The Superior times. [volume] (Superior, Wis.) 1870-1912, 1874-11-14
THE MN OF FORTYFIVE

iS iuth u ioit NV OF IHtGeDN
says Alexander Smith, is compelled
to own, if he sit down to think
about it, THAT existence is very diff:
ferent from what it was twenty
years previously. He is like one who
has spent $50 of his original pat
rlmony of $1,000. Then from hi,
life there has departed that ''wild
freshness of morning" which Tom
Moore sang aboae. In his onward
Journey he is not likely to encounter
anything absolulel Y new. He has
already corrugated every tense OF
the verb 70 Be. He has been in
love twice or thrice. He has been
married-only once, let us trust.
In all probability he is the father of a
fine family of children he has been
/ i'll, and he has recovered; he has ex-
perienced triumph and failure; he
/ has known what it is to want mon
/ ey IN his purse. Sometimes he has
been a debtor, sometimes a creditor.
He has stood by the brink of halt
a dozen graves, and heard the clods
falling on the coffin-id All this he
has experienced the only new
thing before him is death, and even
to that he has at various times APP
proximated. Life has lost most of
It's uneXpectedness. its zest, its nov
city, and has become ike worn
shoe or thread bare doublet. To
him there is no new thing under the
sun. But then this growing old is
a gradual process; AMI zest, sparkle,
and novelty are not essential to hap
piness.
The man who has reached five
and-forty has learned what d pleas
ure there is in customariness and use
and wont-in having everything
around him familiar, tried, contiden-
tial. Life may have become hum
drum, but his tastes have become
humdrum, too. Novelty annoys
o1jtct 5't.' 'Dp Puts H'' m out " pafF 81
newly-em broidered slippers would
be much more ornamental than the
well-worn articles which lie warm
ING for him before the library fire ;
but then he could not get his feet
into them 50 easily. He is conten
ted with his old friends-a new
friend would break the charm Of the
old familiar faces He loves the
hedge-rows and the fields aud the
brook and the bridge which he sees
every day and lie would not ex-
change them for Alps and glaciers.
| BY the time man has reached for
ty-fye, he lies as comfortably in his
habits as the silk worm in its cocoon.
On the whole, take it that middle
age is happier period than
| youth. In the entire circle of the
year, there are no days so delightful
as those of a fine October, when the
trees are bare to the mild heavens
and the red leaves bestrew the road,
and yOu can feel the breath of Win
ter morning and evening--no days
so calm, so tenderly solemn and
with such a reverent meekness in
the air. The lyrical up-burst Of the
/ lark at such time would be incon-
gruous. The only sounds suitab lie
to the season are the rusty cav of
the homeward sliding rook, the
creaking of the vain returning emp
" from the farmyard.
/ There is an EunreSt which men
miscall delight" ard of that "un-
rest" youth is for the most part
composed. From that middle age
is free. The setting suns of youth
are crimson and gold, the setting
suns OF middle age,
/ Do take sober coIoring from an eye
/ That hath kept watch Ger mans mortality.
Youth is the slave of beautiful
faces, and fine eyes, and silyer-sweet
voices-they distract, t, madden
alarm. To middle age they are
/ but the gracetullest statues, the
loveIiest poems. They delight but
burn not, They awake no passion,
they heighten no pulse. And the
imaginative man of the middle age
possesses, after a fashion, all the
passionate turbulence, all the keer
delights Of his earlier days. They
are not dead-they are dwelling il
the antechamber of his memory