OCR Text |
Show GROWING OLD GRACEFULLY. Xow and then we meet a man or woman who has passed the scriptural allotment of years and yet goes on living, taking enjoyment and shedding the light of example upon younger generations. W hy one should attain great age and feel young while another should feci old yet be still under fifty can be explained only upon the hypothesis that the laws of health have been better understood by the one and his forbears, or have been more sedulously observed by one than the other. Old age is as natural as youth, and one who has grown old and retained that indefinable feeling which we call well certainly cim look back over the vista of years with few days darkened by sickness or sins of reckless disregard of the laws of health which everybody knows or ought to know. That old age in many cases is accompanied by many infirmities which are hard to bear is indis putable. But ailments are not peculiar to age. The babe in arms, the youth, the middle-aged, all classes and conditions of men, arc likewise at times subject to ills which arc a tax on the vitality and which, though seemingly thrown off completely, must affect the hardiest constitution. People who are never sick, who suffered none of the ills of childhood and youth, who learned early in life to guard against excesses and to live as God has ordained, have every chance in the world to attain a ripe old age and remain healthy until the machinery of the body is worn out. These people grow old gracefully. The years bring their gray hairs and furrowed brow, but the days bring happiness, for. health is their portion. por-tion. The Russell Sage Institute of Pathology, founded found-ed in New York by the financier whoso name it bears, it is reported, is to inaugurate an investigation investiga-tion into the ills of old age with the purpose of mitigating the suffering that sometimes goes with it. Laboratories will be maintained, and research will be on a purely scientific basis. While the' philanthropic phi-lanthropic spirit of the .founder will be generally commended, it seems that the study of the prevention pre-vention of senile disabilities must go back, back to the days when the victim was young perhaps - to generations passed away whose sins have long since been forgotten. Health is as natural for the aged as for the young, and if infirmities come with age that arc bevond the natural decline of powers, the origin of those infirmities may be traced to an earlier ear-lier time, and remedial agencies, to be effective, must be applied before the constitution has been weakened with many years of work. The founder of this research institution, after he had come to be known as an old man, used to make the proud boast thar he was never sick in all his life. We believe if the records could be found that about'the same thing could be said of his father and grandfather. Longevity runs in families. The requisites to longevity are to be born right, and then, after careful nursing, to enter into healthy pursuits, with not too much ambition, and a constant con-stant regard for that moderation, in all things which affect the mind and body. Most old people are healthy enough; if they were not, they could never have lived beyond middle age. But they know they would be healthier if their lives could have been just a little more in accord with the laws of God. Each little violation must be recognized as a cause for some slight defect in the human organism. or-ganism. On the other hand? it is a fact seemingly well established that the people who grow old have been too busy generally to pay much attention "to the aches and pains they had when they were young, too busy to dose themselves, too busy to do more than take ordinary care of their body. True, nobody no-body will ever know how manM have died as a result of not taking account of slight ailments, and not paying attention to little aches and pains; sono rule may be drawn from such a fact. If the Russell Rus-sell Sage Institute of Pathology should establish a rule for the guidance of young people, should teach them first of all how to attain old age, no doubt the rule would be rigorously followedhj, everybody that is, everybody who has already reached the scriptural scrip-tural limit of three score and ten. Graduation essays-are now being considered by the school boys and girls, and there seems a "still, small voice coming from somewhere, saying. "Some one has said" , "And as Ave go out into the" great world"-, "The rcul battle of life". But wh.j would not have such touching phrases preserved I Didn't we use them once ourselves? Regret for the past and hope for the future are both elevating and ennobling, but an ambition to make the present year atone for the mistakes of those which have preceded it drags a man out of the rut and lifts him up. The past is done, the future is ever before us; the present alone is all we have" to work with. Get to - work, then. And when the calendar is replaced by Uat for 1009, It will be found that fewer mitakes have happ.