SERE AND YELLOW

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 67, 11 December 1937, Page 4

SERE AND YELLOW

" With men, as with the year, it is not always easy to determine age by surface symptoms. One man at sixty may be as good for most purposes as his jqnior of forty. Another may show at fifty all the marks of bodily and mental deterioration whieh usually go with extreme old age. Every living organism is governed by a mysterious regulator whieh decides when it shall rehch the summit of its powers and shall enter upon the downward course. Plants, animals and inen have their allotted span, different within wide limits for the difierent hinds, and still differing, between mueh narrower liinits, for individuals within each kind. Self-conscious man is inebned to kiclf against the prieks, and to try to decide for himself when he may rightly be ealled old. Popular- philosophy recognises that it is nqt inerely a question of the tale of years. A man, it says, is as old as "his arteries, or as old as he feels. " A woman is as old as she looks. The essential thing is a readiness to face the faots, whatever they may be, as to failing pow^ ers and capabilities. The man who cannot bring himself to do so, b\it who persists in trying to cut youthful capers, is a sorry sight. Even if he does not, as is likely, do himself physical harm, he presents a spectacle, the description of which by the youngsters among whom he gambols would, if he overheard it, do him good. But resignation to the inevitable is not his sole resource. Though body and even mind must, in the long run, fade and fail. he possesses iq his spirit an elernent which is capable of vigour and growth up to the very limit of the mortal span, and which indeed,' by its immunity from the toll taken by the years, seems to promise that its cornpletion and its destiny lie beyond l