“Pray keep your seat, madam!” she commanded in stentorian tones. “I may be gray-headed, but I am not old or decrepit!”
I fancy that one reason gray hair is becoming fashionable is this desire to cling to youth. Every year more young women tell us that they are prematurely gray, and their sister-women add eagerly, “So many women are, nowadays!”
THE IMPORTANCE OF TACT
Our Young Person must, then, be very careful how she displays the feeling of reverence for age which, we would like to believe, is inherent in every well-regulated nature. She must exercise tact, without which no person will have popularity.
APPRECIATING ONE’S ELDERS
One point in which Young America displays lamentable vulgarity is in the habit of interrupting older people. Interruptions, we of a former generation were taught, are rude. That is a forgotten fact in many so-called polite circles. And when people do not interrupt they seem to be waiting for the person speaking to finish what he has to say in order to “cut in” (no other expression describes it fitly) with some new and original remark. That is, apparently, the only reason that one listens to others,—just for the sake of having some one to answer. The world is full of things, and getting fuller every day, and unless one talks most of the time he will never be able to air his opinions on all points. And every one’s opinion is of priceless value,—at least to himself. This seems to be the attitude of Young America. Yet in courtesy to the hoary head one should occasionally pause long enough to allow the owner thereof to express an opinion. Although one has passed fifty, one may, nevertheless, have sound judgment and ideas on some subjects that are worth consideration. I wish young men and women would occasionally remember this.
The woman of sixty, or over, can really learn little of value from her granddaughter,—even when that granddaughter is a college graduate, and has all the arrogance of twenty years. Of course, grandmother may need enlightenment on college athletics, on golf, even, perhaps, on bridge,—although that is very doubtful, if she lives in a fashionable neighborhood. But, after all, these are not the greatest things of life. She would, perchance, be glad to listen to her young relative’s accounts of her sports if she would take the trouble to tell the happenings that interest her in a loving respectful spirit. Our elderly woman does not like to be patronized, to be told that she dresses like an old fashion-plate, and that she is, to use the slang of the day, a “back number.” The grandmother knows better. She has lived and she is sure that from her store of knowledge of life—of men, women and things as they really are—she could bring forth treasures, new and old, that would be of great help to the hot-headed, impulsive young girl about to risk all on the perilous journey that lies before her.
I would, therefore, suggest that Our Girl practise deference toward her elders. At first she may not find it easy, but it is worth cultivating. It is, moreover, much more becoming than arrogance and aggressiveness, too common nowadays. There is something wrong when a person feels no respect for one who has attained to double or treble her years. There is something lacking. The collegians of both sexes would do well to turn their analytical minds on themselves, and, as improvement is the order of the day, add to their fund of becoming attainments the sweet old-fashioned attribute of courtesy and reverence toward age.
SMALL COURTESIES
It is easy, after all, if one will watch carefully, to do the little kind thing that makes for comfort, and not do it aggressively. It is not necessary to adjust a pillow at the elderly person’s back as if she needed it. I saw a sweet woman put a pillow behind an invalid with such tact that the sufferer, who was acutely sensitive on the subject of her condition, did not suspect that her hostess had her illness in mind.