-ne,! ;,,., j ter results been accomplished than . . : j.,.;,, The future must Jook brighter it it..? ,;;im,.,j the knowledge of wasted opportunities. Following in the lines drawn by ; ,,;. op -Seankn in his admirable greeting , :,: and people on Christmas eve. Bi-Ii..; M, !'.: Trenton has this to say of the hity i ' ;..,;, toward their own press and literature; "McFaul Bishop McFaul of Tim :. j addressing 14.nM members of the, !!,.;- X ;;;.,. cieties, said: Xo people can assert t !:, . less they manufacture public npii!i..n. I; n ! v,,:;. Catholic publications. If you d-n't ( Catholic paper, how art you goimr to l.e ;.:.r,.a-t the times on Catholic question-.?'" A Missouri editor ha? mad- a li-- " t;,r ( n best poems. We said Missouri not It Him ,i. This kind of weather leave the p ;, .j,,, as to whether he should poetize on ti. L.-r.-i if,, snow or the beautiful spring. A wooden leg factory down ra t hn- Un, :t?nri. , . by the financial panic and i- now offr-rii.- :-, p-r. uct at r.O per cent of former price ,..., r;f, half off. If a man has any automatically rxpasi'iins nivr-geney nivr-geney currency about hi clothes, he is rnnf'ir,! , lie heard on the financial bills before rz-. Otherwise he should go-out and get s..m Banker Walsh of Chicago can be .-en-io-cd r.. 540 -years innil for his peculiar finuii'-ial i.-.p. tions. That i- at least forty years too much; (,. courts should be reasonable under all cireu!n-.faiii-es, A Chicago alderman is said to have gone r ,,: the saloon business, but then one must not lolirre all he sees in the newspapers. Tt seems a great deal harder to get a finuarn ir, bill through the heads of congressmen than throup the head of the average man. Cashier's checks disappeared so silently from j general circulation that the souvenir fiend can't rind one to preserve. Temperance in all things as a principle .f human hu-man conduct is unassailable. When a large portion of a people become intemperate in anything, they need to be saved from themselves. That is why al- 1 coholic wards are maintained in hospitals, and thai is why we need so many policemen to take the pwr j deluded inebriate in out of the wet.' A great man-' ' people do not believe in prohibition, but when intemperance in-temperance becomes too general, to save the stare and to preserve society, there seems no alternative. -However, the limitations of the newspaper? will soon have to be considereel by prospective candidates candi-dates for the presidency. ' I . - I . 7 ". 'A father giving advice to his son starting out in the world tedd him to keep his head cool, his fet warmfc his heart open and hi3 mouth shut ami he would get along all right in the world. All of -which -advice is especially applicable to young men of tu- j day. Being a tightwad is forced upon the man whose income doesn't ' include even cashier's checks. Many a man in building hi3 air castles negWt thc important detail of figuring on the cost of brick. When a man attains unto supreme wisdom he' likely to show what a fool he can be. Maybe we are all so poor because a fool and his money are soon parted. Pugilism consists of much talk, together with a fighting chance. j Sometimes things which, cost a pretty penn' would have been expensive at half price. , ' t "Symp'athy is a fine thing for your fellow nie-u-but a square meal is more substantial. , One would hardly expect a bachelor to he very enthusiastic advocate of the single tax theorj. Brain fag is when a man has only one idea ai'.il it won't work out. However, there is no phonographic record of ta f words of wisdom spoken by money when it talk?. A map who puts his ear to the ground is tisualb" trying to take his nose from the grindstone. Still, the man who is a public servant doesii t waste much time doing more than bossing the job. Hoarding money is awful. Why. n?r hoard more than enough to buy a meal ticket, and know lots of others just like us. j One idea of an elastic currency is that of the man who passes worthless checks. There are tricks in all trades, but the woman whc-cair save the big casino in a seven-up amS certainly known the cards. The courage to begin a great task is not so mil'" j to be commended as the courage to finish it- not very hard to throw out the first shovelful ot dirt, but when the ditch gets deeper the work 15 more difficult. The mad who realizes that every hour is a gain, every day a victory, with the htjp of God will kuow the meaning of triumph in & end. . - |