Women are commonly supposed to worry about their age, but Father Time is
a trouble to men also. The girl of twenty thinks it absurd for women to
be concerned about the matter, but the hour eventually comes when she
regards the subject with reverence akin to awe. There is only one terror
in it--the dreadful nines.

[Sidenote: Scylla and Charybdis]

"Twenty-nine!" Might she not as well be thirty? There is little choice
between Scylla and Charybdis. Twenty-nine is the hour of reckoning for
every woman, married, engaged, or unattached.

The married woman felicitates herself greatly, unless a tall daughter of
nine or ten walks abroad at her side. The engaged girl is safe--she
rejoices in the last hours of her lingering girlhood and hems table
linen with more resignation. The unattached girl has a strange interest
in creams and hair tonics, and usually betakes herself to the cloister
of the university for special courses, since azure hosiery does not
detract from woman's charm in the eyes of the faculty.

Men do not often know their ages accurately till after thirty. The
gladsome heyday of youth takes no note of the annual milestones. But
after thirty, ah me! "Yes," a man will say sometimes, "I am thirty-one,
but the fellows tell me I don't look a day over twenty-nine." Scylla and
Charybdis again!

[Sidenote: Perennial Youth]

Still, age is not a matter of birthdays, but of the heart. Some women