automobile. Up to that time rugged Amazons might crank a     heavy motor, but they were few and far between. With the self-starter however, things were different, and the woman soon be-came independent and developed a new sense of self-importance. She had at last come into her own. She voted, she smoked, she went swimming without stockings (no self-respecting female   would dream of swimming without stockings before the war)      and she used cosmetics freely without being considered a 'painted woman' — except by my mother who felt strongly that all cos-metics were indecent, immoral, unhealthy and unnecessary.      Once a townswoman came to call, and as she sat talking to my mother she opened up her compact and began powdering her  nose.
   "If you do that," said my mother, "I'm going to get my   toothbrush and start brushing my teeth."
   One day Miss Millie Hallowell, a friend for whom my mother   had much respect, took her to task and said, "Well Ruth — if everyone were as beautiful as you there would be no need for cosmetics."

   Many of these things happened over sixty years ago, and most   of the people I have told about are gone. In the interim the old order has given way to the new. The individualists who lived      their own way have been superseded by a more uniform popu-  lace —caused, no doubt, by mechanization and mass production. Things tend to become more and more stereotyped — look at    the similarity in automobile design — or how one house re-  sembles every other in a large urban real estate development — all of which ought to simplify existence. But does it?

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