The time of this call, the occasion and the manner of it, mercifully vary with individuals.  Some fortunate ones, indeed, never hear it till they lie on their deathbeds.  Such have either been gifted with such a generous-sized cake of youth that it has lasted all their lives, or they have possessed a great art in the eating of it.  Though I may add here that a cautious husbanding of your cake is no good way.  That way you are liable to find it grown mouldy on your hands.  No, oddly enough, it is often seen that those who all their lives have eaten their cake most eagerly have quite a little of it left at the end.  There are no hard and fast rules for the eating of your cake.  One can only find out by eating it; and, as I have said, it may be your luck to disprove the proverb and both eat your cake and have it.

For a dreary majority, however, the cake does come to an end, and for them henceforth, as Stevenson grimly put it, the road lies long and straight and dusty to the grave.  For them that last call is apt to come usually before sunset—­and the great American question arises:  What are they going to do about it?  That, of course, every one must decide for himself, according to his inclinations and his opportunities.  But a few general considerations may be of comfort and even of greater value.

There is one thing of importance to know about this last call, that we are apt to imagine we hear it before we actually do, from a nervous sense that it is about time for it to sound.  Our hair perhaps is growing grey, and our years beginning to accumulate.  We hypnotize ourselves with our chronology, and say with Emerson: 

          It is time to grow old,
          To take in sail.

Well and good, if it is and we feel like it; but may be it isn’t, and we don’t.  Youth is largely a habit.  So is romance.  And, unless we allow ourselves to be influenced by musty conventions and superstitions, both habits may be prolonged far beyond the moping limits of custom, and need never be abandoned unless we become sincerely and unregretfully tired of them.  I can well conceive of an old age like that of Sophocles, as reported by Plato, who likened the fading of the passions with the advance of age to “being set free from service to a band of madmen.”

When a man feels so, all is well and comfortable with him.  He has retired of his own free will from the banquet of life, having had his fill, and is content.  Our image of the last call does not apply to him, but rather to those who, with appetites still keen, are sternly warned that for them, willy-nilly, the banquet must soon end, and the prison fare of prosaic middle age be henceforth their portion.  No more ortolans and transporting vintages for them.  Nothing but Scotch oatmeal and occasional sarsaparilla to the end of the chapter.  No wonder that some, hearing this dread sentence, go half crazy in a frenzied effort to clutch at what remains, run amok, so to