She has the secret of “how to grow old gracefully,” and there is no better nor surer way to avoid wrinkles than to keep out of one’s life and heart the demon of worry. If you choose, you may call this power an oil that makes the machinery of life run smoothly and noiselessly. I call it living on a plane where the mire of petty smallness, the hurt of wrong living and the danger of wrong thinking cannot reach us.
But, after all, why should we dread growing old? It seems to me that life should be brightest, like the sunset, just before the night—if it is night. I prefer to think of it as the real morning. When we have learned to drop worry and undue haste, and fretfulness and all disagreeableness, we are only just fitted to enjoy the serenity of age. Let’s stop right here with Hamilton Aide’s comforting verses on “Old Age.”
“There comes a time when nothing more can hurt us.
The winds have done their worst to strew the shore
With stranded hulks; no power can convert us
Into the buoyant barks of youth once more.
“But we can sit and patch the sails for others,
And weave the nets for younger hands to trawl;
And spin long yarns to listening boys and mothers,
While sea and winds do one another call;