has at one time or another rested on the sustaining power of the father. The patriarch, in ancient times, protected and sustained his dependents, and, in return, received their entire allegiance, wielding over them the power of life and death, and thus initiating the first form of human government. Next came the cities where the government was formed by all the fathers together in council, and our village and city legislators are, to this day, called "the city fathers," although the reverence in which so august a body was once held has departed with the silent flight of the dignity of our modern convocations. Some one has said of
A FINE AND HONORABLE OLD MAN,
that he is in the childhood of immortality. "One's age should be tranquil," says Dr. Arnold, "as one's childhood should be playful; hard work at either extremity of human existence, seems to me out of place; the morning and the evening should be alike cool and peaceful; at midday the sun may burn, and men may labor under it." See to it, if it be within your power, that your father has the rest due to the evening of his days. Let him sit in the cool. Let him listen to the voices of his night—the crickets that cry out his mortality and the nightingales that sing of Paradise!
"GRAY HAIRS
seem to fancy," says Richter, "like the light of a soft moon silvering over the evening of life." "Old age," says Madame Swetchine, "is not one of the beauties of creation, but it is one of its harmonies. The law of contrasts is one of the laws of beauty. Shadows give light its worth; sternness enchances mildness; solemnity splendor."
EXPERIENCE.
"Old age was naturally more honored," says Joubert, "in times when people could not know much more than what they had seen." There are still many avenues of learning in which practical experience seems to be paramount in value. In business its great worth is never underestimated. You have heard of the partnership built on a contribution by one firm-member of the money, and by the other of the experience; and of the dissolution of that firm, leaving the one who put in the money with all the experience, and the one who put in the experience with all the money! The practices of law and medicine are famous for the need of age, which they harness anew with the labors and exertions ordinarily demanded of youth. "Tell me," says Shakerly Marmion, "what you find better or more honorable than age. Is not wisdom entailed upon it?
TAKE THE PRE-EMINENCE OF IT IN EVERYTHING—
in an old friend, in old wine, in an old pedigree." "I venerate old age," says the great and good poet Longfellow; "and I love not the man who can look without emotion upon the sunset of life, when the dusk of evening begins to gather over the watery eye, and the shadows of twilight grow broader and deeper upon the understanding." "It is only necessary to grow old to become more indulgent," writes Goethe; "I see no fault committed that I have not committed myself." "An aged Christian," says Chapin, beautifully enlarging on Goldsmith's and Dr. Donne's ideas, "with the snow of time on his head, may remind us that those points of earth are whitest which are nearest heaven."
