“What’s the matter? Are you going to resign?” “Resign? Certainly not. But, remember, I am sixty-six years old.” The only answer to that was a laugh, which I provided spontaneously.
Now if the distinguished president of Harvard had known then that twenty-five years after this interview, he would be in the full possession of his physical and mental faculties, even though he had ceased to possess the Harvard one, he would have wasted not a single moment on the thought of his approaching death. And if gold rusts, what shall iron do?
In the eighteenth century, the poet Young was an intimate friend of the novelist Richardson and their correspondence has a certain mortuary interest. For Young’s letters are as gloomy as his verses; they are largely taken up with predicting his own speedy death, which, however, Richardson awaited in vain, as the aged poet survived him. In his own last moments Richardson may have felt something akin to resentment at having wasted his sympathy on one who would attend his funeral.
We look backward too much and we look forward too much. Thus we miss the passing moment. In our regrets and apprehensions, we miss the only eternity of which man can be absolutely sure, the eternal Present. For it is always NOW.
As Browning’s clever Bishop Blougram remarked:
Do you know, I have often had a dream
(Work it up in your next month’s article)
Of man’s poor spirit in its progress, still
Losing true life forever and a day
Through ever trying to be and ever being—