We speak
not here of the assured Christian. He, from the noblest pinnacle of
faith, beholds a promised land, and is eager to reach it; he prays "to
be delivered from the body of this death;" but we write of those
humbler, perhaps more human souls, with whom increasing age each day
treads down an illusion. All feverish wishes, raw and inconclusive
desires, have died down, and a calm beauty and peace survive; passions
are dead, temptations weakened or conquered; experience has been won;
selfish interests are widened into universal ones; vain, idle hopes,
have merged into a firmer faith or a complete knowledge; and more light
has broken in upon the soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed,
"through chinks which Time has made."
Again, old men are valuable, not only as relics of the past, but as
guides and prophets for the future. They know the pattern of every turn
of life's kaleidoscope. The colors merely fall into new shapes; the
ground-work is just the same. The good which a calm, kind, and cheerful
old man can do is incalculable. And whilst he does good to others, he
enjoys himself. He looks not unnaturally to that which should accompany
old age--honor, love, obedience, troops of friends; and he plays his
part in the comedy or tragedy of life with as much gusto as any one
else. Old Montague, or Capulet, and old Polonius, that wise maxim-man,
enjoy themselves quite as well as the moody Hamlet, the perturbed
Laertes, or even gallant Mercutio or love-sick Romeo.
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