New-York tribune., 1873-07-28
1y OID MANS FESTIVAL.

An OLD MANS FESTIV4L
Man is nothing if not gregariOus. Like seeks
like and we are attracted to each other and
Joined one to another by community OF for
tune or pursuits, of tastes or origin, OF good
han or sorrow. Even minor and less dignited
similarities unite us; and in these days, we
read of many different sodalities-Of Fat Men,
of Lean Men, may be of Long-nosed Men,
sometimes of Old Bachelors, who come to-
gether once year to fish, to shoot, to eat and
drink and make convivial speeches, there be-
ing in all this kindly SAVIOR Of brotherhood
and of neighborhood, which is not only graft
fvine but wise. We have been pleased to read
that there is in Portland, Me-, a Society of the
Aged Brotherhood, with a roll of about two
hundred old men, who, on the Gath inst, made
their annual excursion to Peaks Island for
day of rational festivity. We are not told
what qualification of years appertans to
membership of this venerable band, but the
ages of those present which are given reach
from seventy years to ninety-fOur. In spite OF
the scriptural assertion, for the nonce at least,
the senile scores were not "full of trouble
whether three score and ten or four score.
The mythical poet, AnacreOn, tells us that he
cloves laughing old man." and the prettle2t
of the short-netered Odes is full Of jolIty
which is hardly decorOus. The Old Boys Of
Portland, however, kept within the limits of
becoming mirth, and registered seriously, not
singing wild, drunken choruses, but super
annuated psalm tunes like portland" and
coronation tunes which they chanted long
ago in the church choir when their voices
were fresh and flexible and the pretty
sopranos sang with them. SO under bright
sky with the sea-breeze tempering the
meridian heat they spent the day Gin mirth
"that after no repenting draws" and saw the
sunI slowly westering with no sadness at the
thought OF that human dissolution which his
disappearance typifed.
Swift, whose last years were so friendess,
reckoned friends among the consultations of
longevity; and so this Portland Jubilee must
have been full of the finest attachments and
made cheerful by hundred common reminis-
cences. Old age, like other phases of life, is
much what we make it. The young naturally
enough persist in regarding it with feeling
of apprehension, and strong manhood shrinks
from it by a kind of instinct. Most of the
mOralsts are apt to take somber view of it.
Jeremy Taylor will have it that "baldness is
"but a dressing to our funerals, the proper
" ornament of mourning, and of person en-
" tered very far into the regions and posses
" sion of death and we have many more of
the same signifcation-gray hairs, dim eyes,
trembling joints short breath, stiff limbs,
" "wrinkled skin, short memory, decayed appe-
Cite" Most men live so that the breaking-up
becomes troublesome, and not the quiet pro-
cess which nature meant that it should
be. We can hardly be comfortable at sew
enty if, all our days, we have been running in
debt to nature and crowding into them more
than they can naturally receive. The whole
economy of our lives should have reference
to the future-tO-day implies possible to-
morrow though it may never come, and we
must make a provision which we may not
need. 1t is the fate of our mortality that our
nOblest faculties may leave us with the decay
of the meanest, so that losing appetite which
we share with the beasts we may miss intel
ligence which we share with the angels.
With the best care, if life be sufficiently pro-
longed, time will come when decay, both of
the mind and body, will be inevitable: but we
are fools if by our excesses we invite the
premature arrival of this period-if by abuses
of the body we WOO and hasten premature
decrepitude-if by neglect of the mind we
fall into too early dotage.
A fine old man, only mellOwed by time. only
made charitable by hard experiences, with the
harvest of wise career ganered all about
him, with the love which he has won now a
light to his eyes and guide to his feet, with
the respect which without command is cheer
fully yielded, with his heart halyed between
heaven and earth, between those who remain
and those who have gone before, sweeter and
more lovable for his simplicity and partial
helplessness, affections pensiOner, loves cred
itor, with rich estate i'll the tender graft
tude of all about him-such an old man, an
ancestor still abiding founder who may
contemplate the actual fair extension OF ms
line, is such consummation of htes best
and most honorable purposes that gallant
youth, even in its morning arrogance, may
well study it and seek in turn TO win 1t.
Even in this world we reap that which we
have sown. The ruin and the desolatlon may
be consummate at MONDAY, just as the average
life of man, which should probably be a cen
mry. is hardly third of it. Old age need not
brin, with il that for which We fear it-lone-
illness. ennui. peevishness the general absence
of ALI that makes an abiding here desirable,
but the precaution against such weary doom
must begin with the morning, out of which
will come the evening ISSUES. Nobody who is
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