Evening star., 1932-01-11

| "I know you so well, know what
you will reply. while this stranger may
/ have something new to tell me"
| So says a character in Dumas For
! ty-Five Guardsmen."
! One doesn't know the stranger.
Therefore he is interesting.
| And to be feared.
| The older one grows, the less in
! clined he is to like new people.
| The sensible man fights against
this feeling, while at the same time he
| recognizes it.
| The why Of it interests him.
young man entering business after
| time may come to be surprised at,
= and perhaps little resentful of, the
| older man who does not cotton" to
him right away.
| He feels that the older man looks
upon him as something Of an inter-
/ loper, and evidently just puts up with
| HIM because he has to, not particu-
larly because he wants to.
1t is not until years later when he,
| in his turn, becomes an older man, that
he even begins to understand how the
oldster felt about him.
1t is only when he becomes older, in
his turn, and is called upon to well
come q flow of youngsters, each full of
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| was going on in the minds Of the old
! fellows of his early days.
1t was not jealousy. 1t was not the
fear that the youngsters were going to
do any uSurping on large scale.
1t simply was the disappearance of
their youth in those old fellows, just
as it Is in the end of his own young
days in him, he begins to realize at last.
Youth is eager, and therefore toll
Grant Despite the fine hymns which
have been set up to the intolerance of
youth, it is as nothing to the intol-
! erance of middle and old age.
Not so mych what may be termed
middle age is at fault as the beginning
of old age. That is nearer 1t, closer
home. Then man is about forced to
admit to himself what he can do and,
| he cannot do.
| At least he knows his limits. While
hope is never relinquished, he becomes
| sort of modern stole philosopher who
| does not permit hope unfulfilled to
spoil his life. Hope never flies out the
window. We know many capable men
who still believe that they will produce
great novels If they can but get around
to it. The curious thing is that there
is no doubt IN the minds of their friends
! that they could do it if they could get
around to It, Evidently it is the getting
around to ii that is the difficult part.
| And 1t Is just there that the man at
| the tail end of middle age, or at the
initial years of what may be called old
| age (and that phrase doesn't mean a
hundred years by many, many years.
| it is right there that such a man meets
| the difficulty of getting around to it.
| Habits have crystalliZed. Not only
his own habits, especially of mind, but
also the habits Of mind of others in re-
gard to him. He knows what he has
| done-and so do they. Unless he lit
orally anazes them as we'll as himself,
! he cannot bulge their opinion of him
an inch. Nor, unfortunately, can he
change his own opinion of himself very
! much.
Hence a man tends to become static.
X x
| At this point the youngster, the
stranger, appears on the scene. He is
new, he is green, he is bubbling. The
oldster is old, he is gray, he Is con-
| Servative. He may realize that the
youngster has something to tell him
which might prove interesting, but he
does not want to hear it. Why does he