THE USEFULNESS OF OLD AGE.

THE wisest men and the best have been conspicuous for working to the end, not taking the least advantage of the leisure to which one might think they were entitled. They have found their joy in pursuing labors which they believed useful either to themselves or to others. John Locke began a "Fourth Letter on Toleration before he died, and "the few pages in the posthumous volume, ending in an unfinished sentence, seem to have exhausted his remaining strength." The fire of Galileo's genius burned to the very end. He was engaged in dictating to two of his disciples his latest theories on a favorite subject when the slow fever seized him that brought him to the grave. Sir Edward Coke spent the last six years of his life in revising and improving the works upon which his fame now rests. John Wesley only the year before he died wrote: "I am now an old man, decayed from head to foot. However, blessed be God! I do not slack my labors; I can preach and write still." Arnauld, one of the greatest of French theologians and philosophers, retained, says Disraeli," the vigor of his genius and the command of his pen to the last day, and at the age of eighty-two was still the great Arnauld." It was he who, when urged in his old age to rest from his labors, exclaimed, "Rest! Shall we not have the whole eternity to rest in?'

James Mason.

EVERY noble life leaves the fibre of it interwoven for

ever in the work of the world.

Ruskin.

HERE is a true story: Once there was a woman who years ago decided that she would not grow old. She realized that the secret of eternal youth is to be like the ancient Greeks, always learning some new thing. One day, while taking her first lesson in Indian club swinging, she remembered that it happened to be her fortieth birthday. At forty-four she learned to ride a bicycle. At forty-six she took up typewriting and shorthand, explaining this last venture by saying that she could not die contented until she learned what those wonderful pot-hooks meant. Knowing nothing of the science of astronomy, she at first decided this study to be, in view of her probable destination, premature; but she has since taken it up most enthusiastically, concluding that she could not wait. Cooking lessons followed, and this versatile woman is now attending a business college for bookkeeping. Her physical regimen consists of a cold bath each day, fresh air at all times, and plenty of exercise. What new accomplishments her sixth decade may bring cannot now be told, but it is safe to say that each year will bring some new interest and delight. Why die and leave behind a world full of things you don't know?

GROWING Old gracefully, then, implies keeping up as varied and vital an interest in life as is possible; keeping fresh and genial the sympathies and trusts of the heart and the perceptions of the intelligence. That this is an easy thing to do it would be idle fatuity to assert. Life is a stern ordeal, a battle to be fought from start to finish, and a heroic victor is the man or woman who goes through it without having ninetenths of the courage, hope, and zest knocked out of him. All the more credit, then, to any one who, round after round, comes up smiling" and renews the contest; above all to him who has kept himself young enough in spirit to cry with that juvenile old sage and saint, Rabbi Ben Ezra:

66

"Grow old along with me!

The best is yet to be,

The last of life, for which the first was made;
Our times are in His hand

Who saith 'A whole I planned,

Youth shows but half; trust God; see all, nor be afraid!""

ON HIS SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY.

I STROVE with none, for none was worth my strife;
Nature I loved, and next to Nature Art.
I warmed both hands before the fire of life:
It sinks, and I am ready to depart.

Landor.

TO AGE.

WELCOME, old friend! These many years
Have we lived door by door;
The Fates have laid aside their shears
Perhaps for some few more.

Thanks for expelling Fear and Hope,
One vile, the other vain;
One's scourge, the other's telescope,
I shall not see again.

Rather what lies before my feet
My notice shall engage;

He who braved youth's dizzy heat

Dreads not the frosts of age.

Walter Savage Landor.

THE Gallic bachelor is crowing, like the emblem of his nation, over the fact revealed by the recent census that of the five centenarians found in Paris not one was ever married.

You say I have retained the buoyancy of youth; I have by no means retained its ignorance.

Mallock.

I REMEMBER that I met Bayard Taylor once in a Cambridge street with a book in his hand, which he let me take in mine. It was a Greek author, and he said he was just beginning to read the language, at fifty; a patriarchal age to me of the early thirties.

Howells.

DR. F. J. Furnival, most illustrious of English scholars and just ending his seventy-fifth year, rows fifteen miles on the Thames on Sunday, and recently took part in a race, which he won.

OF TENNYSON.

IN February, when eighty-two, he walked his three miles uphill to the Beacon and back with Princess Louise. At that age he preserved the high spirits of youth. He would defy his friends to get up twenty times quickly from a low chair without touching it with their hands while he was performing this feat himself, and one afternoon he had a long waltz with a young friend in the ball-room.

DWIGHT'S OPTIMISM.

Success.

WHEN Timothy Dwight resigned the presidency of Yale University he said, among other things: "I lay down my office, not because I am old. Seventy is not old, but it is the end of the summer term, and vacation time has come. My theory of life has been this: I believe life was made just as much for one period as another — childhood, prime, and later life- and every man should prepare himself for the late afternoon hour, so that he may grow happier till the golden time late in the afternoon. I look forward to coming years of greater happiness than I have ever known."

It is easy to see why Mr. Dwight felt so happy, even in quitting the field where the chief interest of his life had so long centered. He had cultivated all his mental powers to their utmost, so that, when he felt it the part of wisdom to retire from the more active duties of life, he had inexhaustible resources within himself for the enrichment of life up to that time which none of us can postpone. He had constantly renewed his youth by keeping in touch with the young and sympathizing with their hopes and aspirations; and, by following the progressive movements of his era, he maintains as keen an interest in life now as he did forty years ago.

CHEERFUL Yesterdays and confident Tomorrows. Wordsworth.