He was 60. Looking on the bright side, as conservatives are, for sound philosophic reasons, disinclined to do, I take comfort, of sorts, from the fact that by turning 60 I am freed from the fear of dying young. Unless 60 no longer counts as old. If so, that is, like blessings generally, a mixed one, because it extends one's eligibility for premature death.
Life is like that, always supplying thorns with the roses.
Mrs. Alexander Hamilton, final survivor of the Founders' circle, died in Washington in 1854 in her 97th year. She had lived the entire life of the Republic. So had the slave interviewed in Virginia during the 1862 Peninsula Campaign, who recalled hearing cannonading at the Battle of Yorktown 81 years earlier. Someone who today is 60 has lived 26.6 percent of the nation's life. Life supplies roses amid the thorns.