 Autumn Leaves by Ann Whales Abbott In my school vacations I used occasionally to visit an old sailor friend, a man of uncommon natural gifts, and that buried experience of life, which does so much to supply the one of other means of education. He must have been a handsome man in his youth, and though time and hardship had done their utmost to make a round of his old features and had made it needful to braid his still-jerry-black logs together to cover his bald crown, he was a fine, striking head yet to my boyish fancy. I loved to sit at his feet and hear him tell the events of sixty years of toil and danger, suffering and well-earned joy, as he leaned, with both hands upon his stout staff, his body swaying with the earnestness of his speech. His labours and pearls were now ended, and in his age and infirmity he had found a quiet haven. He had built a small house by the side of the home of his childhood, and his son, who followed his father's vocation, lived under the same roof. This son and two daughters were all that remained to him of a large family. The easterly bank and the westerly glim are certain signs of a wet skin, said the fisherman, pointing to the heavy black masses of cloud that hung over the eastern horizon one morning when I had risen at sunrise for a day's fishing. Don't do, don't go out today. There's soon such a breeze offshore, as with the heavy chop would make you sick enough. Besides, the old Dory won't put up with such a storm as is coming. No fishing, my boy, today. His old father said, Stephen is right. There is a blow brewing, and he came to look, leaning on his cane. Stay in today. I yelled it, and the sky during the morning slowly assumed a dull, laden hue. The storm came on in the afternoon, heavily pattering and pouring and blowing against the windows, and obscuring the little light of an autumn twilight. I wandered through the few small rooms of the cottage, endeavouring to amuse myself while the light lasted. With two funeral sermons and an old newspaper, then I sat down at a window, and I well remembered the glimmy landscape, seen through the rain in the dusk, the marsh with the creek dividing it, the bare-round eminence between the house and the beach, or rather the rocky cliffs, and on either side the wide, lonely sands with heavy foam-capped breakers rolling in upon the shore with the sound like a solemn dirge. At a distance on the left, half-hidden by the walnut trees, lay the ruins of a mill, which had always the air of being hunted. A high, rocky hill, very nearly perpendicular on the side next to the house, was covered on the sides and topped with gin and purged pines and other evergreens. As the darkness thickened, I left the lonely best room for the seat in the large chimney corner in the kitchen. The old wife tottered round, making preparations for the evening meal, and muttered recollections of shipwrecks, which the storm brought to her mind. Now and then she would go to a window, turn back her cap-border, from her forehead, put her face close to the glass, shearing off the fire-light with her hand, and gaze out into the darkness. Asa did not go out either, thanked the good-father. She said, the dog whined piteously, sit, sit, purse-gip. Here shall have a peace, good dog, a fearful night, indeed it is. The two men came in from the barn, shook off the wet, and drew near the fire. Just such a night, twenty-nine years ago, come August, we ran afile of Hatteras. You remember old woman, how they frightened ye about me, don't ye? Amidst such reminiscences, we were called to supper. I remember being solemnly impressed, when that old man, bent with hardship and the weight of years, clasped his hands, fervently, and in rude terms, but full of meaning, asked a blessing upon their humble board. I remember the flickering light from the logs burning on the hearth, and how it showed upon the faces of those who sat there a strong feeling of the words in which rose an added petition on behalf of those on the mighty deep. The supper being ended, the old man took down the tobacco board, and when he had caught enough to fill his pipe, handed it to his son, who, having done the same, restored it to its snail in the chimney corner. Then they smoked, and talked of dangers, braved and overcome, of pirates and shipwrecks and escapes, till I involuntarily drew closer into my corner, and looked over my shoulder. Suddenly the dog under the table gave a whining growl. He never seemed to like that dog, exclaimed the fisherman, turning to me. I thought he was asleep, but if ever a foot comes nigh, the house at night, he gives notice. Depend on it, there's someone coming. The door of the little entry opened, with a rush of the whistling wind, and a man stepped in. The dog half-rose, and though he wagged his tail, it took him that he knew the step to be that of a friend, he kept up a low whine. A young man, muffled to the eyes, and with the water dripping from his huge pee jacket, opened the kitchen door. William Crosby, why, what brings you out in such a storm as this? Strip off your coat and draw up to the fire, can't ye? Where are you bound then, and the night as dark as the wolf's throat? The young fisherman made no answer, unless by a motion of his hand. And as he turned back the colour from his face, he saw by the waving light that it was pale as death. The young wetlocks already lay upon his cheeks, making them more ghastly, as he struggled to speak. Oh, Stephen Lee, there's no time to be sitting by the fire, when old Assa Osbourne is rolling in the waters. A man's drowned, and who's to get the body for the wife and the children? Go pity them, before the ebb carries it out to sea. The old man drew his hand across his forehead and rose. I looked at him as he drew up, his tall figure, and looked the young messenger full in the eye. In a low deep whisper he said, Who, William, did ye say? Ye said a man's drowned, but tell me the name again. Yes, Grandsire, I did say it, old Uncle Assa Fleming. He and the minister went out of fishing in the morning. The minister got his boots off in the water, and after a long time he swum ashore. But poor Uncle Assa, Stephen come along, his poor wife's gone down to the beach now. They left the house and shut the door after them, and came back softly to the seat by the old man's knee. Once before I had seen him when a heavy sorrow fell upon him. It was on a beautiful summer's day, and the open window let in the cool breeze from the sea. He was sitting by it in his armchair, looking out upon the calm water, buried in thought. His favourite daughter had long been very low, and might sink away at any moment. The old dog was at his feet asleep. The clock ticked in the corner, and the sun was shining upon the floor. Some friends sat by in silence with sorrowful countenances. His little grandchild came to his side and said, Mother says, tell Grandpa, Aunt Lizzie's gone home. The old man did not alter his position. For some time he sat in deep thought, looking out with unseeing gaze, and winding his thumbs as before. Of five fair daughters, three had before died by the same disease, consumption. He had seen them slowly fade away one by one, and had followed his children to the grave in the scheduled burying ground, where the green sod was died to be broken to receive the fourth. Rising slowly he walked across the room, and, taking the well-worn family Bible, returned with it to his seat. And as he turned the leaves, he said in a low tone to himself, there's only one left now. Then he sat entirely silent, with his eyes fixed upon the sacred page. He did not utter one word of lamentation. He did not shed a tear. But as he turned his eye on me in passing, its expression went to my heart. Stealing softly out, I left him to the silent comforter, whose blessing is on the mourner. Now the scene was changed. One was suddenly taken from his side, who had been a companion from boyhood to old age. They had played and worked in company. Together they had embarked on their first voyage, and their last. And they had settled down in close neighbourhood in the evening of their days. Each had preserved the other's life in some moment of pearl, but took small praise to himself for so simple an act of duty. Few words of fondness had ever passed between them. They had gone along the path of life, without perhaps being conscious of any peculiarly strong tie of friendship binding them together, till they were thus torn asunder. The death of a daughter, long and slowly wasting away before his eyes, could be calmly born. But this blow was wholly unforeseen, and his chest heavily rose and fell, and by the bright firelight I saw tears rolling over his weather-beaten cheeks. A child will weep, a bramble smart, and made to see her sparrow part, as stripling for a woman's heart. Talk not of grief, till thou hast seen the hard-drawn tears of bearded men. The fury of the storm being abated, I resolved to follow Stephen down to the shore. He was not in sight, and I knew not what direction to take. It was a glimmy night, the transient glimpses of the moon between driving masses of clouds, only making the scene more wild and appalling. I could see the tops of the tall trees bending under the fury of the blast, ere it came to sweep the beach. The heaving billows were covered with foam, far as the eye could see, and rising and tumbling seemed striving with each other as they rolled on towards the sands. I had seen storms upon the ocean before, but never had it presented so awful and majestic an appearance. As the breakers struck upon the shore and sent a huge mass of water upon the sands, their sullen roar mingled with the howling and rushing of the wind and filled me with awe. There were torches upon the beach, and as I drew near I saw the fishermen run together to one point. The body had just been washed ashore, and lay stretched upon the