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Hokitika Guardian, 31 August 1929, Page 8

THE PLEASURES OF OLD AGE. “Nothing helps an aged leader to abdicate his throne with graceful dignity like love and appreciation of his successor,” writes Lady Laura Ridding in the “Contemporary Review.” “This noble condition can be reached by old' people refusing to judge the young in. a temper of jealous criticism. They can only do this when they really accept the fact that these newcomers must think, say, and do most things differently from how their predecessors thought, said, and did them. The focus of young and old eyes differs. The rose-coloured visions of youth may, after all, he truer than the blue-tinted ones oftheir ancestors. Indeed, some of the latter may have been colour-blind. Old people can extract delight as well as amusement from the exuberance and eager certainties of youth; and that helps them to judge its absurdities and impossible -ambitions with tenderness. Did not they, too, in the days of their twenty years, believe that they were called to do wonderful tilings? To rectify the mistakes of the previous generations? To furnish the world with a higher standard of ethics, social reform, government', art, literature?”,