The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1876-11-01

Young and Old.

When we are young our boys sweet,
They climb our knees and lie at our feet;
When we are old they are hard to please,
Cold as the rock and wild as the breeze;
They kiss US kindly and speak US fair,
But we know their hearts are otherwhere.
Oh, my sons my son TILL he gets him
But my daughters my daughter all her
life.
When we are young our days are bright,
And full of hope from morn TIL night;
When we are old we sit alone,
And think Of pleasant days long gone,
When the house was full of the children's
The wiIfiil girls and the naughty boys.
Oh, my sons my son till he gets him
wife,
But my daughters my daughter all my
life.
Apropos of hair dyes, there IS an amusing
anecdote of lady who was beginning TO get
elderly, and who once said to Douglas Jer-
rold: IL can not imagine what makes my
hair turn gray. / sometimes fancy IL must
be the essence of rosemary with which my
maid is in the habit of brushing my hair.
What do YOU think?" 81 should be rather
afraid, madam" replied the witty dramatist,
"that it must be the essence of Time"
How many thousands of cultivated.
highly-trained women at this moment
engaged daily in teaching in our schools
and academies do not know. But certainly
no one has a clearer field and better OPP
portunity to SOW the good seed than she
who teaches. After all, the influence of
ones life, the force of ones example. tell
in deeper and more solemn sense than the
words one says. How many men and wo-
men have followed the bent which their
lives took long ago, when they were little
rosy-cheeked children in some brown, low
rooted, district school? How many boys
and girls must get started for heaven from
,.1ox--e Il. u. 1T Il
in the Sunday-school can women work for
Jesus? Convinced that His service is the
dearest, and His rewards the highest to
which mOrtalS can aspire, surely we must
all desire more and more to be wholly con-
secrated to Him.
An American woman, writing from Paris,
said that the great point of superiority of
the French over the Americans lay in the
fact that the French knew how to grow old
without becoming incapable. An old woman
in France was not necessarily wall flower
nor was she ignored. She was often a center
of attraction, and always an object of respect
and attention. We constantly hear old peo-
pie in America complain of being of no inn
portance, and we all suffer the pain OF see
ing them pushed aside by those who are
younger but not superior. The worst is, the
fault lies, not with the your ger, but the old
er generation. We cOncede too much to age
We allow interest after interest TO slip out
of our minds; we become spectators and are
no longer actors, and then suddenly find the
werld has left us behind. The young people
have pursuits of which we know nothing
They ask no help, they care for no advice
nor sympathy. Their life is not ours
1t is not pleasant to live in the world and
not be of it, and the old man and woman
turn away and say no one cares. And no
one does care. That is the pity of it! The
world thinks only of what is of use to it;
and If the old French woman has power
and influence while the American woman
sits alone and feels that she has outlived the
world, the reason is that the French woman
has kept abreast of her time. She does not
allow old age to defraud her of her interest
in life, nor does she rest in inactivity. She
never dreams that there need be any antag-
onism between youth and age, and il she
can no longer join the workers, she watches
the work with keen eyes, and the younger
ones find help and inspiration in the sym
pathy of an audience wise through
love, interest and experience. We all
know old people who are the most
charming companions, but they are not the
ones who sit aside and ask the world to run
to their liking, nor do they expect to re-
ceive, but never give. They are living les
sons that youth is not all of life. and that il
may be possible to make our. lives the richer
for being long