Let us determine to face the situation, when it is necessary, calmly and sensibly.  For, unlike the aforesaid horse, we do not expect to be knocked on the head with a club, or quietly chloroformed out of existence at a stated period.  We would do well to follow our optimistic principles, and look at the many benefits which, in the words of the old catechism, “do accompany and flow from” this state.  If you have lived well, fifty is better than thirty, as the sun-and-frost-kissed (not bitten) Catawba grape is better than the tiny green sphere of June, and as maturity is nearer perfection than crude youth.  The tedious routine of the life-school, the hours spent in acquiring knowledge for which you had no immediate use, are past.  The wisdom that must come with time and experience is yours.

Another of the great advantages in being near the top of the mountain is that you can speak from superior knowledge words of comfort and encouragement to those beneath you, who are still toiling over the path you have trod.  Such help from you who have “been there,” and have now successfully passed the most trying places, will do more to keep up others’ hearts than many sermons preached by one who knows it all only in theory.

Since old age is inevitable, do not let us try to pretend that it is not, and let us never act as if there were any hope of shunning it.  On the other hand, neither should we wish that it were possible for us to evade it.  It is just as much of a God-ordained period as youth, and we ought to grow old in the manner in which God meant we should.  He meant us to keep heart and soul young by constant occupation and by unselfish interest in the affairs of others.

I know one woman, past the fifties, who is, the young people declare, “much more fun than any girl.”  Their enjoyments are hers, and she laughs as heartily over their fun, sympathizes as sincerely in their disappointments, as if she were thirty years younger than she is.  In fact, her sympathy is more genuine, for her age puts her completely beyond the faintest suspicion of rivalry, and it is easier to tell of one’s defeats and triumphs when the listener is too far along in years to be jealous or envious.

It should not be necessary for us to call courage into use to reconcile us to our lost youth.  Plain common sense is all that is requisite.  We have gained much on life in the past century.  As science has taught us how to ward off death, so has it instructed us in the art of preserving youth far beyond middle age.  Over my fireplace hangs a portrait of my grandmother, one of the loveliest women of her time.

She died at the age of fifty, and in it she wears a mob-cap and an old woman’s gown.  For years before her death, she felt that she belonged to the past generation, did not join in the younger people’s occupations, and claimed her place in the chimney-corner.  In her day the “dead-line” in a man’s life was drawn at fifty.  Now we know that to be out of all reason.  If the years of a man’s life are three-score-and-ten let us determine to move the dead-line on to seventy, and claim that we are not old until we have reached that point.  And if, by reason of strength we can hold on to four-score, let us push it on the ten years farther, and, taking courage, thank God for this new lease of life.