Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: basis of all true freedom; wherefore, we set our face fixedly against every opposing tendency, political or otherwise, and earnestly maintain that woman's enhancement, by harmless artifices, of Nature's endowment of charm is as clearly her inalienable prerogative as immunity from interference with thought and speech is that of man. On Being Younger or Older There seem to be a beginning and an end of the above reflection, and there may be correlation between the two, but if so we humbly confess our inability to detect it. What the desirability of growing old gracefully, in conformity with the plain intent of nature, has to do with safeguarding personal liberty would pass the comprehension of a Solomon. Who cares ? No journey is so delightful as that which leads no one knows whither, and whose end is unforeseen even by the wayfarer himself. And yet the mere orderliness of mind which should not countenance vagaries, leaving a premise suspended in the air, and never so much as pointing to a conclusion, surely calls for duteous observance. Why, then, do persons wish they were younger in years? Is the motive to be found in anhonest desire to live one's life over and better, or in mere envy of those who seem to be lighter- hearted ? If the former, there is no good reason to believe that the wider experience brought into play would make adequate compensation for the certain loss of the enthusiasm of ignorance; if the latter, there could be no effect other than the unhappiness of mental, moral, and even physical isolation. The fulness of enjoyment of companionship can be had only with one's contemporaries in years, faculties, and sympathies. Ignorance may profit from association with wisdom, but only through distasteful confession of inferiority by the one and shameful waste of ti...