Democratic Sentinel, Volume 9, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 February 1885 — Age in a Woman. [ARTICLE]

Age in a Woman.

Age in a woman is a ticklish subject, and I have been talking with an expert about it—that is to say, a physician of heavy and long practice. I reminded him that we can judge of a horse's years by his mouth, and why couldn’t some rule be laid down, in a widely general way, as data to go on in estimating the age of a human being? “Do horses wear false teeth!” the man of medicine answered. “Do they dye their gray hairs, or putty up the wrinkles in their faces? Seriously, there is nobody so expert as to learn the age of a woman with anywhere near exactitude by physical observation. The uncertainty isn’t altogether due to deceptive practices, either, but to the widely varying effect of time in individuals. As a rule, brunettes look older than blondes at a corresponding age. As to the plumpness and the lack of it, fat may be said to increase the apparent age of a girl under 25, and to lessen it in a woman over that; and the reason is that slenderness is girlish as long as it does not produce wrinkles, while rotundity keeps the skin taut and smooth. “But these are mere generalities. In no gathering of women strangers to you could you guess the ages within five years on the average, and in half the instances you would be ten years out of the way. I know a woman of 35 with a son of 18, and when out together they are commonly mistaken for brother and sister. Popular ideas as to the ages of actresses is extravagantly erroneous. I could name several whom I know to be tremendously outraged by overestimates. Heal th is the only preserver of juvenility. Cosmetics, without exception, are injurious finally, if not at once. The skin is deadened by unguents and powders that fill the pores. But on the whole a woman can’t greatly alter her countenance as to its showing of her age, whether the exhibit be true or false.”— New York Cor. Chicago Herald.