sands. The head was bare and long, logs of white, hair streamed down upon the shoulders. The heavy P-jacket was off from one arm as if he had endeavoured to extricate himself from it in the water. The sinew-y arms lay powerless and free from tension then, but they told me that when they first drew him from the surf, both hands were grasping a broken oar with such strength that they were unable to miss his hold to suddenly the muscles relaxed and the arms fell upon the ground. They turned the body and the little water ran from the mouth, then gently raising it upon their shoulders they bore at home. End of Chapter 16 The Old Sailor by Anne Wales Abbott. Recording by Mary Windeshar W-I-N-D-I-S-H-A-R dot com. The Decline of the Drama by Stephen Leacock. Note, 1910 was an important year. Haley's comic came along, and some predicted the end of the world. And Stephen Leacock's first humorous book, Literary Lapses, was published. First humorous book, I said, for Mr. Leacock, who is Professor of Political Economy at McGill University, Montreal, had published his Elements of Political Science in 1906. It seems to me that I have heard that Literary Lapses was obscurely or privately published in Canada before 1910, that Mr. John Lane, the famous London publisher, was given a copy by someone as he got on a steamer to go home to England, that he read it on a voyage and cabled an offer for it as soon as he landed. This is very vague in my mind, but it sounds probable. At any rate, since that time, Professor Leacock's humorous volumes have appeared with gratifying regularity, nonsense novels, behind the beyond, etc. and some more serious books, too, such as Essays and Literary Studies and The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice. One of the Unsolved Riddles of Social Injustice is, why should Professor Leacock be so much more amusing than most people? We usually think of him as a Canadian, but he was born in England in 1869. The introduction was written by Christopher Morley. The Decline of the Drama Coming up home the other night in my car, the Guy Street car, I heard a man who was hanging onto a strap say, the drama is just turning into a bunch of talk. This set me thinking, and I was glad that it did, because I am being paid by this paper to think once a week, and it is wearing. Some days I never think from morning till night. This Decline of the Drama is a thing on which I feel deeply and bitterly, for I am, or I have been, something of an actor myself. I have only been in amateur work, I admit, but still I have played some mighty interesting parts. I have acted in Shakespeare as a citizen. I have been a fairy in a Midsummer Night's Dream, and I was once one end, choice of ends, of a camel in a pantomime. I have had other parts too, such as a voice speaks from within, or a noise is heard without, or a bell rings from behind, and a lot of things like that. I played as a noise for seven nights before crowded houses where people were being turned away from the door, and I have been a grown, and a sigh, and a tumult, and once I was a vision passes before the sleeper. So when I talk of acting in the spirit of the drama, I speak of what I know. Naturally too, I was brought into contact, very often into quite intimate personal contact, with some of the greatest actors of the day. I don't say it in any way of boasting, but merely because to those of us who love the stage, all dramatic souvenirs are interesting. I remember, for example, that when Wilson Barrett played the bat, and had to wear the queer suit with the scales, it was I who put the glue on him. And I recall a conversation with Sir Henry Irving one night when he said to me, fetch me a glass of water, will you? And I said, Sir Henry, it is not only a pleasure to get it, but it is to me as a humble devotee of the art that you have ennobled, a high privilege. I will go further, do, he said. Henry was like that, quick, sympathetic, what we call in French, vibrant. And as for Martin Harvey, I simply cannot call him Sir John. We are such dear old friends. He never comes to this town without it once calling in my services to lend a hand in his production. No doubt everybody knows that splendid play in which he appears called The Breed of the Treshums. There is a torture scene in it, a most gruesome thing. Harvey, as the hero, has to be tortured, not on the stage itself, but off the stage, in a little room at the side. You can hear him howling as he is tortured. Well, it was I who was torturing him. We are so used to working together that Harvey didn't want to let anybody do it but me. So naturally I am a keen friend and student of the drama, and I hate to think of it going all to pieces. The trouble with it is that it is becoming a mere mass of conversation and reflection. Nothing happens in it. The action is all going out of it, and there is nothing left but thought. When actors begin to think, it is time for a change. They are not fitted for it. Now in my day, I mean when I was at the apogee of my reputation. I think that is the word. It may be apology. I forget. Things were very different. What we wanted was action, striking, climactic, catastrophic action, in which things not only happened, but happened suddenly and all in a lump. And we always took care that the action happened in some place that was worthwhile, not simply in an ordinary room with ordinary furniture, the way it is in the new drama. The scene was laid in a lighthouse, top story, or in a madhouse at midnight, or in a powerhouse or a doghouse or a bathhouse, in short, in some place with a distinct local color and atmosphere. I remember in the case of the first play I ever wrote, I write plays too. The manager to whom I submitted it asked me at once the moment he glanced at it, where is the action of this laid? It is laid, I answered, in the main sewer of a great city. Good, good, he said. Keep it there. In the case of another play, the manager said to me, what are you doing for atmosphere? The opening act, I said, is an esteemed laundry. Very good, he answered as he turned over the pages. And have you brought in a condemned cell? I told him that I had not. That's rather unfortunate, he said, because we are especially anxious to bring in a condemned cell. Three of the big theaters have got them this season, and I think we ought to have it in. Can you do it? Yes, I said. I can if it's wanted. I'll look through the cast and no doubt I can find at least one of them that ought to be put to death. Yes, yes, said the manager enthusiastically. I'm sure you can. But I think of all the settings that we used, the lighthouse plays were the best. There is something about a lighthouse that you don't get in a modern drawing room. What it is I don't know, but there's a difference. I always have liked a lighthouse play, and never have enjoyed acting so much, have never thrown myself into acting so deeply, as in a play of that sort. There is something about a lighthouse, the way you see it in the earlier scenes, with the lantern shining out over the black waters, that suggests security, fidelity, faithfulness to a trust. The stage used generally to be dim in the first part of a lighthouse play, and you could see the huddled figures of the fishermen and their wives on the foreshore pointing out to the sea, the back of the stage. See, one cried with his arm extended, there is lightning in Yon's sky. I was the lightning and that was my cue for it. God, help all the poor souls at sea tonight! Then a woman cried, look, look, a boat upon the reef. And as she said it, I had to rush round and work the boat to make it go up and down properly. Then there was more lightning, and someone screamed out, look, see, there's a woman in the boat! There wasn't really, it was me, but in the darkness it was all the same. And of course the heroine herself couldn't be there yet because she had to be downstairs getting dressed to be drowned. Then they all cried out, poor soul, she's doomed! And all the fishermen ran up and down making a noise. Fishermen in those plays used to get fearfully excited, and what with the excitement and the darkness and the bright beams of the lighthouse falling on the wet oil skins and the thundering of the sea upon the reef, ah, me, those were plays. That was acting, and to think that there isn't a single streak of lightning in any play on the boards this year. And then the kind of climax that a play like this used to have. The scene shifted right at the moment of the excitement, and lo, we are in the tower, the top story of the lighthouse interior scene. All is still and quiet within, with the bright light of the reflectors flooding the little room and the roar of the storm heard like muffled thunder outside. The lighthouse keeper trims his lamps, how firm and quiet and rugged he looks. The snows of sixty winters are on his head, but his eye is clear and his grip strong. Hear the howl of the wind as he opens the door and steps forth upon the iron balcony, eighty feet above the water, and peers out upon the storm. God pity all the poor souls at sea, he says. They all say that. If you get used to it and get to like it, you want to hear it said, no matter how often they say it. The waves rage beneath him. I threw it at him, really, but the effect was wonderful. And then, as he comes in from the storm to the still room, the climax breaks. A man staggers into the room in oil skins, drenched, wet, breathless. They all staggered in these plays, and in the new drama they walk, and the effect is feebleness itself. He points to the sea, a boat, a boat upon the reef, with a woman in it. And the lighthouse keeper knows that it is his only daughter, the only one that he has, is being cast to death upon the reef. Then comes the dilemma. They want him for the lifeboat. No one can take it through the surf but him. You know that because the other man says so