The Columbus dispatch. (Columbus, Miss.) 19??-1922, 1921-11-13
. EDITO AL
THE GAME OF MAKE-BELIEVE

Yesterday morning, while walking down Main
Street, we saw a game of Make-Believe. small
boy was putting away at a cigarette and trying
to make himself believe he was a man. little
farther along gray-haired man was having his
hair dyed and trying to make himself believe
he was young again
Believe is life's most ravshing game.
Youth strives to be sophisticated.
Age is an arrant masquerader
Youth-having no past, and no vision Of the
future-is a cruel and merciless critic
Age, remembering its own folies is lenent in
Judging the fatuous
Yet youth, galoping towards age, and age,
speeding to second childhood, meet on the race
track of life without even so much as friendly
hail
Youth filings brutal word into the ears of
those whose lives are at their zenith.
"Old"-it is the most crucifying word in our
language.
1t has only three letters but it stupefes the
mind, paralyzes the will and throttles the mag
nation Better to be slain by the sword than
hear this word when we are on the firing line
And yet this word has tracked us since the
day we were born. 1t has logged our footsteps
and been closer to than the skin that covers our
quverng nerves. We have watched it clutch the
minds and bodies of men, mercilessly relentlessly
until the erstYhile man of genius would gibber
in his speech and totter in his walk But we
have affirmed that time will never spike our
guns that our powder flask will never be empty
that we will never be a blank cartridge in a
Quaker gun
In the insolence Of youth we expected to for
ever travel at high pressure. We believed our
blood would always flow like quicksilver, and that
to the end of the race we would be a dynamic
force and live circuit in the electrical current
of life.
We believed that time could not incapacitate or
dsqualify us for the task we chose; that our
endeavors would forever be fed by the flame of
determination; that we would always be in the
tull possession of our faculties and that our bodily
strength and endurance would never fail
In youth we never expect to be dead letter in
the book of life
For us the brasier is full of glowing Goals
delicious incense is i'm our noStrs. Life is beau
tifu, for it is full Of activity The past has its
precious memories of childhood youth and mid
die age-memories of love- memories of father
hood and motherhood Our pattern of life is
etched in gayest coors. We know lifes splendid
possibilities and are equipped for the task.
But all our precious store of knowledge all
we have learned i'm the school of life becomes a
mockery when youth cries derisvely:
INT OlA man
THE old woman
The blood-red Goals arc covered with ashes The
pains and penalties of parenthood fit like ghosts
across the horizon where the sunset glow is hid
den by fastm0ying storm clouds. The gorgeous
colors have faded, and our pattern of life is a
scrawl. In a single moment, life is "a fiasco We
are bankrupt in hope and courage. We have
flashed i'm the pan. We have ended in smoke
All our lives we have thrown this phrase like
a ball OF flame and never dreamed that it scared
the souls and SCARED the spirits of men and
women whose years are many
And now we haze Cd Father Time.
We hate him for what be has done for us
We hate his scytho that be seems to have fash
Toned from the taIest tree that grows upon a
wind-swept cid-a tree that neither icy blasts
nor weight Of snow could shake its topmost
b0ugh We hate its blade. fused from the metal
that dubbed I'D a volcanoes blood-red heart.
blade chilled i'm the frozen currents of the poles
and sharpened on the iron wills Of men who hate
Old age.
Oh, how we hate old Father Time for the