True, your years, as you say, are against you, however well you wear
them: it is to the young that we look first for signs of the great
Regeneration. And in particular we look to those who are to be the
mothers of that future race which should reap the full harvest of our
blood and tears.
"And what do we find?" continued the Cynic. "We find a contempt for the
old virtues of simplicity and reticence; we find the distinction of sex
wiped out, and with it all reverence and sense of mystery. Nature is a
back number with them; they must for ever be plastering their noses
with powder--not just privily, as used to be the better way of faded
charmers, but shamelessly in public places. In dress they barely keep
within the bounds of decency prescribed by the police. They make their
own advances, rounding up and capturing their 'boys' for partners,
lest the haunts of jazzery should be closed against them. And in this
competition for their favours the good modest fellows who only a little
while ago were fighting our battles for us are now giving themselves the
airs of spoilt beauties.
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