himself. But if he goes out in the boat, then the great light will go out. Untended, it cannot live in the storm. And if it goes out, ah, if it goes out, ask of the angry waves and the resounding rocks of what tonight's long toll of death must be without the light. I wish you could have seen it. You who only see the drawing-room plays of today, the scene where the lighthouse man draws himself up, calm and resolute and says, my place is here. God's will be done. And you know that as he says it and turns quietly to his lamps again, the boat is drifting at that very moment to the rocks. How did they save her? My dear sir, if you can ask that question, you little understand the drama as it was. Save her? No, of course they didn't save her. What we wanted in the old drama was reality and force, no matter how wild and tragic it might be. They did not save her. They found her the next day in the concluding scene, all that was left of her when she was dashed upon the rocks. Her ribs were broken, her bottom boards had been smashed in, her gunwale was gone. In short, she was a wreck. The girl? Oh, yes, certainly they saved the girl. That kind of thing was always taken care of. You see, just as the lighthouse man said, God's will be done, his eye fell on a long coil of rope hanging there. Providential, wasn't it? But then we were not ashamed to use Providence in the old drama. So he made a noose in it and threw it over the balcony and hauled the girl up on it. I used to hook her on to it every night. A rotten play. Oh, I'm sure it must have been. But somehow, those of us who were brought up on that sort of thing, still sigh for it. Recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Colleen McMahon. Growing Old Gracefully From The Blade, Toledo, Ohio, June 4, 1891. Question. Have you acquired the art of growing old gracefully? Answer. It is very hard to live a great while without getting old, and it is hardly worthwhile to die just to keep young. It is claimed that people with certain incomes live longer than those who have to earn their bread. But the income people have a stupid kind of life. And though they may hang on a good many years, they can hardly be said to do much real living. The best you can say is not that they lived so many years, but that it took them so many years to die. Some people imagine that regular habits prolong life, but that depends somewhat on the habits. Only the other day I read an article written by a physician in which regular habits, good ones, were declared to be quite dangerous. Where life is perfectly regular, all the wear and tear comes on the same nerves. Every blow falls on the same place. Variety, even in a bad direction, is a great relief. But living long has nothing to do with getting old gracefully. Good nature is a great enemy of wrinkles, and cheerfulness helps the complexion. If we could only keep from being annoyed at little things, it would add to the luxury of living. Great sorrows are few, and after all do not affect us as much as the many irritating almost nothings that attack from every side. The traveler is bothered more with dust than mountains. It is a great thing to have an object in life, something to work for and think for. If a man thinks only about himself, his own comfort, his own importance, he will not grow old gracefully. More and more his spirit, small and mean, will leave its impress on his face and especially in his eyes. You look at him and feel that there is no jewel in the casket, that a shriveled soul is living in a tumbledown house. The body gets its grace from the mind. I suppose that we are all more or less responsible for our looks. Perhaps the thinker of great thoughts, the doer of noble deeds, molds his features in harmony with his life. Probably the best medicine, the greatest beautifier in the world, is to make somebody else happy. I have noticed that good mothers have faces as serene as a cloudless day in June, and the older the serener. It is a great thing to know the relative importance of things, and those who do get the most out of life. Those who take an interest in what they see, and keep their minds busy are always young. The other day I met a blacksmith who has given much attention to geology and fossil remains. He told me how happy he was in his excursions. He was nearly seventy years old, and yet he had the enthusiasm of a boy. He said he had some very fine specimens, but said he, nearly every night I dream of finding perfect ones. That man will keep young as long as he lives. As long as a man lives he should study. Death alone has the right to dismiss the school. No man can get too much knowledge. In that he can have all the avarice he wants, but he can get too much property. If the businessmen would stop when they got enough, they might have a chance to grow old gracefully. But the most of them go on and on until, like the old stage-horse, stiff and lame, they drop dead in the road. The intelligent, the kind, the reasonably contented, the courageous, the self-poised grow old gracefully. End of Growing Old Gracefully Recording by Colleen McMahon A speech by Mark Twain Coffee Break Collection 20 Old Age This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. How to be seventy We have no permanent habits until we are forty. Then they begin to harden. Presently they petrify. Then business begins. Since forty I've been regular about going to bed and getting up. And that is one of the main things. I've made it a rule to go to bed when there wasn't anybody left to sit up with. And I've made it a rule to get up when I had to. This has resulted in an unswerving regularity of irregularity. It has saved me sound. But it would injure another person. In the matter of diet, which is another main thing, I have been persistently strict and sticking to the things which didn't agree with me until one or the other of us got the best of it. Until lately I get the best of it myself. But last spring I stopped frolicking with mince pie after midnight. Up to then I had always believed it wasn't loaded. And I wished urge upon you this, which I think is wisdom, that if you find you can't make seventy by any but an uncomfortable road, don't you go. When they take off the pullman and retire you to the rancid smoker, put on your things, count your checks, and get out at the first way station where there's a cemetery. I've made it a rule never to smoke more than one cigar at a time. I have no other restriction as regards smoking. I do not know just when I began to smoke. I only know that it was in my father's lifetime and that I was discreet. He passed from this life early in 1847 when I was a shade past eleven. Ever since then I have smoked publicly. Today it is all of sixty years since I began to smoke the limit. I've never bought cigars with life belts around them. I early found that these were too expensive for me. I've always bought cheap cigars, reasonably cheap at any rate. Sixty years ago they cost me four dollars a barrel, but my taste has improved laterally and I pay seven dollars now. As for drinking I have no rule about that. When the others drink I like to help. Otherwise I remain dry by habit and preference. This dryness does not hurt me but it could easily hurt you because you are different. You let it alone. I've never taken any exercise except sleeping and resting and I never intend to take any. Exercise is glowsome and it cannot be any benefit when you are tired. I was always tired but let another person try my way and see where he will come out. I desire now to repeat and emphasize that maxim. You can't reach old age by another man's road. My habits protect my life but they would assassinate you. End of How to be Seventy. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. You may remember, my dear friend, that when we lately spent that happy day in the delightful garden and sweet society of the Moulin Jolie, I stopped a little in one of our walks and stayed some time behind the company. We had been shown numberless skeletons of a kind of little fly called an ephemera whose successive generations, we were told, were bred and expired within the day. I happened to see a living company of them on a leaf who appeared to be engaged in conversation. You know, I understand all the inferior animal tongues. My two great applications to the study of them is the best excuse I can give for the little progress I have made in your charming language. I listened through curiosity to the discourse of these little creatures as they, in their national vivacity, spoke three or four together, I could make but little of their conversation. I found, however, by some broken expressions that I heard now and then, they were disputing warmly on the merit of two foreign musicians, one a cousin, the other a mosquito, in which dispute they spent their time, seemingly as regardless of the shortness of life as if they had been sure of living a month. Happy people, thought I, you live certainly under a wise, just and mild government, since you have no public grievances to complain of, nor any subject of contention, but the perfections or imperfections of foreign music. I turned my head from them to an old grey-headed one, who was single on another leaf and talking to himself. Being amused with his soliloquy, I put it down in writing, in hopes it will likewise amuse her to whom I am so much indebted for the most pleasing of all amusements, a delicious company and heavenly harmony. It was, says he, the opinion of learned philosophers of our race who lived and flourished long before my time, that this vast world, the Moulin Jolie, could not itself subsist more than eighteen hours. And I think there was some foundation for that opinion, since, by the apparent motion of the great luminary that gives life to all nature, and which in my time has evidently declined considerably towards the ocean at the end of the