Newark evening star and Newark advertiser. [volume] (Newark, N.J.) 1909-1916, 1913-06-26
WHEN DOES MAN
ATTAIN OLD AGE?.
No Measurement of Years
Seems to Answer
Question.

Someone has spoken OF the rlglulty
of old age. That pretty nearly ex-
presses all that there is of old age
When is a person old? No measure
ment of years answers the question.
There are those that are old before
they are out of their teens. Others
are young to their last day. The sub
ject can never be rightly stated with
out recurrence to oliver Wendell
Holiness famous mot in answer to
the query how old he was. mot old
at ALL" he replied. IT am rs years
young" And that was the truth. A
man that could answer so had youth
in him, no matter how many sum-
mers and winters he had seen.
Age itself is as beautiful as youth,
and, in sense, far more valuable.
We are prone to confound age with
the rigidity of age. The blood may
pulse slower, the movements be more
deliberate, the chosen delights more
rational and less frivolous, the rea-
son clearer, the contemplation saner,
the patience greater-all these are
the attributes of old age. but none
of them implies or includes that
rigidity of old age which ceased to
be eager in spirit, to take interest in
progress, to view life with zest.
1t is this that characterizes that
term of life to which somewhat of
reproach attaches as denoting a di-
minution of usefulness and lack of
participation, as if one were done
measurably with what made up life
and did not care what happened but
how shall we reconcile this attitude
or condition with the notion of inn
mortality? To the idea of immor-
atty mankind has chung from the
earliest records Of history. Max
Mueller says that when the first man
consciously saw the sun go below the
horizon at night and return at the
opposite side in the morning he must
have asked himself where the sun
had been, and that meant to him an
other place than this.
If, then, we have looked to con-
tinuance of life eternally, what a
contradiction is the rigidity of old
age! What an irrational thing It is
for one to become listless and tired
of the face of the earth in sixty
seventy or eighty years. To care
nothing, to feel himself no part of
development! What sort of candi-
date is that for life that shall con-
tinue forever? 1t is a contradiction
of things.
True old age is as young as youth.
Bodily infirmity that distraets the
mind or limits physical activity is
merely incidental and has nothing to
do with the zest of spirit that halls
life as an inestimable gift to be felt
and experienced while the senses last.
So, even so brief a contemplation as
this seems to make it clear that age
Is properly a season of activity and
generally one of far more wisdom
than youth. Its enjoyments are
deeper, because it knows more; its
feelings are finer, because it has had
experience All this is SO if one
really lives in old age as the i'm
mortality of the spirit surely means
that one should.
The old person, then, who is
wrapped in self and has no interest
in life, who stands aside instead of
keeping step, is not SO much old as
that he is perverted in age. He has
allowed It's rightly to seize him and
give a last manifestation Of SELFISH
ness. Unconsciously such a one is
simply trying to escape responsible
ity: a poor preparation surely for be-
ginning that life which we insist is
without end-Indianapolis News.