Alaska sentinel., 1905-09-07

Society has passed an unwritten law abolishing old age. Unlike many writ ten laws, it is being enforced. Where Is the venerable grandmother who used, in black dress and black cap, to sit in the chimney corner knitting the childrens stockings? Arrayed in a beautiful pea green silk gown and lowered hat. her gray hair done in naughty pompadour. she Is out help
 ing receive at fashionable function or attending the latest musical com edy at the theater. Where is the lean and slippered pantaloon" who used to spend the long days, "spectacles on nose and pouch on side summing him. self on the front porch or hobbling about the house and yard on canef He is down at the office or store work Ing as energetically and ambitiously as he did twenty years ago, or out at the ball game. cheering as Justify as the most vociferous small boy on the bleachers. A writer in Scribner's re- calls that when Washington was 56 years old he shrank from accepting the presidency on the ground that he had reached the advanced season Of life" Henry c. Davis was quarter century older than this when he ran for vice president. Some thought MT. Davis had reached the advanced sea- son of life" and passed it, but 1t was impossible 10 make him think so. When Froude. the historian, was elect ed rector of St. Andrews he remarked that the honor gave him pleasure as recognition of what he had done" As We advance in life" he said, the question Is no longer what We shall do." He spoke at 51 in the tone of an old man. Young manhood used to end at 30 and old age for men began at 45. A single woman was an old maid at 25 and a married woman thought at 70 that age required her to begin to quit society and make room for the younger generation" We have changed all this. A man is now young until be Is 45 and middle aged the rest of his life. Spinsters don't become old maids any more They are girls until 35, when they become bachelor maids. Married women are young at 40, after which, like their husbands after 45, they enjoy perennial middle age. There may be persons scattered here and there who regard themselves as old and will submit to be banished. as the aged of past generations were. from business, amusements and so- ciety, but if there be any such their number Is small and they are all well past the biblical three score and ten mark. Prof Shaler of Harvard re- gards the abolition of old age as sign of progress. Brutes and savages, as he points out. either kill their su- perannuates or leave them to starve. On rising from savagery to barbarism men set their aged as a class apart and revere them for their wisdom and dig nifty. It is a mark of an advance in civilization when they are 'readopted into the association and are allowed to go along with the business of life in the manner of other people" They are allowed nowadays to go along not only with the business of life but also with Its enjoyments: and the sum of human good and human happiness is thereby greatly increased. The utility and happiness of life depends not on its length but on its average breadth-not on the number of years, but on the number of its years winch are filled with useful exertion and in- nocent pleasure. It is disputed wheth- CT the average length of life is increas- ing. That the abolition of the old fashioned "old age" is increasing the average breadth of 1t seems scarce apop fo 0uastinD