I have been talking to you an hour about what I would do if I could live life over.  If I had life to live over would I do any better than I have done?  If I am no better now, than I was five years ago, if I am to be no better five years hence than I am now, then I would do no better if I had another trial.

However, I cannot live life over.  The sand in the hour-glass is running low and when gone can never be replaced, and I am not much struck on old age.  It is said to have its compensations, in that the “aches and asthmas of old age are no worse than the measles, mumps, whooping-coughs and appendicitis pains of youth.”  Righteous old age should be better than youth.  The ocean of time with its breakers and perils face the young, while for the righteous old the storms are past, and they are

  “Waiting to enter the haven wide,
  See His face, and be satisfied.”

I cannot help these grey hairs or the wrinkles on my brow, but I can keep my heart young, and I do.  I enjoy the company of old people, but delight more in associating with the young.

Dr. A.A.  Willetts lectured on “Sunshine” sixty years ago.  In his ninetieth year he was still lecturing; had he lectured on shadows he would doubtless have died many years before, and never been known as the “Apostle of Sunshine.”

Solomon said:  “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine.”  Never lock the door of your heart against the sunshine of cheerfulness, and remember it is not the exclusive blessing of youth but blooms in the heart of any age.  With some it seems to be an inheritance.  It kisses some babies in the cradle, and the radiance of that kiss lingers through three-score years and ten; while others are born cross, live cross and die cross.  A babe of this latter kind came into a home and kept up its wailing for several days.  The little six-year old boy of the home said:  “Mother, did you say little brother came from heaven?”

“Yes, dear; why do you ask?”

“Well, no wonder the angels bounced him,” the boy replied.

I know a woman who is forever telling her trials.  If you do not listen to her story you must read it on her countenance.  Nearby is another who has lost her parents; indeed all her near relatives are gone; not a flower left to bloom on the desert of old age.  Yet, she hides her sorrows beneath the soul’s altar of hope and meets the world with a smile.  Doubtless the first woman wonders why she is so slighted and the company of the other courted.  She should know it is for the same reason that honey-bees and humming birds light on sweet flowers instead of dry mullien stalks, and mocking-birds and canaries are caged instead of owls and rain-crows.

Some persons seem to relish the “cold soup of retrospect” and persist in picking the “bones of regret,” without any appetite for the present or promises of the future.  Beside one of these I would place a happy-hearted soul, who laughs through the window of the eye and on whose face you can read,