Autocrat of the Breakfast Table Part 12

It has been shown by some noted French experimenters, that the amount of combustion increases up to about the thirtieth year, remains stationary to about forty-five, and then diminishes. This last is the point where old age starts from. The great fact of physical life is the perpetual commerce with the elements, and the fire is the measure of it.

About this time of life, if food is plenty where you live,-for that, you know, regulates matrimony,-you may be expecting to find yourself a grandfather some fine morning; a kind of domestic felicity that gives one a cool shiver of delight to think of, as among the not remotely possible events.

I don't mind much those slipshod lines Dr. Johnson wrote to Thrale, telling her about life's declining from _thirty-five_; the furnace is in full blast for ten years longer, as I have said. The Romans came very near the mark; their age of enlistment reached from seventeen to forty-six years.

What is the use of fighting against the seasons, or the tides, or the movements of the planetary bodies, or this ebb in the wave of life that flows through us? We are old fellows from the moment the fire begins to go out. Let us always behave like gentlemen when we are introduced to new acquaintance.

_Incipit Allegoria Senectutis_.

Old Age, this is Mr. Professor; Mr. Professor, this is Old Age.

_Old Age_.-Mr. Professor, I hope to see you well. I have known you for some time, though I think you did not know me. Shall we walk down the street together?

_Professor_ (drawing back a little).-We can talk more quietly, perhaps, in my study. Will you tell me how it is you seem to be acquainted with everybody you are introduced to, though he evidently considers you an entire stranger?

_Old Age_.-I make it a rule never to force myself upon a person's recognition until I have known him at least _five years_.

_Professor_.-Do you mean to say that you have known me so long as that?

_Old Age_. I do. I left my card on you longer ago than that, but I am afraid you never read it; yet I see you have it with you.

_Professor_.-Where?

_Old Age_.-There, between your eyebrows,-three straight lines running up and down; all the probate courts know that token,-"Old Age, his mark."

Put your forefinger on the inner end of one eyebrow, and your middle finger on the inner end of the other eyebrow; now separate the fingers, and you will smooth out my sign-manual; that's the way you used to look before I left my card on you.

_Professor_.-What message do people generally send back when you first call on them?

_Old Age_.-Not at home. Then I leave a card and go. Next year I call; get the same answer; leave another card. So for five or six,-sometimes ten years or more. At last, if they don't let me in, I break in through the front door or the windows.

We talked together in this way some time. Then Old Age said again,-Come, let us walk down the street together,-and offered me a cane, an eyegla.s.s, a tippet, and a pair of over-shoes.-No, much obliged to you, said I. I don't want those things, and I had a little rather talk with you here, privately, in my study. So I dressed myself up in a jaunty way and walked out alone;-got a fall, caught a cold, was laid up with a lumbago, and had time to think over this whole matter.

_Explicit Allegoria Senectutis_.

We have settled when old age begins. Like all Nature's processes, it is gentle and gradual in its approaches, strewed with illusions, and all its little griefs soothed by natural sedatives. But the iron hand is not less irresistible because it wears the velvet glove. The b.u.t.ton-wood throws off its bark in large flakes, which one may find lying at its foot, pushed out, and at last pushed off, by that tranquil movement from beneath, which is too slow to be seen, but too powerful to be arrested.

One finds them always, but one rarely sees them fall. So it is our youth drops from us,-scales off, sapless and lifeless, and lays bare the tender and immature fresh growth of old age. Looked at collectively, the changes of old age appear as a series of personal insults and indignities, terminating at last in death, which Sir Thomas Browne has called "the very disgrace and ignominy of our nature."

My lady's cheek can boast no more The cranberry white and pink it wore; And where her shining locks divide, The parting line is all too wide-

No, no,-this will never do. Talk about men, if you will, but spare the poor women.

We have a brief description of seven stages of life by a remarkably good observer. It is very presumptuous to attempt to add to it, yet I have been struck with the fact that life admits of a natural a.n.a.lysis into no less than fifteen distinct periods. Taking the five primary divisions, infancy, childhood, youth, manhood, old age, each of these has its own three periods of immaturity, complete development, and decline. I recognize on _old_ baby at once,-with its "pipe and mug," (a stick of candy and a porringer,)-so does everybody; and an old child shedding its milk-teeth is only a little prototype of the old man shedding his permanent ones. Fifty or thereabouts is only the childhood, as it were, of old age; the graybeard youngster must be weaned from his late suppers now. So you will see that you have to make fifteen stages at any rate, and that it would not be hard to make twenty-five; five primary, each with five secondary divisions.

The infancy and childhood of commencing old age have the same ingenuous simplicity and delightful unconsciousness about them as the first stage of the earlier periods of life shows. The great delusion of mankind is in supposing that to be individual and exceptional which is universal and according to law. A person is always startled when he hears himself seriously called an old man for the first time.

