That is why the roles of the heroes and heroines of plays are given by the managers to the most youthful actors they can find among the competent.

Both middle-aged people and young people enjoy a play about young lovers; but only middle-aged people will tolerate a play about middle-aged lovers; young people will not come to see such a play, because, for them, middle-aged lovers are a joke--not a very funny one.

Therefore, to bring both the middle-aged people and the young people into his house, the manager makes his romance as young as he can.

Youth will indeed be served, and its profound instinct is to be not only scornfully amused but vaguely angered by middle-age romance.

So, standing beside his mother, George was disturbed by a sudden impression, coming upon him out of nowhere, so far as he could detect, that her eyes were brilliant, that she was graceful and youthful--in a word, that she was romantically lovely.
He had one of those curious moments that seem to have neither a cause nor any connection with actual things.