earth, it must then finish its course, be extinguished in the waters that surround us, and leave the world in cold and darkness, necessarily producing universal death and destruction. I have lived seven of those hours, a great age, being no less than four hundred and twenty minutes of time, how very few of us continue so long. I have seen generations born, flourish, and expire. My present friends are the children and grandchildren of the friends of my youth, who are now alas no more. And I must soon follow them, for by the course of nature, though still in health, I cannot expect to live above seven or eight minutes longer. What now avails all my toil and labour in a massing honeydew on this leaf, which I cannot live to enjoy? What the political struggles I have been engaged in for the good of my compatriot inhabitants of this bush, or my philosophical studies for the benefit of our race in general? For in politics, what can laws do without morals, our present race of ephemera will in a course of minutes become corrupt, like those of other and older bushes, and consequently as wretched? And in philosophy, how small our progress? Alas, art is long, and life is short. My friends would comfort me with the idea of a name, they say, I shall leave behind me, and they tell me I have lived long enough to nature and to glory. But what will fame be to an ephemera who no longer exists? And what will become of all history in the eighteenth hour, when the world itself, even the whole Moulin-Jolie, shall come to its end, and be buried in universal ruin? To me, after all my eager pursuits, no solid pleasures now remain. But the reflection of a long life spent in meaning well, the sensible conversation of a few good lady ephemera, and now and then a kind smile and a tune from the ever-amiable Breont. B. Franklin End of To Madame Breont, the ephemera, An Emblem of Human Life Read by Rick Rodstrom A man that is young in years may be old in hours, if he have lost no time. But that happeneth, rarely. Generally, youth is like the first cogitation, not so wise as the second, for there is a youth in thought, but there is a youth in thought, but there is a youth in thought, not so wise as the second, for there is a youth in thoughts, as well as in ages. And yet the invention of young men is more lively than that of old, and imaginations stream into their minds better, and as it were, more divinely. Natures that have much heat and great and violent desires and perturbations are not ripe for action till they have passed the meridian of their years. As it was with Julius Caesar and Septimius Severus, of the latter of whom it is said, Juventutum igrich iraribus emo furaribus plenum. And yet he was the ablest emperor almost of all the list, but reposed natures may do well in youth, as it is seen in Augustus Caesar, Cosmus duke of Florence, Gaston de Foix and others. On the other side, heat and vivacity in age is an excellent composition for business. Young men are fitter to invent than to judge, fitter for execution than for counsel, and fitter for new projects than for settled business. For the experience of age in things that fall within the compass of it, directed them, but in new things, abused them. The errors of young men are the ruin of business, but the errors of aged men amount but to this, that more might have been done or sooner. Young men in the conduct and of manage of actions embrace more than they can hold, stir more than they can quiet, fly to the end without consideration of the means and degrees, pursue some few principles which they have chanced upon absurdly, care not to innovate which draws unknown inconveniences, use extreme remedies at first and that which double if all errors will not acknowledge or retract them, like an unready horse that will neither stop nor turn. Men of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too little, repent too soon, and seldom drive business home to the full period, but content themselves with the mediocrity of success. Certainly it is good to compound employments of both, for that will be good for the present because the virtues of either age may correct the defects of both, and good for succession that young men may be learners while men in age are actors and lastly good for external accidents because authority followeth old men and favor and popularity youth. But for the moral part perhaps youth will have the preeminence as age hath for the politic. A certain rabbon upon the text your young men shall see visions and your old men shall dream dreams inferoth that young men are admitted nearer to God than old because vision is a clearer revelation than a dream. And certainly the more a man drinketh of the world the more it intoxicates and age doth profit rather the powers of understanding than in the virtues of the will and affections. There be some have an over-eager ripeness in their years which fadeeth the batons. These are first such as have brittle wits, the edge whereof is soon turned such as was Hermogenes the Rhetoretician whose books are exceedingly subtle who afterwards waxed stupid. A second sort is of those that have some natural dispositions which have better grace in youth than in age such as is affluent and luxuriant speech which becomes youth well but not age. So Tully hath said of Hortensius The third is of such as take too high a strain at the first and are magnanimous more than tract of years can uphold as was Cipio Africanus of whom Livy sayeth in effect Ultima primus catebonte This ends of Youth and Age by Francis Bacon Old Age by Unknown Coffee Break Collection 20 Old Age This is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Old Age Printed and sold by Samuel Wood and Sons at the juvenile bookstore in 1816 As manhood passes on many and various are the scenes that present As one day goes another comes and sometimes shows us dismal dooms As time rolls on new things we see which seldom with us do agree Though now in men's a pleasant day it is longer coming soon away Wherefore the everlasting truth is good for aged and for youth it is good to fix their minds upon for that will last when time is gone Man's experience will teach him that this world is not the place of his rest and that there is a better state where pleasure unmixed with sorrow will be the lot of all those whose days have been spent in obedience to the will of their heavenly Father After many toils and perils with some mixture of pleasure and summer's heat and winter's cold as year after year rolls rapidly away which in a state of manhood seem to move with quicker secession than in the days of youth Old age at last arrives Old age Who is this that comes tottering along His footsteps are feeble and slow His beard is grown curling and long and his head is turned white as snow His dim eye is sunk in his head and wrinkles deep furrow his brow Animation and vigor are fled and yield to infirmity now Little stranger his name is Old Age his journey will shortly be o'er He soon will leave life's busy stage to be torn by affliction no more Little stranger though healthy and strong thou dost adversity brave like him thou must totter ere long like him thou must sink in the grave those limbs that so actively play that face beaming pleasure and mirth like his must drop into decay and molder away in the earth then ere the dark season of night when youth and its energies cease O follow with zeal and delight those paths that are pleasure and peace so triumph and hope shall be nigh when failing and fainting thy breath still light a bright spark in thy eye as it closes forever in death as age advances nature fails step by step the teeth decay the hair turns white and falls off leaving the head bald the eyes become dim and recourse is had to glasses to aid the failing sight changes the once plump and ruddy cheek grows thin and pale and the face is covered with wrinkles the joints become stiff the body bends downward as it were betokening its approach to the earth the hands tremble in pains and sickness attend how happy are they who at this period when the world is forsaking them or rather they leaving the world find on reflection that from a well spent life through the mercy and assistance of kind heaven all is peace within and that they can meet death the king of terrors with joy and resign their souls to him that made them in their bodies to the earth in a blessed assurance of happy eternity end of old age old age insurance in Germany by Abraham Epstein coffee break collection 20 old age this is a LibriVox recording or LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org old age insurance in Germany Germany was a pioneer in the field of social insurance insurance against old age was first established in that country in 1889 in 1911 Germany adopted a most comprehensive system of working men's insurance which included besides the payment of old age pensions sickness, accident, invalidity and survivors benefits under the German law insurance was made compulsory for all manual workers and those other wage and salaried persons whose annual income did not exceed 2000 marks normally 476 dollars the obligation to insure begins with the 17th year prior to 1916 the age of eligibility for an old age pension was set at 70 years an imperial law of June 12 1916 reduced this age from 70 to 65 and made retroactive taking effect as from the 1st of January 1916 in addition to the payment of old age pensions the German system also provides for invalidity pensions which are granted in case of permanent disability before the pensionable age the letter is given to all persons unable to earn one third of the normal wages from occupation and locality as would be expected many more persons are receiving invalidity than old age pensions the former has steadfastly increased while the letter has steadily declined in 1914 there were 998,339 invalidity pensions paid as