Nature gets us out of youth into manhood, as sailors are hurried on board of vessels,-in a state of intoxication. We are hustled into maturity reeling with our pa.s.sions and imaginations, and we have drifted far away from port before we awake out of our illusions. But to carry us out of maturity into old age, without our knowing where we are going, she drugs us with strong opiates, and so we stagger along with wide open eyes that see nothing until snow enough has fallen on our heads to rouse our comatose brains out of their stupid trances.

There is one mark of age that strikes me more than any of the physical ones;-I mean the formation of _Habits_. An old man who shrinks into himself falls into ways that become as positive and as much beyond the reach of outside influences as if they were governed by clock-work. The _animal_ functions, as the physiologists call them, in distinction from the _organic_, tend, in the process of deterioration to which age and neglect united gradually lead them, to a.s.sume the periodical or rhythmical type of movement. Every man's _heart_ (this organ belongs, you know, to the organic system) has a regular mode of action; but I know a great many men whose _brains_, and all their voluntary existence flowing from their brains, have a _systole_ and _diastole_ as regular as that of the heart itself. Habit is the approximation of the animal system to the organic. It is a confession of failure in the highest function of being, which involves a perpetual self-determination, in full view of all existing circ.u.mstances. But habit, you see, is an action in present circ.u.mstances from past motives. It is subst.i.tuting a _vis a tergo_ for the evolution of living force.

When a man, instead of burning up three hundred pounds of carbon a year, has got down to two hundred and fifty, it is plain enough he must economize force somewhere. Now habit is a labor-saving invention which enables a man to get along with less fuel,-that is all; for fuel is force, you know, just as much in the page I am writing for you as in the locomotive or the legs that carry it to you. Carbon is the same thing, whether you call it wood, or coal, or bread and cheese. A reverend gentleman demurred to this statement,-as if, because combustion is a.s.serted to be the _sine qua non_ of thought, therefore thought is alleged to be a purely chemical process. Facts of chemistry are one thing, I told him, and facts of consciousness another. It can be proved to him, by a very simple a.n.a.lysis of some of his spare elements, that every Sunday, when he does his duty faithfully, he uses up more phosphorus out of his brain and nerves than on ordinary days. But then he had his choice whether to do his duty, or to neglect it, and save his phosphorus and other combustibles.

It follows from all this that _the formation of habits_ ought naturally to be, as it is, the special characteristic of age. As for the muscular powers, they pa.s.s their maximum long before the time when the true decline of life begins, if we may judge by the experience of the ring. A man is "stale," I think, in their language, soon after thirty,-often, no doubt, much earlier, as gentlemen of the pugilistic profession are exceedingly apt to keep their vital fire burning _with the blower up_.

-So far without Tully. But in the mean time I have been reading the treatise, "De Senectute." It is not long, but a leisurely performance.

The old gentleman was sixty-three years of age when he addressed it to his friend T. Pomponius Atticus, Eq., a person of distinction, some two or three years older. We read it when we are schoolboys, forget all about it for thirty years, and then take it up again by a natural instinct,-provided always that we read Latin as we drink water, without stopping to taste it, as all of us who ever learned it at school or college ought to do.

Cato is the chief speaker in the dialogue. A good deal of it is what would be called in vulgar phrase "slow." It unpacks and unfolds incidental ill.u.s.trations which a modern writer would look at the back of, and toss each to its pigeon-hole. I think ancient cla.s.sics and ancient people are alike in the tendency to this kind of expansion.

An old doctor came to me once (this is literal fact) with some contrivance or other for people with broken kneepans. As the patient would be confined for a good while, he might find it dull work to sit with his hands in his lap. Reading, the ingenious inventor suggested, would be an agreeable mode of pa.s.sing the time. He mentioned, in his written account of his contrivance, various works that might amuse the weary hour. I remember only three,-Don Quixote, Tom Jones, and _Watts on the Mind_.

It is not generally understood that Cicero's essay was delivered as a lyceum lecture, (_concio popularis_,) at the Temple of Mercury. The journals (_papyri_) of the day ("Tempora Quotidiana,"-"Tribuinus Quirinalis,"-"Praeco Roma.n.u.s," and the rest) gave abstracts of it, one of which I have translated and modernized, as being a subst.i.tute for the a.n.a.lysis I intended to make.

IV. Kal. Mart. . . . .

The lecture at the Temple of Mercury, last evening, was well attended by the _elite_ of our great city. Two hundred thousand sestertia were thought to have been represented in the house. The doors were besieged by a mob of shabby fellows, (_illotum vulgus_,) who were at length quieted after two or three had been somewhat roughly handled (_gladio jugulati_). The speaker was the well-known Mark Tully, Eq.,-the subject Old Age. Mr. T. has a lean and scraggy person, with a very unpleasant excrescence upon his nasal feature, from which his nickname of _chick-pea_ (Cicero) is said by some to be derived. As a lecturer is public property, we may remark, that his outer garment (_toga_) was of cheap stuff and somewhat worn, and that his general style and appearance of dress and manner (_habitus_, _vest.i.tusque_) were somewhat provincial.

The lecture consisted of an imaginary dialogue between Cato and Laelius.

