor heretofore unknown. So general has this mania become that if asked what one weakness was most characteristic of modern women, what peculiarity marked them as different from their sisters in other centuries, I should unhesitatingly answer, "The desire to look younger than their years."
That people should long to be handsomer or taller or better proportioned than a cruel Providence has made them, is natural enough; but that so much time and trouble should be spent simply in trying to look "young," does seem unreasonable, especially when it is evident to everybody that such efforts must, in the nature of things, be failures. The men or women who do not look their age are rare. In each generation there are exceptions, people who, from one cause or another--generally an excellent constitution--succeed in producing the illusion of youth for a few years after youth itself has flown.
A curious fatality that has the air of a nemesis pursues those who succeed in giving this false appearance.


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