compared with 87,261 old age pensions the comparative growth and decline of the two forms of pensions may be seen from the following in 1891 there were 31 invalidity pensions this increased to 405,335 in 1900 in 1908 it rose to 868,086 and in 1914 it numbered 998,339 the aggregate expenditures for the old age and invalidity pensions stood at 1 to 2 in 1894 it reversed to 2 to 1 in 1900 8 to 1 in 1908 and 11 to 1 in 1912 the reduction of the pensionable age from 70 to 65 rose this proportion considerably the consequences for this reduction for the first complete year during which it was enforced may be seen from the following the number of new pensions granted by the insurance offices of the various states increased from 11,276 in 1915 to 92,120 in 1916 those granted by other offices of a special nature rose 10-fold in the same interval the insurance contributions in Germany are made jointly by the state the employers and the employees the state bears part of the expenses of administration by the payment of pensions through the post offices and contributes in addition a fixed sum each year for the pension the amounts of the weekly premiums that are paid by the employers and employees are in equal parts the employer is made responsible for the insurance of all his employees and for the payment of their premiums he is permitted to deduct the latter's contributions from their wages and receipts it by affixing special stamps to the workers receipt card the contributions to the fund are not uniform but vary in accordance with the annual earnings of the workers for this purpose the insured persons were divided until recently into five classes ranging from those earning less than 350 marks $83.37 per year in the first class to those earning more than 1,150 marks $273.93 per year in the fifth class until 1917 the weekly contribution of those classes ranged from 16 finning .038 cents to 48 finning .114 cents per week on January 1, 1917 however, owing to the extra sums expended as a result of the reduction of the age limit the contributions were increased to 15 finning per week for the first class and 50 finning per week for the highest group another amendment was adopted in April 1920 the new law increased the weekly contributions from 90 to 140 finning respectively normally .2104 cents and .3303 cents this enormous increase of contributions since beginning of the war is of course explained by the depreciation of the German money participants in the war were exempted from payments during the war in July 23, 1921 a new law was adopted increasing the classes to 8 and the weekly payments from 3.50 marks for the lowest class to 12 marks for the highest class further provided that this law continue in effect until December 1926 the German law provides that in order to be eligible for an old age pension one must have at least 1200 weekly contributions to meet the immediate problem of old age relief the required number of contributions was reduced by 40 weeks for each year of age for 40 at the time the law became operative persons over 70 years of age at the time of the passage of the law were thus pensioned outright but they had to show that they had worked in a trade coming under the insurance law for 3 years end of old age insurance in Germany age insurance in Russia by Abraham Epstein coffee break collection 20 this is a LibriVox recording or LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org old age insurance in Russia prior to the 1917 revolution there was no general provision for invalidity and old age insurance in Russia the only class protected against old age there were certain groups of government employees under separate funds however as the Tsar's government controlled the great many industries these government employees constituted a considerable number an old age pension fund granting pensions after 25 years of service to employees of state minds was established as early as 1797 in 1800 and this was extended to all employees of government factories the miners fund paid pensions after 35 years of service and required all over 18 years of age engaged for at least one year in the work to become members of the fund the railroad employees pension fund required all employees of state and private railroads to insure themselves paid after 15 years of service a similar fund existed for the employees of the state liquor monopoly a separate savings fund for old age also existed for the workers of factories and harbor workers operated by the ministry of marine another fund against old age was operated by members of the volunteer fleet a compulsory contributory pension fund was also established for all employees of the Zemsfo practically all these funds were controlled by members of the particular funds in 1914 the government's contribution to these funds amounted to 117,994 rubles normally 60,694 dollars according to the meager available information a decree published by the russian soviet government on march 8th 1918 established a complete scheme of government protection against sickness in validity, old age, unemployment etc pensions are given to workers having served at least 5 years in their enterprise and who have lost their working capacity and have no other resources than a product of their own labor the amount of the pension in case of complete disability is equal to the full wages received in unhelpful industries a pension is given regardless of length of service and of old age insurance in russia the seven ages of man by ralf bergengring coffee break, collection 20 old age all libravox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libravox.org recording by chad horner from baliclair in county under northern ireland situated in the northeast of the island of ireland the seven ages of man by ralf bergengring chapter 7 the old, old, very old man now concerning the soul it is a queer thing considering that it lives in the body it is not and so i conclude that the soul was made separate and this body for its brief use and tenement and how it gets in and gets out i cannot tell you and be like there be all sorts and conditions of souls some good, some bad some so so but because good is better than evil and i like to start and because they live in eternity i will find it out in time and become good and the so so souls will learn wisdom and cease of their foolishness but why they are not all made i like to start that i cannot tell you nor just how they was made the sages own book it was a poetess i'm glad to say i'm not a poet who wrote the once popular lines backward, flow backward oh tired of the years i am so weary of toil and of tears toil without recompense tears all in vain take them and give me my childhood again many a voice no doubt sagged under this load of pathos as it read rock me to sleep mother to a little group of sympathetic listeners but if such melancholys are to be set on paper and circulated in print i am unshivalrous enough to wish that joyless occupation on the gentler sex would perform prodigies of toil which seemed to receive scant recompense and shed figuratively many a bucket of seemingly useless tears but i do not imagine that this sad poetess was half as badly off as she seemed to think and more than that she had only to wait long enough and keep alive long enough to get her childhood back without asking for it time the grocery man in due season would hunt her a second childhood in many respects just as good as the first for we who are betwixt and between can observe an unintelligent ignorance of later troubles in one condition neatly balanced in an unintelligent forgetfulness of them in the other one might say was neither more or less than asking the tide of the years obligingly to assist her to commit suicide had her request been granted there would have been one more child and one less poetess an impressive parallel may indeed be drawn between these two childhoods the first a period of dependence upon its elders and the second of dependence upon its youngers and each to the reflective observer a pretty neat evenly balanced reversal of the other it is as if in the beginning the whole family of recognisable human characteristics curiosity memory affection dislike ambition love hate good nature bad temper and all the rest of them were moving one after another into a new house and as if in the end the whole family one after another were leaving an old one the very youngest and the very oldest men in the world seem equally equipped for living in it son teeth son eyes son taste son everything and baby a little older when he goes out in his perambulator is much like ancient Thomas the father being conveyed to London as a human curiosity in a litter and two horses for the more easy carriage of a man so enfeebled and worn by age and to cheer up the old man and make him merry there was an antique-faced fellow called Jack or John the Full why I myself meeting a baby in a perambulator have made such antique faces that I might fairly have been called Jack or John the Full and all to cheer up the young man and make him merry a little older yet the child will run and play rolling his hook spinning his top enjoying the excitement of tag and hide and go seek and I dare say that the old man a little younger than before would be just as happy with hook and top if he were again introduced to them and would have a grand good time at tag and had he go if he had other old men and old women to play with others would let him I do not mean that he would do any of these things as well as the child but it would please him as much to do them to the top of his aged bent though now and then a flicker of remembered convention which the child has never known and considered would make him self-consciously abandon these simple pleasures even as an old cat caught trying to catch its hail and sit up with dignity and pretend that it wasn't there was once a