We found the first portion rather heavy, and retired a few moments for refreshment (_pocula quaedam vini_).-All want to reach old age, says Cato, and grumble when they get it; therefore they are donkeys.-The lecturer will allow us to say that he is the donkey; we know we shall grumble at old age, but we want to live through youth and manhood, _in spite_ of the troubles we shall groan over.-There was considerable prosing as to what old age can do and can't.-True, but not new. Certainly, old folks can't jump,-break the necks of their thigh-bones, (_femorum cervices_,) if they do; can't crack nuts with their teeth; can't climb a greased pole (_malum inunctum scandere non possunt_); but they can tell old stories and give you good advice; if they know what you have made up your mind to do when you ask them.-All this is well enough, but won't set the Tiber on fire (_Tiberim accendere nequaquam potest_.)

There were some clever things enough, (_dicta hand inepta_,) a few of which are worth reporting.-Old people are accused of being forgetful; but they never forget where they have put their money.-n.o.body is so old he doesn't think he can live a year.-The lecturer quoted an ancient maxim,-Grow old early, if you would be old long,-but disputed it.-Authority, he thought, was the chief privilege of age.-It is not great to have money, but fine to govern those that have it.-Old age begins at _forty-six_ years, according to the common opinion.-It is not every kind of old age or of wine that grows sour with time.-Some excellent remarks were made on immortality, but mainly borrowed from and credited to Plato.-Several pleasing anecdotes were told.-Old Milo, champion of the heavy weights in his day, looked at his arms and whimpered, "They are dead." Not so dead as you, you old fool,-says Cato;-you never were good for anything but for your shoulders and flanks.-Pisistratus asked Solon what made him dare to be so obstinate.

Old age, said Solon.

The lecture was on the whole acceptable, and a credit to our culture and civilization.-The reporter goes on to state that there will be no lecture next week, on account of the expected combat between the bear and the barbarian. Betting (_sponsio_) two to one (_duo ad unum_) on the bear.

-After all, the most encouraging things I find in the treatise, "De Senectute," are the stories of men who have found new occupations when growing old, or kept up their common pursuits in the extreme period of life. Cato learned Greek when he was old, and speaks of wishing to learn the fiddle, or some such instrument, (_fidibus_,) after the example of Socrates. Solon learned something new, every day, in his old age, as he gloried to proclaim. Cyrus pointed out with pride and pleasure the trees he had planted with his own hand. [I remember a pillar on the Duke of Northumberland's estate at Alnwick, with an inscription in similar words, if not the same. That, like other country pleasures, never wears out.

None is too rich, none too poor, none too young, none too old to enjoy it.] There is a New England story I have heard more to the point, however, than any of Cicero's. A young farmer was urged to set out some apple-trees.-No, said he, they are too long growing, and I don't want to plant for other people. The young farmer's father was spoken to about it, but he, with better reason, alleged that apple-trees were slow and life was fleeting. At last some one mentioned it to the old grandfather of the young farmer. He had nothing else to do,-so he stuck in some trees. He lived long enough to drink barrels of cider made from the apples that grew on those trees.

As for myself, after visiting a friend lately,-[Do remember all the time that this is the Professor's paper.]-I satisfied myself that I had better concede the fact that-my contemporaries are not so young as they have been,-and that,-awkward as it is,-science and history agree in telling me that I can claim the immunities and must own the humiliations of the early stage of senility. Ah! but we have all gone down the hill together. The dandies of my time have split their waistbands and taken to high-low shoes. The beauties of my recollections-where are they?

They have run the gantlet of the years as well as I. First the years pelted them with red roses till their cheeks were all on fire. By and by they began throwing white roses, and that morning flush pa.s.sed away. At last one of the years threw a snow-ball, and after that no year let the poor girls pa.s.s without throwing snow-b.a.l.l.s. And then came rougher missiles,-ice and stones; and from time to time an arrow whistled, and down went one of the poor girls. So there are but few left; and we don't call those few _girls_, but-

Ah, me! Here am I groaning just as the old Greek sighed _A_, _a_! and the old Roman, _Eheu_! I have no doubt we should die of shame and grief at the indignities offered us by age, if it were not that we see so many others as badly or worse off than ourselves. We always compare ourselves with our contemporaries.

[I was interrupted in my reading just here. Before I began at the next breakfast, I read them these verses;-I hope you will like them, and get a useful lesson from them.]

THE LAST BLOSSOM.

Though young no more, we still would dream Of beauty's dear deluding wiles; The leagues of life to graybeards seem Shorter than boyhood's lingering miles.

Who knows a woman's wild caprice?

It played with Goethe's silvered hair, And many a Holy Father's "niece"

Has softly smoothed the papal chair.

When sixty bids us sigh in vain To melt the heart of sweet sixteen, We think upon those ladies twain Who loved so well the tough old Dean.

We see the Patriarch's wintry face, The maid of Egypt's dusky glow, And dream that Youth and Age embrace, As April violets fill with snow.

Tranced in her Lord's Olympian smile His lotus-loving Memphian lies,- The musky daughter of the Nile With plaited hair and almond eyes.