SEEK not the same steps with the crowd; A constant humble mind Is both his own joy, and his Maker's too; Let Folly dust it on, or lag behind. A sweet self-privacy in a right soul Outruns the earth, and lines the utmost pole. Henry Vaughan. RULE FOR A LONG LIFE. TEMPERANCE, the bath, and flesh-brush, and don't fret. Rogers. BARRY CORNWALL. BRYAN WALLER PROCTER, who for more than sixty years was known in English literature as Barry Cornwall, lived to the age of eighty-seven. He was the schoolmate of Byron and Sir Robert Peel at Harrow, and friend and companion during his life of Keats, Lamb, Shelley, Coleridge, Talfourd, Rogers, and Leigh Hunt, and was the man to whom Thackeray affectionately dedicated his "Vanity Fair." ANOTHER Octogenarian, with a face transfigured by long beneficence of thought and life, is Henry S. Washburn, the author of "The Vacant Chair" and the once famous missionary hymn "The Burial of Mrs. Judson." He published a volume of poems when eighty-two years of age a book full of the true song spirit, of mellifluous meters, the fire of patriotism, and the true touch of home. He watched long by the chair of his invalid wife, whom he has made the subject of truly beautiful verse. He belonged to the class of religious authors represented by Dr. Samuel F. Smith, who died at the age of eightyseven, falling at his post as he was going out to preach. The venerable Bishop Clark, the War Bishop of Rhode Island, partially administered the duties of his office in the serene twilight of a life of nearly ninety years. So lived on Dr. Cyrus Hamlin, the missionary, passing away at eighty-nine. AGE is not all decay; it is the ripening, the swelling of the fresh life within, that withers and bursts the husk. George Macdonald. O DEAR old age, he who is afraid of thee is unworthy of having reached thee. I have always longed for thee but never feared thee, and, as thou didst draw nearer and nearer to me, I went out to meet thee. Next to God, I owe it to thee alone that I have broken the fetters in which I was sighing, and learned at last to govern myself. Thou hast given back liberty to me; thy gift came late, but I am all the more grateful for it. The days of my youth were rendered miserable because I had lost my freedom; having regained it makes me happy in my old age. Petrarch. I'm older'n you, an' I've seen things an' men, You can't git red on't; jest ez sure ez sin Wal, don't give up afore the ship goes down; Lowell. THE LESSON OF VERDI'S LIFE. VERDI died at the age of eighty-eight, what you might call a young man. In work and in years he outlived Gladstone, Bismarck, and other men of the nineteenth century equally great in their respective walks of life. Verdi's life stopped only when it had departed. Some men are dead for a score of years at a time without knowing it. Verdi kept pace with the procession. He is a record in the possibilities of human endurance and artistic enterprise. Day by day he reflected in his work the spirit of that day. Guisseppe Fortunio Verdi was always abreast and sometimes ahead of his times. He came of poor parents who gave him little save a high-sounding name. He lived up to that name for fourscore years and eight. It would seem that he had discovered the fountain of youth — and so he had in a way, for he kept his mind limber and his senses plastic. He could hear the new note from afar. While his contemporaries grew old and stale he grew young and fresh. His music was as timely as your morning paper, with the difference that it lasted longer. His life and works are a lesson for all men. Where there are a will and a way there is no such thing as age. Fathers, grandfathers, study the life of Verdi; withdraw your resignations and wake up to the beauty and activity of life. BREAK forth, my lips, in praise and own As Thou hast made Thy world without, Fill, brief or long, my granted span Whittier. |