custom skeleton or perhaps a mummy in the festivity of a banquet to remind the diners of their mortality and for all I know the after dinner speakers of the shortness of time though very likely they soon got used to their silent companion and took their mortality as lightly as most people do at dinner an old old very old man as a contemporary writer called the unpicturesque human reign I have just referred to would it seems to me I have answered the same purpose and answered it better human nature takes neither the skeleton nor the mummy with continuous seriousness and proves by its attitude that if we instinctively fear death at one moment we instinctively ridicule our fear at another I have read it argued that man with his clothes on is nevertheless naked such arguments seem to amused philosophers and by the same entertaining process of reasoning we are all skeletons together though some may worry less others consider them too fat for romantic admiration or again to the man who believes that death snuffs him out like a candle this skeleton at the feast might easily become an urgent reminder that he is still living and he would most unwisely stuff himself out like a toy balloon while he still had a chance but your old old very old man is a reality he is both dead and alive his presence to say nothing of his table manners should tend to make each guest regard death as a friend rather than an enemy and his state of mind and body prove such a warning against pride in either that even the after dinner speakers would take notice and modestly shorten their speeches let it not be imagined that I lack respect for age I tell you frankly aging and respected reader that so long as you can intelligently read even today you are not seriously old and when you cannot you won't know the difference and no respect of mine will be of any value to you your time has not come to sit propped up at table as the latest modern improvement on the skeleton at the feast if ever it does you my friend will not be there where you will be I cannot faintly imagine and neither church men nor philosophers help me but the church men are too objective abstract the best I can do is to take John Fisk's words for it who knew far more about both science and metaphysics than I can hope to when he says the materialistic theory that the life of the soul ends when the life of the body is perhaps the most colossal instance of baseless assumption that is known to the history of philosophy but when its house has become a reign my soul will certainly have sense enough to look for something more habitable and may conceivably depart while there are still a few embers burning in the furnace leaving the fire to die out when it will. Man is a conventional being and perhaps his most astonishing convention is a funeral but the custom has long gone out of this poignantly reminding diners that a time is coming when they will have no stomachs and old old very old men will get no invitations out to down for any suggestion of mine fortunately there are other uses for them. They are for example a source of innocent pride to their families. Grandpa was 89 his last birthday and he still has a tooth they interest the million readers of the morning paper. Friends from far and near gathered yesterday to celebrate the 101st birthday of Mr John Doe 17 Jones Avenue the venerable patriarch who can still walk unaided from his place of honour by the steam radiator to his cushion chair in the dining room when asked to what he attributes his ripe old age replied with astonishing intelligence that the winters are longer than they used to be Mr Doe was surrounded by 247 living children grandchildren and great-grandchildren these are visible uses but this old old very old man may have invisibly a more important function and the helplessness of age like that of infancy may well have been a necessary factor in the slow conversion of our ape-like ancestors into you and me. I have commented elsewhere on the natural astonishment of the first parents who realised with their inefficient prehistoric minds that this baby belonged to them and how in the considered opinion of able scientists the little hitherto missing link joined father and mother into the first human family tending and providing for baby made the cave a home but I suspect it was a long time before tending and proving for grandpa added another motive for the cultivation of those higher qualities that distinguished man from all other animals why there were savages who ate him yet in due time the old old very old man became such a motive and today man is the only animal that takes care of its grandfather when you think of the differences between today and men then between men then and the ape men before them and between men now as they go about their various occupations it seems quite possible that ape men had no souls at all and that some men today have rudimentary ones millions of years behind others in evolution it explains much and so wherever there is an old old very old man I dare say the care his youngsters take of him is doing them good even reverse the parental platitude of punishment and say grandpa this does me more good than it does you but this proud possession of an old old very old man does not always work visibly toward such beneficent ends his obstreperous infancy masquerading in mature garments sometimes exhausts the patience of his youngsters and his permanent conviction often the only sign of intelligence left that he knows more than they do and perhaps more than anybody else makes their task difficult it is one thing so to speak to take care of a baby when it is growing up and another thing to take care of a baby when it is growing down then indeed one needs the assurance of immortality the conviction that grandpa is little as one might think it still growing up and that this simulacrum of grandpa that still remains to be looked after must not be taken too seriously these old old very old men are not all just alike there are grandpas whom anybody might be proud to take care of and grandpas whom anybody might be excused for wishing as the brisk modern phrase has it to sidestep and the explanation of this diversity as if much else that puzzles us in a puzzling world may be that they were not all just alike when they were babies inside their thin and tiny skulls some had better brains than others brains with more of those wonderful little pyramidal neurons which able scientists unless I get their message twisted tell me correlate connect assemble and unite our individual ideas memories sensations and intellectual and emotional what nots men in short may be born free but they are not born equal but why worry if the individual soul is still young and has no wisdom and experience nor will it lose touch with other souls that are akin to it and in the measurement of eternity it's contemporaries and it will have a better and better house to live in and ever more modern improvements in the way of pyramidal neurons as the March Hare conclusively replied to Alice when she asked why the three little sisters who lived in the treacle well learn to draw by drawing everything but they are not so if ever I become like the Val Trudinarians described by Macaulay who took great pleasure in being wheeled along his terrace who relished in boiled chicken and his weak wine and water and who enjoyed a hearty laugh over the Queen of Niverge tales I hope that somebody will considerably push my chariot boil me an occasional chicken and keep handy my spectacles but I shall have to do without but my soul I like to think which is the me for work and play, love, friendship and all the finer things of life already will have closed the door of its house and gone away and as it goes I like to think also that it whistles cheerfully a little tune of its own the burden of which is life is long End of Chapter 7 The Old Old Very Old Man Our old is two inhabitants two of them by Josh Billings Coffee Break Collection 20 Old Age This is a LibriVox recording while LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Our old is two inhabitants two of them John Bascom John Bascom is now living in Cunhala, Raccoon County State of Iowa He is 196 years old and can read fine print by moonlight 33 feet off He remembers George Washington first rate and once lent him $10 to buy a pair of calfskin boots with He fit in The Revolution also in the War of 1812 likewise in the late Melee and says he won't take sass now from any man living He is a hard shell Baptist by religion and says he will die for his religion He was converted 150 years ago and thinks the hard shell is the toughest religion there is for everyday wear He says that one hard shell Baptist can do more hard work on the same vitals during a hot day than 15 Episcopalites He has always used plug tobacco from a child and says he learnt how to chew by watching a cow chew her cud He has never drunk any intoxicate and liquor but whiskey and says that no other liquor is healthy He thinks three horn a day is enough for health He has always voted the Democratic ticket for the last 170 years and walked last fall with the weather 18 miles to vote for Jim Buchanan He ain't seen a railroad yet nor a women's right convention His greatest desire he tells me is to see General Jackson and says that he shall go next year down to Tennessee to see him He fatted a hog last year with his own hands that weighed 636 pounds after it was dressed and well dried out He is very cheerful and says he won $7 on the weight of this hog out of one of the deacons of the hard shell church He declares this to be one of the proudest accidents of his life for the deacon was known far and near as a tight cuss He tells me that for 90 years he has went to bed at just 17 minutes at 9 and has arisen at precisely 5 o'clock the next day The first thing he does in the morning is to take a short