Page:Free Opinions, Freely Expressed on Certain Phases of Modern Social Life and Conduct.djvu/230

 of pleasure-loving society. The innumerable nostrums for removing wrinkles, massaging or "steaming" the complexion, the "coverings" for thin hair, the "rays," of gold or copper or auburn, which are cunningly contrived for grey, or to use the more polite word, "faded," tresses, the great army of manicurists, masseurs and "beauty-specialists," who, in the most clever way, manage to make comfortable incomes out of the general panic which apparently prevails among their patrons at the inflexible, unstoppable march of Time,—all these things are striking proofs of the constant desperate fight kept up by a large and foolish majority against the laws of God and of Nature. Nor is the category confined to persons of admittedly weak intellect, as might readily be imagined, for just as the sapient Mr. Andrew Lang has almost been convicted of a hesitating faith in magic crystals, (God save him!) so are the names of many men, eminent in scholarship and politics, "down on the list" of the dyer, the steamer, the padder, the muscle-improver, the nail-polisher, the wrinkle-remover, and the eye-embellisher. Which facts, though apparently trivial, are so many brief hints of a "giving" in the masculine stamina. "It is but foolery; but it is such a kind of gain-giving as would perhaps trouble a woman." Vide Hamlet. Such it may be,—let us hope that such it is.

No doubt much of this fantastic dread of "looking old," arises from the fact that nowadays age, instead of receiving the honour it merits, is frequently made the butt of ignorant and vulgar ridicule. One exception alone is allowed in the case of our gracious Queen Alexandra, who supports