Precept and Practice – DECEMBER 12 – Old Age

The eye of age looks meekly into my heart!   The voice of age echoes mournfully through it!   The hoary head and palsied hand of age plead irresistibly for its sympathies!   I venerate old age;  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 eyes, and the shadows of twilight grow broader and deeper upon the under-standing.

(Longfellow)

It is the saddest fortune of old age that the old have to see themselves daily grown more lonely – reduced to commune with the inarticulate eternities, and the loved ones, now irresponsive, who have preceded them thither.   Well, well, there is blessedness in this too, if we take it well, – nor is hope quite wanting, nor the clear conviction that those whom we would most screen from pain and misery are now at rest.   Shakespeare says pathetically –

These tones go tinkling through us sometimes like the pious chime of far-off church bells.

(Carlyle)

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From the Introduction to Precept and Practice

The kindly welcome given to my other little books, ‘Being and Doing’ and ‘Character and Conduct,’ must be my excuse for adding another collection of extracts to the number now in circulation.

The quotations are gathered from the books of many earnest thinkers, and deal with Life in all its length and breadth, with ourselves, our characters, our plain unvarnished faults and weaknesses, our often untoward circumstances, and with all that drags us down;-  with our purposes, our religion, our love and friendships, and with all that uplifts us;-  with our relation to others, our influence and responsibilities, and finally with those stages of our journey which bring us to the Road’s Last Turn and to the Silent Land.

CONSTANCE  M. WHISHAW