THE HAPPY OLD MAN.
The wisest and best productions of the human intellect, says Dr. Moore,[[67]] have proceeded from those who have lived through the bustling morning and meridian periods of their day, and calmly sat down to think and instruct others in the meditative evening of life. Even when the brilliancy of reason’s sunset yields to the advancing gloom, there is an indescribable beauty haunting the old man still, if in youth and vigour his soul was conversant with truth; and even when the chill of night is upon him, his eye seems to rest upon the glories for awhile departed; or he looks off into the stars, and reads in them his destiny with a gladness as quiet and as holy as their light.
How instructive is the usual state of memory and hope in advanced life! As the senses become dull, the nervous system slow, and the whole body unfit for active uses, the old man necessarily falls into constant abstraction. Like all debilitated persons, he feels his unfitness for action, and, of course, becomes querulous if improperly excited. Peacefulness, gentle exercise among flowers and trees, unstimulating diet, and the quiet company of books and philosophic toys, are suitable for him. With such helps his heart will beat kindly, and his intellect, however childlike, will maintain a beautiful power to the last. Objects of affection occasionally move him with more than their accustomed force. Young children are especially agreeable to him. When approaching him with the gentle love and reverence which unspoiled childhood is so apt to exhibit, his heart seems suddenly to kindle as the little fingers wander over his shrivelled hand and wrinkled brow. He smiles, and at once goes back in spirit to his childhood, and finds a world of fun, frolic, and liveliness before him; and he has tales of joy and beauty, which children and age and holy beings can best appreciate. Next to the children of his children, the old man, whose thoughts have been directed by the Bible, loves the society of persons of holy habits; and as he finds these more frequently among females, such are generally his associates. But all aged and infirm persons he deems fit company, because they, like himself, are busied in reviewing past impressions, rather than planning or plotting for a livelihood, or reasoning about ways and means. The past is his own, and he cons it over like a puzzling but at least an interesting lesson. If his soul have been trained to delight in truth, his will becomes weaned from this world of effort in proportion as he feels the weakness that disqualifies him from struggling on in it. Yet in our ashes live their wonted fires: he feels an internal, a spiritual energy, awakening in a new manner the sympathies that belong to his being, and he feels as if his affections had been laid by to ripen into an intensity out of keeping with the usages and objects about him. He realises most fully the facts of a coming life, and even now lives apart from the present; and if his habits of reflection be not distracted, and his heart broken by hard and ignorant treatment, and if his soul have not been wedded to care by a love of gold without the possibility of divorce, and mammon have not branded his spirit with indelible misery, then is the old man ready to enter on a purely spiritual existence with alacrity and joy.
[67]. The Use of the Body to the Mind.