You are old, Father William, the young man cried,
The few locks which are left you are grey;
You are hale, Father William, a hearty old man,
Now tell me the reason, I pray.
In the days of my youth, Father William replied,
I remember’d that youth would fly fast,
And abused not my health and my vigour at first,
That I never might need them at last.
You are old, Father William, the young man cried,
And pleasures with youth pass away,
And yet you lament not the days that are gone,
Now tell me the reason, I pray.
In the days of my youth, Father William replied,
I remember’d that youth could not last;
I thought of the future, whatever I did,
That I never might grieve for the past.
You are old, Father William, the young man cried,
And life must be hastening away;
You are cheerful, and love to converse upon death,
Now tell me the reason, I pray.
I am cheerful, young man, Father William replied,
Let the cause thy attention engage;
In the days of my youth I remember’d my God!
And He hath not forgotten my age.
⁂ The above Stanzas are ascribed to Mr. Southey.
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_Encouragement to Persons of mature Age to cultivate the
Mind._--Instances have frequently occurred of individuals, in whom the
power of imagination has at an advanced period of life been found
susceptible of culture to a wonderful degree. In such men what an
accession is gained to their most refined pleasures! What enchantments
are added to their most ordinary perceptions! The mind awakening, as if
from a trance to a new existence, becomes habituated to the most
interesting aspects of life and of nature; the intellectual eye is
“purged of its film;” and things, the most familiar and unnoticed,
disclose charms invisible before. The same objects and events, which
were lately beheld with indifference, occupy now all the powers and
capacities of the soul; the contrast between the present and the past
serving only to enhance and to endear so unlooked-for an acquisition.
What Gray has so finely said of _the pleasures of vicissitude_, conveys
but a faint image of what is experienced by the man who, after having
lost in vulgar occupations and vulgar amusements his earliest and most
precious years, is thus introduced at last to a new heaven and a new
earth:
“The meanest floweret of the vale,
The simplest note that swells the gale,
The common sun, the air, the skies,
To him are op’ning Paradise.”
_Dugald Stewart’s Essay on the Cultivation of
Intellectual Habits._
---------------------
_Cure of Drunkenness._--A man in Maryland, notoriously addicted to this
vice, hearing an uproar in his kitchen one evening, had the curiosity to
step without noise to the door, to know what was the matter, when he
beheld his servants indulging in the most unbounded roar of laughter at
a couple of his negro boys, who were mimicking himself in his drunken
fits; showing how he reeled and staggered,--how he looked and nodded,
and hiccupped and tumbled. The picture which these children of nature
drew of him, and which had filled the rest with so much merriment,
struck him so forcibly, that he became a perfectly sober man, to the
unspeakable joy of his wife and children.--_Anatomy of Drunkenness._
---------------------
_Lesson to Rulers._--The Chinese Emperor Tchou set out on a journey to
visit the vast provinces of his empire, accompanied by his eldest son.
One day he stopped his car in the midst of some fields where the people
were hard at work. “I took you with me,” said he to his son, “that you
might be an eye-witness of the painful toils of the poor husbandmen, and
that the feeling their laborious station should excite in your heart
might prevent your burdening them with taxes!”
---------------------
_How to prolong Life._--For many years there prevailed in China an
extraordinary superstition and belief that the secret sect of Tao had
discovered an elixir which bestowed immortality. No less than three
Emperors died after swallowing a drink presented to them by the eunuchs
of the palace, as the draught that was to confer never-ending life. “The
best method of prolonging life, and of making life happy,” said a wise
Mandarin to one of these infatuated princes, “is to control your
appetites, subdue your passions, and practise virtue! Most of your
predecessors, O Emperor! would have lived to a good old age had they
followed the advice which I give you!”
---------------------
A wise man’s kingdom is his own breast; or, if he ever looks farther, it
will only be to the judgment of a select few, who are free from
prejudices, and capable of giving him solid and substantial advice.
---------------------
Time tries the characters of men, as the furnace assays the quality of
metals, by disengaging the impurities, dissipating the superficial
glitter, and leaving the sterling gold bright and pure.
---------------------
It was said, with truth, by Charles the Twelfth, of Sweden, that he who
was ignorant of the arithmetical art was but _half a man_. With how much
greater force may a similar expression be applied to _him_ who carries
to his grave the neglected and unprofitable seeds of faculties, which it
depended on himself to have reared to maturity, and of which the fruits
bring accessions to human happiness--more precious than all the
gratifications which power or wealth can command.--_Dugald Stewart._
---------------------
_A Ship of War._--It is a mighty and comprehensive problem to
contemplate all the essential elements connected with the construction
of so massy and stupendous a fabric as a ship destined for the terrible
purposes of war, which, in the magnificent voyages it undertakes, has to
cross wide and immeasurable seas, agitated at times by the unbridled
fury of the winds, subjecting it to strains of the most formidable
kind;--which shall possess mechanical strength to resist these, and at
the same time be adapted for stowage and velocity,--which is expected in
all cases to overtake the enemy, and yet must contain within itself the
_materiel_ of a six months’ cruise. These and many other complicated
inquiries which the naval architect has to contemplate, must all be
involved in the general conditions of his problem, the elements of which
he must estimate while he is rearing his mighty fabric in the dock, and
be prepared to anticipate their effects before he launches his vessel on
the turbulent bosom of the deep.--_Review of Hervey’s Article,
Ship-building, Edinburgh Encyclopædia._
---------------------
_Average Duration of Life._--Nothing is more proverbially uncertain than
the duration of human life, where the maxim is applied to an individual;
yet there are few things less subject to fluctuation than the average
duration of a multitude of individuals. The number of deaths happening
amongst persons of our own acquaintance is frequently very different in
different years; and it is not an uncommon event that this number shall
be double, treble, or even many times larger in one year than in the
next succeeding. If we consider larger societies of individuals, as the
inhabitants of a village or small town, the number of deaths is more
uniform; and in still larger bodies, as among the inhabitants of a
kingdom, the uniformity is such, that the excess of deaths in any year
above the average number, seldom exceeds a small fractional part of the
whole. In the two periods, each of fifteen years, beginning at 1780, the
number of deaths occurring in England and Wales in any year did not fall
short of, or exceed, the average number one-thirteenth part of the
whole; nor did the number dying in any year differ from the number of
those dying in the next by a tenth part.--_Babbage on the Assurance of
Lives._
---------------------
How many minds--almost all the great ones--were formed in secrecy and
solitude, without knowing whether they should ever make a figure or not!
All they knew was, that they liked what they were about, and gave their
whole souls to it.
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