The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1885-01-29
THE DREAD OF OLD AGE.
The Disease Called Senility Much Rarer
Than it Used to Be.

There is nothing to surprise US in the
interest displayed all over the world
often in such kindly and graceful fash
iOn-in the hundredth anniversary of
Sir Moses Montefiore's birthday. Apart
from the dignity of the great Hebrews
personal character, which, though in a
different way, resembles the dignity of
Lord Shaftesbury's and from the fact
that he has illustrated a cosmopolitan
clan very sensitive to such illustrations,
all mankind are attracted by any in
stance of extreme old age reached with
out loss of faculties, ofvisible happiness
or of consideration, We all of us, or
at least all of us who are slipping past
fifty, secretly dread old age, and regard
with aversion its usual, or traditionally
usual, conditions; and the sight of a
man about whose years there can be no
question who has passed by thirtyyears
the average limit of human life, and by
ten years an extreme limit, and vet
talks well, hears fairly well, sees per-
fectly well, and could walk like another
but for weakness, is pleasantly reassur-
ing. 1t the man Of a century can be
like Sir Moses, the man of ninety may
be only little indolent, the man of
eighty hale and hearty, and the man of
seventy retain "the fullest vigor of his
faculties "a phrase so habitually used
and in so conventional a sense that a
Suffolk laborer was once heard to tell
his clergyman: Thank We, sir, I'm
well enow, but my faculties is failing,
specially my feet. That is one secret,
we are convinced, of the decided popu-
larity of very old statesmen, and espec-
tally old statesmen of great vigor,
a sense among the middle-aged
that if they who are so visible
can be so strong and active and
full of brilliancy, old age can not
be so dreadful after ALL An appre-
hension is removed or lessened, and
very keen one. Some of the dread, no
doubt, is traditional, founded upon
boyish recollections, and even upon
books. Shakespeare in particular hav-
ing expressed, in lines which have
stuck in the National memory, an I'M
usually strong sense of the infrSlities of
age. His celebrated lines were proba-
accurate now when applied to certain
classes of the very poor, but they no
longer describe the majority of the
aged well-to-do. Whatever the cause,
whether improved sanitary appliances,
or greater temperance, or, as we
should ourselves believe, an increase in
the habit of persistently using the mind
and consistently taking interest in
events, it is certain that the disease
called senility is among the fully-fed
much rarer than it used to be. The
old lose their hearing and their activ-
10y, and part of the keenness oftheir sight
and are supposed to be grown duller alike
to pleasure and to pain; but they much
schooner become totally blind, or fatu-
Gus, or unable to control their features,
or incapable of guiding themselves
about. Men of eighty-four or eighty
five, who in the early part of the cen
tary, would have fallen into second
childhood, then disease recognized
not only by doctors, but by all men,
and regarded as sort of idiocy, now
talk easily, and glide over little def
clences of memory, and are, apart from
a not ungraceful, or at all events not
disgusting physical weakness, truly
men. The younger generation has,
however, scarcely realized the change
in its full extent, and fears age, there
fore, unconsciously, little more acute
~ than it should, though it has reason
for some of its fear. The lot of the old
Is not the happiest. even if they are for
tunately placed.-LOndon Spectator.