GROWING OLD.

Dominion, Volume 7, Issue 1891, 28 October 1913, Page 7

GROWING OLD.

"I consider that every healthy' person should count himself or herself young up to the age ot 70," writes W. tj K. Howard in tho "Daily Mail." "Up to that ago life should be lived to tho full. ; There should bo no thought of old ago or even middle age; there should bo 110 thought of retiring from business, or of diet, or of abstention from tho usual pleasures of life'. . "The period of middle age should bo reckoned as from 70 to 100. When 1 the age of 70 has been reached I think we should slow down a. little. We might work five days a week instead of six, for instance, and, we might exchange cricket for golf, and football for lawn tennis. Wo might also, during this middle-age period, make it a rule to get to bed by midnight. But oven now wo should not dream of leading an idle life, or of allowing ourselves to be fussed and coddled, or of looking upon the younger generation as ignorant and 'rather impertinent upstarts. "People who have reached 100 years of age might be entitled to look upon themselves as getting old, but there should be no thought of decay. They should look forward to the enjoyment of at least 20 years' of old age. I uso the word 'enjoyment' with deliberation, for it is quite wrong to associate old ■ age, even though one lives to bo 120, with misery and wretchedness. _ The ] Psalmist was in a very jjessimistic mood ; wlien he lvroto the verso which lias given so much trouble to millions. Who does not know tho pleasure of looking back after a steep hill has been climbed? That is exactly the pleasure that comes of old age. You will seldom see old' people who have lived their lives healthily and well without a smile upon their faces. Nothing troubles them except their natural anxiety for their ftranchildron and their great-grand-children, and even this anxiety is tempered by thp knowledge that the hill can be climbed, bee an so they themselves have climbed it."