drink about 2 inches and then for an hour before breakfast he reads the Almanacs I will here state that it is Josh Billings Farmer's Almanacs that he reads I asked him his opinion of gin and milk as a fertilizer He pronounced it bogus and said that the good old hard shell drink whiskey unadorned was the only spirits that never went back on a man His habits are simple for breakfast he generally ate 4 slices of salt, pork 3 boiled potatoes a couple of sausages 5 hot baskets a dozen of hard boiled eggs 2 cups of rye coffee a small plate of slapjacks some few pickles and cold cabbage and vinegar if there was any left from yesterday's dinner His dinner was always a light one and he seldom ate anything but some billed mutton some corned beef some cold ham and some engine pudding to top off with His suppers were mere nothing and consisted simply of salt park, cold corned beef cold billed mutton and once in a great while a few slices of cold ham with mustard and horse reddish I examined his head and found that he had all the usual bumps in a remarkable state of preservation He has a good ear for music and whistled me Yankee Doodle with variations He was born a shoemaker but hasn't done anything at the trade for the last 125 years He enjoys the best of health but just now he is teething which he tells me is his seventh set He is a firm believer in the Darwin theory and says he used to hear his great grandfather tell of a race of men somewhere down on the coast of Florida who had some little of the caudal appendix still remaining on the subject to marriage seems to be dead level He said that he had been married 15 times and proposed again to Hannah Campbell a lady in the neighborhood who was 28 years old I asked him what he thought his chances were for obtaining the lady's hand and he said it lay between him and one Theodorus Whitney a traveling corn doctor and added if Whitney don't look out he would enlarge his head for him upon me asking him what he attributed his immense life and vigor to he said in a clear and distinct voice to three small horns whiskey a day believing in the hard shell doctrine and voting unanimously the democratic ticket I thanked him very much for the information he had given me of himself and asked him if he had any objection to me putting it into print and he manifested a great desire that I should do so not forgetting to make special mention of what he said about enlarging Whitney's head for him for he thought that would clear him out of the neighborhood I left John Baskham after a delightful visit of four hours and thought over to myself if there was any two rules for long life that had been thus far discovered that was alike I thought of this the more I wished I could come across Methuselur for a few minutes and hear him tell how he managed Elizabeth Meacham Liv Meacham as she is familiarly called in the township where she resides is one of the rarest gyms of extenuated mortality that has been my blessed luck to encounter not so old as Baskham by about two years being only about 194 years old next to Lot's wife she is the best preserved woman the world contains I reached her place so residents early in the morning and in one minute after I told her my business her tongue had a full head of steam on and for three hours it run like a stream of quicksilver down an incline plane I asked her a thousand questions but not one of them did she answer but kept talking all the time faster than Pocahontas can pace downhill to saddle as near as I could find out she had lived 194 years simply because she couldn't die without cutting short one of her stories I asked her to show me her tongue I wanted to see if that member was badly worn but she couldn't stop it long enough this woman has reached her enormous age without any particular habit she has outlived everybody she has come across so far by out talking them the only subject that I could for a moment arrest the flood of her language with was the fashions but that was the subject upon which I unfortunately wasn't much as a last hope had drawn her out upon some facts to her mode of life I touched upon that all absorbent topic to both old and young I refer now to matrimony her first husband it seemed was carpenter and to use her own words was too lazy to talk or to listen while she talked and so he died her second husband was a pretty good talker but a poor listener and therefore he died her third husband was a deaf and dumb man and as she remarked either he or she had got to die and the man died her fourth husband undertook to out talk her and died early in this way she went on describing her husbands twelve and all as I rose to depart I said to her solemnly Elizabeth meet him you have been much married and much in excellent with her at what time of life do you think the married state ceases to be preferable she replied you must ask somebody older than I am end of our oldest inhabitants two of them by Josh Billings the old lovers by Kenneth Rand coffee break collection twenty old age this is a Libervox recording all Libervox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit Libervox.org the old lovers we meet in a sorrowful land that is hard by the gates of death a smile and a touch of the hand as the sun sets flaming brand flickers and fails in the west with the day winds dying breath tis the most we may dare and best they say that the passion is cold that the flame is dead in the heart good friends that have loved of old once more in the sunset gold meet with a clasp of the hand nod and dream and depart ah love tis a sorrowful land I that have walked in a cloud you that have wept in the sun wrinkled and wearied and bowed cover the wound be proud laugh be at hell the while that the world air the hell be done may watch with a kindly smile end of old lovers old timers by Carl Sandberg coffee break collection 20 old age this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Dimash in Reno, Nevada all timers I am an ancient reluctant on the soup wagons of Xerxes I was a cleaner of pans on the march of Miltiades fellings they had a half and head I had a bristling gleaming spearhead red-headed Caesar picked me for a Timster he said go to work you tusken dusted wrong calls for a man who can drive horses the units of conquest led by Charles XII the whirling whimsical and apollyonic columns they saw me one of the horses I trained the feet of a white horse born apart swept the night stars wet Lincoln said get into the game your nation takes you and I drove a wagon and Tim and I had my arm shot off at Spotsylvania courthouse I am an ancient reluctant conscript and of old timers On set of Old Age by Sir Humphrey Rolliston Coffee Break Collection 20 Old Age this is a LibriVox recording a LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Betty B On set of Old Age the onset of Old Age varies in different countries and like the development of puberty is accelerated by the high temperature of tropical countries there is also considerable variation in families and individuals of the same race and country thus while one man may be denial at 60 years of age another is vigorous both in mind and body at 80 the inconstancy of onset depends on the various factors that may play a causal part Old Age may be a physiological involution but too often is a pathological product when the period of reproductive power, maturity wanes that of Old Age begins in women this is marked by the menopause the age of 45 years being taken as the limit of fertility but before this even in the late 30s the specter of fading attractiveness may upset the matron and lead to the irregularities of the dangerous age for man there is no such index and the change is so insidious that most of us would expostulate at Stanley Hall statement that Old Age in men begins in the early 40s and sooner in women or less than halfway through the physiological lifetime of 100 years according to Dante 45 marks the termination of youth and it seems generally agreed that as a rule and everyone is entitled to consider himself as the exception the gay bloom of 50 passes quickly away and people get fat and infirm and all that it has from analogy of the female sex than rather principally suggested that in man there occurs about the age of 50 a critical period climacterium virile due to changes in the sex glands Mendel or prostate Rankin but of this there is no proof it recalls as a kind of echo the ancient conceptions of the grand climacterics at 49 a multiple of the number 7 63 7 times the magical number 9 of the Arabians in 81 in the description in 1807 by professor B. Waterhouse of Cambridge, Massachusetts who in 1800 introduced generic vaccination into America of a kind of male molting between 43 and 50 and a worse one at 63 an idea expanded into the climatic disease imagined in 1813 by Sir Henry Holland there is indeed no doubt that after an illness and the so called climatic disease admittedly seldom occurred without some previous factor such as an attack of gout, a common cold about of intemperance recent marriage or particularly grief or bereavement old age may come on a pace in some instances the so called climatic disease was perhaps really chronic renal disease in others merely the prolonged or imperfect convalescence due to some lingering infection after an acute illness such as influenza and as in the latter case recovery may occur Holland's contention that recovery was an argument in favor of the existence of this climatic disease holds good only in distinguishing it from permanent senility which indeed was the objection that he was concerned to meet the conception of the climatic disease is interesting historically only and it may be agreed that apart from accidents of environment the progress of senescence in healthy men is gradual and uneventful so stealthy is the onset of senescence that commonly it is not recognized by its victim and