第46章

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 Iam 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 Icall; 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, Ibreak 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 eyeglass, 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 Idressed 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 button-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 analysis 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 passions 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.