Some Private Views | Page 4

the present assurance companies
have. How many a time, I wonder, in these later years, has a hand been
stayed, with a pistol or 'a cup of cold poison' in it, by the thought, 'If I
do this, my family will lose the money I am insured for, besides the
premiums.' This feeling is altogether different from that which causes
Jeannette and Jeannot in their Paris attic to light their charcoal fire, stop
up the chinks with their love-letters, and die (very disreputably)
'clasped in one another's arms, and silent in a last embrace.' There is not
one halfpenny's worth of sentiment about it in the Englishman's case,
nor are any such thoughts bred in his brain while youth is in him. It is
in our midway days, with old age touching us here and there, as autumn
'lays its fiery finger on the leaves' and withers them, that we first think
of it. When the weight of anxiety and care is growing on us, while the
shoulders are becoming bowed (not in resignation, but in weakness)
which have to bear it; when our pains are more and more constant, our
pleasures few and fading, and when whatever happens, we know, must

needs be for the worse--then it is that the praise of the silver hair and
length of days becomes a mockery indeed.
Was it the prescience of such a state of thought, I wonder (for it
certainly did not exist in their time), that caused good men of old to
extol old age; as though anything could reconcile the mind of man to
the time when the very sun is darkened to him, and 'the clouds return
after the rain?' There is a noble passage in 'Hyperion' which has always
seemed to me to repeat that sentiment in Ecclesiastes; it speaks of an
expression in a man's face:
'As though the vanward clouds of evil days Had spent their malice, and
the sullen rear Was with its storied thunder labouring up.'
This is why poor Paterfamilias, sitting in the family pew, is not so
enamoured of that idea of accomplishing those threescore years and ten
which the young parson, fresh from Cambridge, is describing as such a
lucky number in life's lottery. The attempt to paint it so is well-meaning,
no doubt, 'the vacant chaff well meant for grain;' and it is touching to
see how men generally (knowing that they themselves have to go
through with it) are wont to portray it in cheerful colours.
A modern philosopher even goes so far as to say that our memories in
old age are always grateful to us. Our pleasures are remembered, but
our pains are forgotten; 'if we try to recall a physical pain,' she writes
(for it is a female), 'we find it to be impossible,' From which I gather
only this for certain, that that woman never had the gout.
The folks who come my way, indeed, seem to remember their physical
ailments very distinctly, to judge by the way they talk of them; and are
exceedingly apprehensive of their recurrence. Nay, it is curious to see
how some old men will resent the compliments of their juniors on their
state of health or appearance. 'Stuff and nonsense!' cried old Sam
Rogers, grimly; 'I tell you there is no such thing as a fine old man.' In a
humbler walk of life I remember to have heard a similar but more
touching reply. It was upon the great centenarian question raised by Mr.
Thorns. An old woman in a workhouse, said to be a hundred years of
age, was sent for by the Board of Guardians, to decide the point by her
personal testimony. One can imagine the half-dozen portly prosperous
figures, and the contrast their appearance offered to that of the bent and
withered crone. 'Now, Betty,' said the chairman with unctuous
patronage, 'you look hale and hearty enough, yet they tell me that you

are a hundred years old; is this really true?' 'God Almighty knows, sir,'
was her reply, 'but I feel a thousand.'
And there are so many people nowadays who 'feel a thousand.'
It is for this reason that the gift of old age is unwished for, and the
prospect of future life without encouragement. It is the modern
conviction that there will be some kind of work in it; and even though
what we shall be set to do may be 'wrought with tumult of acclaim,' we
have had enough of work. What follows, almost as a matter of course,
is that the thought of possible extinction has lost its terrors. Heaven and
its glories may have still their charms for those who are not wearied out
with toil in this life; but the slave draws for himself a far other picture