The Worthington advance. [volume] (Worthington, Minn.) 1874-1908, 1886-02-25
GROWING OLD.


! And Heaven has no frost.
GROWING OLD.
CHICAGO rlMEs.)
I.
There comes time in the life of ,
man who has journeyed some distanc,
beyond middle age when he begins tt
experiences certain surprises. They
are not surprises in the sense of sud
den occurrences. They are preceded
by attentuated indications, something
as the advent of a full moon above the
horizon is announced by dim and then
increasing light against the sky. The
man thus affected notices from time to
time with establishment that this and
that acquaintance is very much young
er than he had supposed. The number
OF the class grows, and the knowledge
of the fact suddenly bursts into the
conviction that he is older than the
majority of his associates.
Impossible! 1t cannot be! And vet
the conviction on examination, shows
no flaw. The disagreeable truth is
forced upon him that he is older than
the average of the mass by whom he is
surrounded. He chances about him,
and sees that in front of him along the
pathway of time the travellers are the
minority; he looks behind him and
then for the first time, he is confronted
with the fact that he is growing old.
1t affects him like strong electric
shock. At first he throws off the de-
pressing conviction, and for the mom-
ent he is again young; but, a little
later, he finds himself in the possession
of the phantom, which is thrown off
only to return at shorter intervals un-
til it comes to 60 away no more.
II.
This unexpected visitant has the
effect to transform the life of him on
whom it has imposed itself. Great am
billions which have long held their
place in his life suddenly lose their SUBJ
stantial nature and become vaporous
and float away. The horizon of the
future instead of remaining at the illim-
liable distance which it has occupied
all the years now shrink back on the
fairgrounds of life and seems almost
within the reach of the outstretched
hand. Its once endless vista, peopled,
radiant with light and roseate in color
becomes a deml-obscurity. gray. somber,
lifeless, save as to few limping figures
with white heads and despairing faces.
At the same time the long past extends
its dimensions AMI increases in light
and attract.veness. The charms which
have 50 long decorated the future have
changed their location, and now ex-
2ands their glory over the area that
stretches back to infancy.
II is strange, a pathetic fact in the
life of man that age should force him
to love. to long for, the unattainable
past. and to dread and recoil from the
inevitable future. There is lack of
adoption, of harmony, in condition
which compclls one to accept that
which he fears, and to lose that which
he would cling to. Everything in the
future is hidden from the human vision
except-death. What is the motive OF
plan which places in to morrow only
one certainty, and that one horrifying
and intolerable? Why should the ap.
parent future be simply mirage, and
the only real view one that permits the
sight of grinning skeleton, menacing
and deadly?
When he reaches the stage in life
where he suddenly discovers that
the living majority is far behind
him, there begin to be developed new
and curious phases in his daily expert
ences. He learns, all in a moment,
that he is possessed by singular inter-
est in the current death notices. His
first glance, after one at the name OF
the deceased, is at the date of his birth.
If it be one trife later than his own,
he experiences a shock; thought:
HE was younger than ~ flows
through his soul with a chill effect:
If the year of birth antedates his by a
decade or two, it affords him thrill of
satisfaction. ''Men do live ten. twenty,
thirty years longer than have lived, -
is the swift conclusion.
is with intense qualification that
the man at the period referred to reads
of the eighty years and the vigor,
freshness and activity of men like
Gladstone, the late Beaconstield, and
Commodore Vanderbilt. There is for
him much comfort as he reads of the
centenarian who has just died, or of
the one who is yet alive and has a
promise of further life.
Still other phases are present at this
period. He finds himself taking an in
terest in mortuary statistics. That so
many died during such period at a
tender age does not effect him largely;
it Is as the deaths at certain decades
approach his own total of years, that
his interest is excited. All, so many
between so and 60. and so many bes
tween 60 and 20! How his eager curl
osity inspects these results, and his
hopes rise as they promise good or ILL!
The announcement of the death of one
of his own age strikes him like a little
stab in the heart. Wait! What were
his habits, his constitution, his disease?
1t is almost with a devilish glee that
he learns that the other was drunk
ard; that he was constitutionally frail;
that he worked and worried himself to
death; that in short, he died from
some exceptional agencies. Happy is
he if, after scanning the causes of the
death, he can say: ''None of these have
IT,
So interested does he become in this
morbid study that when he meets a
funeral procession he curiously scans
the coffin, and if it be short enough to
l. A. A