Let not the purpose of this paper be misunderstood.  It is not to urge young women to become old or to act like old women.  The independence and frankness of age might not be becoming to them.  They must stumble along as best they can, alternately attracting and repelling, until by right of years they join that serene company which is altogether beautiful.  There is a natural unfolding and maturing to the beauty of old age.  The mission of woman, about which we are pretty weary of hearing, is not accomplished by any means in her years of vernal bloom and loveliness; she has equal power to bless and sweeten life in the autumn of her pilgrimage.  But here is an apologue:  The peach, from blossom to maturity, is the most attractive of fruits.  Yet the demands of the market, competition, and fashion often cause it to be plucked and shipped while green.  It never matures, though it may take a deceptive richness of color; it decays without ripening.  And the last end of that peach is worse than the first.

THE ATTRACTION OF THE REPULSIVE

On one of the most charming of the many wonderfully picturesque little beaches on the Pacific coast, near Monterey, is the idlest if not the most disagreeable social group in the world.  Just off the shore, farther than a stone’s-throw, lies a mass of broken rocks.  The surf comes leaping and laughing in, sending up, above the curving green breakers and crests of foam, jets and spirals of water which flash like silver fountains in the sunlight.  These islets of rocks are the homes of the sea-lion.  This loafer of the coast congregates here by the thousand.  Sometimes the rocks are quite covered, the smooth rounded surface of the larger one presenting the appearance at a distance of a knoll dotted with dirty sheep.  There is generally a select knot of a dozen floating about in the still water under the lee of the rock, bobbing up their tails and flippers very much as black driftwood might heave about in the tide.  During certain parts of the day members of this community are off fishing in deep water; but what they like best to do is to crawl up on the rocks and grunt and bellow, or go to sleep in the sun.  Some of them lie half in water, their tails floating and their ungainly heads wagging.  These uneasy ones are always wriggling out or plunging in.  Some crawl to the tops of the rocks and lie like gunny bags stuffed with meal, or they repose on the broken surfaces like masses of jelly.  When they are all at home the rocks have not room for them, and they crawl on and over each other, and lie like piles of undressed pork.  In the water they are black, but when they are dry in the sun the skin becomes a dirty light brown.  Many of them are huge fellows, with a body as big as an ox.  In the water they are repulsively graceful; on the rocks they are as ungainly as boneless cows, or hogs that have lost their shape in prosperity.  Summer and winter (and it is almost always summer