The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-01-01

nHE coming of new year is excitive of reflection. It is time for mem ! ory, for serious reveries, for intro spection, and for forecasting. To all classes capable of thinking the new year comes with it's solemn suggestions Of these mental moods. But to aged people the passing of time speaks most emphat- ically They realize that the wheels or the coach of time move as if heavily bur 6ened, and with many creak, grate and jar which were not noticed in the years that are gone. The coach is old, now. Soon it will have answered it's purpose. T. will have brought the traveller to the end of his journey. Obscure the fact as we may the truth is, that it Is not the coach that is failing, but the traveller him. self This is the consciousness of the aged. He knows that he grows fonder of his walking stick, more careless of his dress, more ready to abide by the hearth when days are frosty, and more prone to live in the distant past among those who for many years have slept in the silent mystery of death. With what sol emn tones does the new year speak to those who. like Othello. "have declined into the vale of years" ~
 The elder D'Israeli, author of that rare old book, "Curiosities of Literature" said, "Youth is mistake. manhood is strug- gle and old age regret" Lord Byron entered into old age while still young, and when 36 wrote:
 My days are in the yellow leaf,
 The flowers and fruits of love are gone; The worm, the canker and the grief. Are mine alone"
 - A life misdirected, with aims less than the highest, that seeks to satisfy the long ings of the immortal nature with tenn poral and material things, can expect nothing other than mistakes, struggles and an old age of egret, 'the worm, ,the canker and tho grief" Tho great philosophical poet illustrates this senti- ment pathetically in one of his most pie turesque characters. now grown to ex- treme old age:
 Farewell, long farewell to all my
 greatness! This is the state of man; today he puts
 forth
 The tender leaves of hopes. tomorrow
 blossoms,
 And bears his blushing honors thick upon The third day comes a frost. a killing And when he, thinks. good easy man, full
 surely
 His greatness is a-ripening. nips his root, And then he falls as do. have ven-
 turs1.
 Like little wanton boys. that swim on
 bladders,
 This many summers in a sea of glory, But far beyond my depth: my hish-blown At length broke under me; and now has
 left mo Weary and old with service. to the mercy Of a rude stream that must sorsver hide Had I but served my God with half the served my King. He would not in mine Have left me naked to mine enemies" ~ And &so, as Richelieu said of the old Cardinal de Fleury. '.Ie- stole into his grave to escape the funeral of his power"
 But Wolsey was right in his last declar- ation above cited, for God had said, q will never leave thee nor forsake thee"
 Ono of the reminders that the new year hrings to the aged ts . consciousness of growing unfitness for the activities of ' life. Cicero, in his De senectute. ad- vances this thought. which is so untver- sally recosnized. It is long leap from Cicero to Solomon Gills, in Dombey and Son. but 1t is leap easily made on paper. MT. oils kept nautical shop.