The Opinions of a Philosopher

by Robert Grant

"Because so many people would feel obliged to give us silver," she replied. "I am perfectly willing, Fred, that people, should send me flowers when I'm dead, but I will not have them send silver to my silver wedding."

"The simplest way then would be to tell them not to. Put in the corner of the invitation the letters A. S. W. B. S. B. 'All silver will be sent back.'"

"This is a serious subject, Fred. I should like very much to have our best friends with us on the anniversary, if I could feel sure that they wouldn't regard it as a tax. We all give willingly when people are married, but it does seem rather a grind, as the children used to say, to have to go out and buy something else a quarter of a century later, when you know that the senile old couple will be able to use whatever you get only a few years at the farthest, and that then it will be snapped up or melted up by their children or grandchildren. Mind you, dear, I should often be glad to give silver myself, if I could afford it; but I am looking at the matter from the point of view of the world at large. Do you know," she added, "that isn't at all a bad idea of yours. We could put on the cards 'No silver,' just as they put 'No flowers.' It was quite a brilliant suggestion, Fred."

"There are always fools, though, who will disregard such a notice just from sheer contrariness."

"Oh, if we once gave them warning, and they chose to send notwithstanding, it would be their own fault," exclaimed Josephine, buoyantly. "I should hope there would be a few such people, for I should be very glad to have more silver. It's not that I object to the silver, but because I wish to give a loophole of escape to the people who wouldn't send it unless they felt obliged to. I should expect surely to receive quite a lot in one way or another. And it would be convenient, love, for Winona did not get any too much when she was married. Everything ran to furniture and books, and out of the little silver she received their were seven large salad forks, all of which had her initials on them, so that she couldn't change them."

There are people who refrain from having their wills drawn on the score that they would be likely to die if they did. While I have no sympathy with this superstition, I must confess that a formal celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of your wedding-day has always seemed to me to savor of willingness to have your account with life audited, with a view to being able to sink quietly and becomingly into your grave whenever you were called. In view of the fact that, though each of us has trifling ailments, neither of us is seriously disabled, it seemed a little soon to be taking account of stock and talking of putting up the shutters forever. Yet time's figures are not to be gainsaid, and especially in the Land of Liberty people are not allowed to forget that they are growing old even if they have no tall sons and daughters to attest the fact. What boots it to protest that we feel as young as we ever did? We might be allowed to say so unchallenged, provided we did not try to act on the assumption, but the youths without parents and the newly created species would soon bring us to our senses if we were to assert ourselves in society so as to cause them the slightest inconvenience. The middle-aged are allowed to drive and go to the theatre, and are tolerated at weddings on the ground that they may have given a wedding present, and at garden parties where there is no lack of space, but their room is considered better than their company everywhere else, in spite of the pretty speeches one sometimes hears as to the charm of entertainments where all ages are gathered together, and the glory of growing old gracefully as they do in England. I am not complaining, for between you and me we wouldn't be hired to go to one-tenth of the places to which we ought to be invited, so far as our physical state is concerned; but it would be soothing to be asked occasionally and not to be treated as though we were moribund, and bidden only to Class Day spreads and to church weddings without a card for the reception. Once in a while lately Josephine and I have taken it into our heads to put in an appearance at the Assemblies, where, though we had been respectfully and cordially received, it has been evident to us that we were regarded as social Rip Van Winkles, and that at least half the company were inquiring who in thunder we were, and the remainder, who did know us, were wondering why in time we came.

A remark of Josephine's served to crystallize these reflections. "Do you know, Fred, that I think on the whole we shall have a happier day if we pass it quietly together, and simply have the children to dine. So many of the people of whom we were fond at the time we were married have passed away, that I am sure we should be appalled by the thinness of the ranks when we began to reckon who are left. Besides, I don't think that a notice not to bring silver would really protect the poor wretches who didn't wish to bring any. It would seem too evidently to mean that they needn't bring any unless they chose to, but that it would be acceptable all the same, which would worry dreadfully those who like to do whatever others do. Don't you think so? You see everybody understands that nobody really objects to receiving silver. Besides, it would involve no end of fuss, and we should be so occupied with the arrangements that we should forget to pay any attention to each other, so that it would be a dreary day to look back upon."

"Indeed, Josephine, I agree with you entirely," said I. "Unless such affairs go off just right they are stiff and ghastly. People who are bent on paying us a compliment will have an opportunity to come to our funerals before very long."

"Not together, though. Oh, Fred, wouldn't it be the crowning thing of all, after so much happiness, if we could die at the same time and never know what it was to miss each other!"

Although we are jointly and severally aware that the years have been slipping away, and that our turns to bid farewell to this dear earth may come any day now despite the fact that we feel young as ever, we choose still to regard death as a shy visitor which is likely to prefer others to us. I say to myself that people rarely die of rheumatism, which is Josephine's only cross, and though pneumonia is a fell destroyer, I know that Josephine is firmly convinced that the colds to which I am subject never attack my lungs. Some day one of us will wake up and miss the other, unless my darling's prayer that we be taken away together be granted; but until we do, are we not happier for cherishing the delusion that we are to be overlooked indefinitely?