“When a man or a woman holds fast to youth, even if successfully, there is something of the pitiful and the tragic involved. It is the everlasting struggle of the soul to retain the joy of earth, whose fleeing distinguishes it from heaven, and whose retention is not accomplished without an inner knowledge of its futility.’’

— Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman (1852-1930), New England native, in her story “The Amethyst Comb’’.