Age is content with comfort. “Content,” did I say? Nay, old folks are always wanting more and more comfort, until they seem out of harmony with surrounding objects and circumstances. I think it is Ruskin who says that there are “much sadder days than the early ones; not sadder in a noble, deep way, but in a dim, wearied way—the way of ennui and jaded intellect. The Romans had their life interwoven with white and purple; the life of the aged is one seamless stuff of brown.” And this is true, so far as beauty of existence is expressed by variety.
Perhaps there are few periods of keener suffering to any one than when he first realizes that he is growing old. This experience is none the less sharp for being universal; but it comes with peculiar poignancy to a woman, because of the fictitious estimate that has always been placed upon her good looks. They are her highest stock in the market, not through her own valuation but by man’s. If she has never had beauty, still less can she afford to lose any charm which youth alone confers. This pain of loss with the majority of women is not an expression of mere vanity, but—as with a man—it arises from a fear of waning power, the dread of inability any longer to be a factor in the world’s value; from the horror of having no longer an aptness to attract, of being no more desired, of filling no true place in life—any or all of which is enough to make a soul cry out for death.
That there is something wrong with our social structure is not more surely indicated than by the present demand in all fields of labor for only the young man or woman. The span of life is perceptibly lengthening for most civilized peoples; yet, with increase of days, old age is set forward instead of being proportionally postponed. Thirty years ago it was considered that a man must make his success by fifty years of age, if he made it at all; now it is said that unless a man has made his mark at thirty he is already written down “a back number.” No profession to-day, perhaps, chronicles so many tragedies as that of the teacher; for school and college give the preference to the young applicant who has yet to prove if he have the making of a teacher in him, while rejected experience dies of a broken heart. Not long since, it was stated in The Outlook, in reference to the ministry, that a man over forty years old was not wanted to fill important charges. Last year I heard a conversation between a young missionary from China and a woman of superior attainments, a wide knowledge of life, high spiritual culture, and who was not yet old; who, moreover, was one of the sort who never grow old. They talked of the advisability of older women entering the foreign mission field. The missionary advised that the other make application to the Board, but frankly stated that the missionaries abroad did not wish anybody of her age because she would have established opinions which might conflict with the younger members’ control of the mission. The church no doubt can well account for its preference for young people; but it has seemed to me rather hard on the heathen that they must be the subjects of untested enthusiasm, however “consecrated” and zealous it may be.
The tendency to fasten old age prematurely on our people by the rejection of practical knowledge for the brawn of youth, seems to find an explanation mainly in the all-prevailing commercialism of the day. The herding of productive industries in syndicates and trusts has destroyed the individual in the industrial world: it is not the man who is employed, but “the hand”—so many hands in the office, so many at the machine; and these are “put on or knocked off” according to the sum totals of the ledger. Manhood is the football of the dividend, and grows less and less as the latter grows more and more. Everywhere it is the same; the young with few ties and responsibilities are most plastic to the interests of the business; pawns have widest range of movement, and whoever can cover the most ground for the least money is the person in demand.
“Trade! is thy heart all dead, all dead?
And hast thou nothing but a head?——
O Trade! O Trade! would thou wert dead!
The time needs heart—’tis tired of head.”
It is more than shocking to think of the effects on the English-speaking people—ever inclined to sadness—of saddening them still more by pushing into the background those who have passed the first flush of youthful vigor. It is even worse to reflect upon the over-confidence, the over-consciousness and the irreverence of youth increased by a preference which does not point to intrinsic value. Whoever has lost his reverence is already degenerate; that soul which has lost hope and courage is dead to achievement, and is unproductive for himself and his country. Let us give to youth all its due for its keen curiosity, its vivid expectation, its unreflecting daring, its joy of pure existence, its all-the-world-is-mine spirit, and let us give it opportunity and ever growing privilege; but, as we value reverence, as we honor knowledge, as we cherish a well-tried faith, as we trust a noble courage born of proof, let our customs teach that “Youth ended—what survives is gold.”
While so much that is beautiful and attractive inheres in youth, it is maturity that possesses perfect charm. Women should remember this and begin early to cultivate faith in their power to grow. They should endeavor to learn to live along a line of steady development; to keep themselves in the forefront of thought and endeavor; to repudiate old age as more a matter of want of will than of necessity—and so abjure a statement I have recently heard from a young physician—that the only disease for which there is no remedy is old age. There is a remedy in living en rapport with the subtle forces of growth. Learn the laws of life and dwell in them; persevere in helping one’s self instead of being helped, and it will astonish the world how long one may live with “natural force unabated”—yes, and with beauty and power. It is unnatural to grow old and die; though everybody seems to do it, the bitter protest against it is a proof that it is against nature. There must be a better way out than by failure and decay. Live as an immortal here and now, and in fulness of time the fetters of the flesh will simply drop off, like the shell of a locust, and life will go on—from glory to glory.
I have grown old myself, but I could have kept younger if my attention had early enough been turned that way. All that I can do now is to tell other women to be wiser than I have been—and I wish to tell them, for:
“The best things any mortal hath
Are those which every mortal shares.”
Perhaps all women do not know that the menopause of life is not a signal for old age. Released from her child-bearing functions, a new lease of life is taken out; intellectual power is greatly increased; women should then, in the ripeness of experience, the mellowness of judgment and the opportunity for comparison which the years have conferred, do their best brain-work; besides, there is usually an added beauty of person, a renewal of vigor of every kind. At the same time—just as then the look of some ancestor we have not before been thought to resemble begins to crop out in our faces—is there a tendency toward the return of natural defects of character; faults of youth long deemed dead rise up and defy us. As never before should women be aware that now their charms must be those of an inner grace, a spiritual beauty; as they have received during all the long past, so now must they give out fully, freely—keeping back not one jot or tittle of life’s riches for self; so will they get very close to the other world before they get in it.