pathetic aging softness

Healthy young muscles are elastic. But impoverished muscles soon lose their elasticity and become flaccid. They will sag from weariness and defeat whenever your face is in repose. If you let them, they will develop the sagging habit, till they are stretched and fail to contract again. And then your mouth has that pathetic aging softness; your chin and throat lose their keen contour and assume a vague indeterminate outline; your cheeks lose their roundness and fall in deep furrow.

Cocks, Dorothy. 1927. Help Yourself to Beauty. New York. Harper and Brothers Publishing. p. 94