though he may seldom mention it every man is firmly convinced that he not only looks but is at least 10 years less than the register would tell him though unconscious of the change in himself he notes it with perhaps some self congratulation in his contemporaries it is only if he tests himself for example by timing himself for a miles walk that a healthy man of say 70 years has it born in on him that he is not what he was the information that he is old may be suddenly conveyed by overhearing the chance remarks of others by catching a reflection of his bent back in a mirror by tardy recovery from illness or the advent of some disability such as hypertrophy of the prostate or dyspnea on holiday exertion perhaps the commonest warning is a feeling of fatigue Sir Andrew Clark regarded the onset of old age as the period when a man needs to adjust himself to his environment some persons never are able to do this and misfits are not necessarily old Laurentius divided old age beginning at 50 into the three stages of the green because it is accompanied with prudence full of experience and fit to wear in common wheels the second at 70 years is very cold and dry and the last without a specified age is that of decrepitude corresponding to the famous description in the 12th chapter of Ecclesiastes a more modern and comforting division is that of La Cassonne of presonality old age beginning at 60 or sometimes 70 in men and in women 10 to 15 years earlier advanced old age and lastly decrepitude Nashor speaks of a senile climatic about the latter part of the seventh or eighth decade the transitional period between old age and decrepitude corresponding to the changes at puberty and at the menopause precocious old age due to the effects of disease especially syphilis and acute infections and to metabolic defects which permanently damage the cells of the body as a special interest as it supports Metshnikov pathological view that old age as ordinarily seen is a result of toxic injury V to page 82 Hastings-Gilford has specially investigated premature senility and under the title progeria has described a remarkable condition of premature senility combined with or secondary to infantilism this condition was independently described in 1910 by Leo and Pirino as the senile type of nanism in such cases it would appear reasonable to ascribe these two opposite conditions to the same toxic or other factor the infantilism depending more on damage to the ductless glands before development was complete and the senile changes to direct injury of the cells in the body in general end of onset of old age The Raft Builders by Lord Dunsaney Coffee Break Collection 20 Old Age this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org this recording by Michelle Fry Baton Rouge Louisiana in June 2019 The Raft Builders All we who write put me in mind of sailors hastily making Rafts upon doomed ships when we break up under the heavy years and to go down into eternity with all that is ours our thoughts like small lost Rafts float on awhile upon oblivion sea they will not carry much over those tides our names and a phrase are too and little else they that write as a trade to please the whim of the day they are like sailors that work at the Rafts only to warm their hands and to distract their thoughts from their certain doom their Rafts go all to pieces before the ship breaks up see now oblivion shimmering all around us it's very tranquility deadlier than tempest how little all our keels time in its deeps swims like a monstrous whale and like a whale feeds on the littlest things small tunes and little unskilled songs of the old and golden evenings and then on turneth whale like to overthrow whole ships see now the wreckage of Babylon floating idly and something there that once was Nineveh already their kings and queens are in the deeps among the weedy masses of old centuries that hide the sodden bulk of sunken tire and make a darkness round Persepolis for the rest I dimly see the forms of foundered ships upon the seafloor strewn with crowns our ships were all unseaworthy from the first there goes the Raft made for Helen and of the Raft builders by Lord Donsani Stimulants Narcotics and Old Age by George Miller Beard 1839-1883 Coffee Break Collection 20 Old Age This is a LibriVox recording or LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Stimulants Narcotics and Old Age published in 1883 Their effects vary with the age they all bear them better than the young Those who carefully study their own constitutions find that varieties and preparations of food which at one time of life are beneficial at others prove injurious and all the world knows that the diet of infants and children must be radically different from that of adults and that adults in turn must modify their habits of eating in extreme old age Negative food stimulants and narcotics is much more variable in its effects at different periods of life than positive food and hence there is need of greater caution in using it Infants and children do not need stimulants and narcotics and should not ordinarily be allowed even the weaker varieties The young of both sexes whose growth is not completed are more liable to be harmed than benefited by a free indulgence of these substances for these three important reasons First, while the system is growing it needs abundance of positive nutriment to supply the rapid changes of tissue rather than negative which lessens the appetite for other food Secondly, their brains are much less actively employed than those of mature age and therefore have less need of the sustaining influence of stimulants and narcotics and thirdly, there is great danger that they may acquire habits of over indulgence and become slaves to appetite since at this time of life they have neither the full development of moral character nor yet the manifold restraining diverting and counteracting influences and duties that enable adults to use them in a wise and decorous moderation The tendency with many parents in this country certainly is to allow their young children to form habits of using tea and coffee much too early and the tendency with young men in every walk of life is to acquire the habit of smoking chewing and drinking strong liquors at a time when they have little need of these substances and when they have not the moral force to resist their seductive and bewitching influences I have long thought and frequently stated that if our young people would avoid the formation of habits of free indulgence and stimulants and narcotics until the growth is completed a period which variously ranges between the age of 20 and 30 in temperance and most of the physical disease that results from these substances would in the course of the next generation be well-nigh unknown for habitual intemperance like most other crimes is usually the result of habits formed in youth especially beneficial in old age on the other hand some of these articles of which we have been speaking which in youth are of such doubtful advantage in the decline of life are as beneficial as they are grateful by gently stimulating the jaded digestion by giving tone to the exhausted brain by equalizing the language and unbalanced circulation and by economizing the tissues they beneficially and efficiently sustain the system when the desire for positive nutriment has long been blunted and the forces of assimilation have well nigh lost their mysterious power thus they serve a most beneficial purpose to sweeten and prolong the evening twilight of existence to make less perceptible the slow darkening of the lights in the windows more gently and easy the sure descent into the depths of the dark unknown surprises often expressed by individuals that as they advance in age they can use with benefit or at least without injury substances which in their previous history they could not bear our bodies change continually without regard to age they are changed by the weather by our occupation and duties by our joys and woes by our diet and sleep or the want of it by the very conditions of disease by all that makes up our life they are changed even when we are the least subject to external influences the elaborate chemistry of the body never rests I am not the same individual today that I was yesterday tomorrow I shall be different from what I am today a month hence I shall be a new being thus in the course of life I personate numberless different and even opposite physical characters a stimulant or narcotic therefore which I take today affects me very differently from what it did last year because I am not the same person professor Huxley tells the story he was quite young he never could bear to smoke and all attempts to do so left him on the floor of the room where he made the attempt recently in middle life he has tried it and finds in it enjoyment without apparent harm there is a story of a Greek philosopher who vowed that he never would call in a doctor but when he was sick he sent for one and when he was reproached he replied but I am not the same person that I was today I cannot take coffee without immediate and perceptible injury ten years hence I may indulge in it freely without harm time was perchance when tea kept me awake the whole night long but now it seems rather to dispose me to slumber you wonder that the cigar in which you formerly indulged suffered now excites a myriad unpleasant and harassing symptoms that the glass of cider which once caused you intense headache now serves as a tonic and appetizer to the rule that infants and children should abstain from stimulants and narcotics there would appear to be some exceptions of race and climate and condition for in some countries babies use wine and beer and little children of both sexes smoke cigars and the query is not raised whether they are or are not injured by so doing end of stimulants and narcotics in old age