CONCERNING GRANDMOTHERS.
By Abbie Morton Diaz
[Mrs. Abbie Morton Diaz, in Woman's Column.] AND now, dear Mabel, as to dealing with a grandmother. The difficulties you speak of are incident to the situation. We find the same. It does seem, as you say, that if the subject fails to perceive what is for her own good, it should be made clear to her; tho attempts at this are not always effective. It is curiously true that at a late period of life an abnormal activity is likely to set in, accompanied by a mild species of head-strongness, and, as you have found, it is very trying to see a person determined not to rest when she can, just as well as not, and when you know it is what her system needs. I should advise that the ideal held up to her be one of repose. Persuade her that her days of doing are over. But let us thoughtfully ask whose inclinations are to be consulted, the subjects or ours? Life, you know, is activity, and activity is joy. Note its spontaneous outburst through the whole animate creation. To crush this out in any human being, to deaden it, to prescribe its limits, would not this be working against nature, and in the interests of decay? I wonder if we dare advise this; if it is quite the thing- for a younger person, as such, to contend against a sexagenarian, or septuagenarian, or octogenarian, or any genarian, as such; to venture to direct, to restrain, to criticize, and in various ways to assume the superiority of youth over age? Since life does mean activity, and activity is joy, has not our faithful grandmother and yours, and shall not you and I have, when we become such, a constitutional right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?