Mineral Point weekly tribune. (Mineral Point, Wis.) 1859-1868, 1864-01-13
Old Age.

/ cannot tell where childhood ends, and
manhood begins; nor where manhood ends,
and old age begins 1t is a wayering and I'M
certain line, not straight and definite, which
borders betwiXt the two. But the outward
characteristics of old age are obvious enough.
The weight diminishes. Man is commonly
heaviest at forty, woman at fifty. After that
the body shTinks little the height shortens
as the cartilages become thin and dry The
hair whitcns and falls away. The frame
stOops, the bones become smaller, feebler,
have less animal and more mere earthly mat
ter. The senses decay, slowly and handsome
ly. The eye is not so sharp, and while it
penetrates further into space, it has less
power clearly to define the outline of what it
sees. The ear is dull; the appetite less
Bodily heat is lower; the breath produces
less carbonic acid than before The old man
consumes less food, water, air The hands
grasp less strongly; the feet less firmly tread
The lungs suck the breast of heaven with
less powerful collapse. The eye and ear take
not 50 strong a hold upon the world:
And the big manly voice,
Turning again to childish treble pipes
And whistles in his sound.
The animal life is making ready to % out
The very old man loves the sunshine and the
fire, the armchair and the shady nook. A
rude wind would jostle the ful-grown apple
from its bough, full-ripe, fuII-colored, too
The internal characteristics correspond Gen
eral activity is less. Salient love of new
things and of new persons, which bit the
young mans heart, fades away. He thinks
the old is better. He is not venturesome:
he keeps at home. Passion once stung him
into quickened life; now that gad-fy is no
more buzzing in his ears. Madame de Stael
finds compensation in science for the decay of
the passion that once fired her blood but
Heather Socrates, seventy years old, thanks
the gods that he is now free from that raven
Gus beast which had disturbed his philO-
sophie meditations for many a year. Ro-
nance is the child of Passion and Imagina-
ton the sudden father that the long pro-
tracing mother this. Old age has little ro-
nance. Only some rare man, like Wilhelm
Won HUMBOLDT keeps it still! fresh in his
bosom.
In intellectual matters the venerable man
who loves to recall the old times, to revive
his taYOrlte old men-nO new ones half so fair.
So in Homer, Nestor, who is the oldest Of the
Greeks, is always taking Of the old times, be-
fore the grandfathers of the men then living
had come into being :" net such as live in
these degenerate days" Verse loving John
Quincy Adams turns off from Byron and Shell
ley and Wieland and Goethe, and returns to
Pope,
The pleasure of hope is smaller, that of memo
~ creator. 1t Is exceedingly beautiful that
II il so. The venerable man loves to set rec
objection to beat the roIl-call, and summon up
from the grave the old time, . the good old
time, the old places, old friends, old games,
old talk, nay, to his ear, the old familiar tunes
are sweeter than anything that Mcndclsshou,
OF Strauss, or Rossini can bring TO pass. FL
der Brewster expects 10 hear st. Martius and
Old Hundred chanted IN Heaven. Why not Z?
To him Heaven comes in the long-used must
cal tradition, not in the ueologies Of sound.
Then the scholar becomes an antiquary
he likes not young men unless he knew their
grandfathers before. The young woman
looks in the newspaper for the marriages, the
old man fCI the deaths. The young mans
eve looks forward; the world Is " all before
him where to choose" 1t is a hard world he
does not know 1t (; be works but little, and
hopes much. The middle aged man look.
around at the present. he has found out thai
it is a hard world he hopes less and work.
more. The old man looks back on the field
he has trod; this is the tree planted thi
Is my footstep," and he loves his old house
his old carriage, cat, dog, staff and friend
| In lands where the vine grows, | have seer
| an old man sit all day long sunny autumn
/ day, before his cottage door, In a great arm
T chair, his old dog crouched at his feet in th,
| genial Sun. The autumn wind PLAYED Will
| the old mans venerable hairs: above him OF
the wall, purphng in the sunlight, hung tbs
: full cluster OF the grape, ripening and matur