are mature cynics at twenty, while a grey-haired matron of fifty seems
to have found the secret of perennial youth. There is little to choose,
as regards beauty and charm, between the young, unformed girl, whose
soft eyes look with longing into the unyielding future which gives her
no hint of its purposes, and the mature woman, well-groomed,
self-reliant to her finger-tips, who has drunk deeply of life's cup and
found it sweet. A woman is never old until the little finger of her
glove is allowed to project beyond the finger itself and she orders her
new photographs from an old plate in preference to sitting again.

In all the seven ages of man, there is someone whom she may attract. If
she is twenty-five, the boy who has just attained long trousers will not
buy her striped sticks of peppermint and ask shyly if he may carry her
books. She is not apt to wear fraternity pins and decorate her rooms in
college colours, unless her lover still holds his alma mater in fond
remembrance. But there are others, always the others--and is it less
sweet to inspire the love which lasts than the tender verses of a
Sophomore? Her field of action is not sensibly limited, for at twenty
men love woman, at thirty a woman, and at forty, women.

[Sidenote: Three Weapons]

Woman has three weapons--flattery, food, and flirtation, and only the
last of these is ever denied her by Time. With the first she appeals to
man's conceit, with the second to his heart, which is suspected to lie
at the end of the oesophagus, rather than over among lungs and ribs, and
with the third to his natural rivalry of his fellows. But the pleasures
of the chase grow beautifully less when age brings rheumatism and
kindred ills.