_Question_. How 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 worth while 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 tumble-down 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, moulds 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 business men 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.
_Question_. Are not the restraints to free religious thought being
worn away, as the world grows older, and will not the recent attacks
of the religious press and pulpit upon the unorthodoxy of Dr.
Briggs, Rev. R. Heber Newton and the prospective Episcopal bishop
of Massachusetts, Dr. Phillips Brooks, and others, have a tendency
still further to extend this freedom?
_Answer_. Of course the world is growing somewhat wiser--getting
more sense day by day. It is amazing to me that any human being
or beings ever wrote the Presbyterian creed. Nothing can be more
absurd--more barbaric than that creed. It makes man the sport of
an infinite monster, and yet good people, men and women of ability,
who have gained eminence in almost every department of human effort,
stand by this creed as if it were filled with wisdom and goodness.
They really think that a good God damns his poor ignorant children
just for his own glory, and that he sends people to perdition, not
for any evil in them, but to the praise of his glorious justice.
Dr. Briggs has been wicked enough to doubt this phase of God's
goodness, and Dr. Bridgman was heartless enough to drop a tear in
hell. Of course they have no idea of what justice really is.
The Presbyterian General Assembly that has just adjourned stood by
Calvinism. The "Five Points" are as sharp as ever. The members
of that assembly--most of them--find all their happiness in the
"creed." They need no other amusement. If they feel blue they
read about total depravity--and cheer up. In moments of great
sorrow they think of the tale of non-elect infants, and their hearts
overflow with a kind of joy.
They cannot imagine why people wish to attend the theatre when they
can read the "Confession of Faith," or why they should feel like
dancing after they do read it.
It is very sad to think of the young men and women who have been
eternally ruined by witnessing the plays of Shakespeare, and it is
also sad to think of the young people, foolish enough to be happy,
keeping time to the pulse of music, waltzing to hell in loving
pairs--all for the glory of God, and to the praise of his glorious
justice. I think, too, of the thousands of men and women who, while
listening to the music of Wagner, have absolutely forgotten the
Presbyterian creed, and who for a little while have been as happy
as if the creed had never been written. Tear down the theatres,
burn the opera houses, break all musical instruments, and then let
us go to church.
I am not at all surprised that the General Assembly took up this
progressive euchre matter. The word "progressive" is always
obnoxious to the ministers. Euchre under another name might go.
Of course, progressive euchre is a kind of gambling. I knew a
young man, or rather heard of him, who won at progressive euchre
a silver spoon. At first this looks like nothing, almost innocent,
and yet that spoon, gotten for nothing, sowed the seed of gambling
in that young man's brain. He became infatuated with euchre, then
with cards in general, then with draw-poker in particular,--then
into Wall Street. He is now a total wreck, and has the impudence
to say that is was all "pre-ordained." Think of the thousands and
millions that are being demoralized by games of chance, by marbles
--when they play for keeps--by billiards and croquet, by fox and
geese, authors, halma, tiddledywinks and pigs in clover. In all
these miserable games, is the infamous element of chance--the raw
material of gambling. Probably none of these games could be played
exclusively for the glory of God. I agree with the Presbyterian
General Assembly, if the creed is true, why should anyone try to
amuse himself? If there is a hell, and all of us are going there,
there should never be another smile on the human face. We should
spend our days in sighs, our nights in tears. The world should go
insane. We find strange combinations--good men with bad creeds,
and bad men with good ones--and so the great world stumbles along.
--_The Blade_, Toledo, Ohio, June 4, 1891.