New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1891-12-13
A SWEET OLD AGE.

One day this week a young gentleman IL
Amesbury, Mass, known and loved by grea
many thousands who neven grasped his hand o.
looked into his eyes will pass his eighty fifth
birthday. Young, because whatever may have
happened to his physical powers in all these
crowded and eventful years, he has carried witt
him through all of them that Astounding love FOL
humanity, and for all his 1ellow-men, that keeps
the spirit always young, always in touch with
to-day. Gentleman, because in more than sixty
years of service to the thinking, reading world
he has said no word that was not helpful, hope
full full of that gentleness and tenderness which
outside Of all creeds and beliefs and theologes
attracts to-day the loving reverence OF mankind
for the First True Gentleman"
II is one thing TO grow old Love OF Efe
80 strong in us that we slide into the belief thai
we are greatly blessed in living long. We COME
10 count old age among the beatitudes. 1t is
not so. In the ordinary course OF nature the
losses we suffer, the disappointments we meet
the bereavements that come to MS, and the grow
ing loneliness of the thinned-Out circles that have
been so much to u.s. become WEAKNESS. Grow
ing old is a melancholy necessity. But to grow
old gracefully to keep with us, spite OF disap-
pointmentS and bereavements and losses and in
creasing physical ills, the youthful spirit, the
charm and sweetness of gentle temper and
unselfish soul, that indeed is beatitude; one
of the greatest; to be crowned by the last Of all
blessed are the dead who die in the Lord, y
for " their works do follow them" 1t is such a
graceful drawing to close OF long and use
full life that the attention of the Englsh-speak-
ing world will be drawn to this week by the
occurrence of the eighty-ffth birthday OF the
Quaker poet.
There have been and are greater poets than
Whittier The critics tell us that his art is moi
perfect that he slips sometimes in his meter
and that he has not given the world any start
ling effects, any great sustained effort or any
manifestation of what the profound or the sophis-
ticated call poetic genius. Let it 60 so. But
with or without poetic genius he has for more
than sixty years been writing verse that sus-
tanned the weak, encouraged the oppressed, in
spired the disheartened, put new life and hope
into the respondent; that lifted up wet eyes and
failing hearts to the Eternal Goodness. Such 8
life is in the very highest sense benefaction
1t offers no startling surprises, dazzles with nc
coruscations, but it irradiates the whole horizon
with the beams of tender sympathy and the
gentle glow of an. unfailing trust. 1t is for this
that one day this week thousands of hearts will
turn with emotions of grateful tenderness to the
New England home of the Quaker poet. Foi
he has kinded in them hope and trust
And awGy yonder in the coming time, when
great deal of what passes for art has crumbled
and a great deal of what is called genius has
gone out, the weary and doubling ones of this
world will be taking fresh courage and renew
ing their trust from the simple lines
know not where His islands lift
Their fronded palms in air,
only know cannot drift
Beyond His love and care.