" See to it, if it be
within your power, that your father has the rest due to the evening of
his days. Let him sit in the cool. Let him listen to the voices of his
night--the crickets that cry out his mortality and the nightingales that
sing of Paradise!
"GRAY HAIRS
seem to fancy," says Richter, "like the light of a soft moon silvering
over the evening of life." "Old age," says Madame Swetchine, "is not one
of the beauties of creation, but it is one of its harmonies. The law of
contrasts is one of the laws of beauty. Shadows give light its worth;
sternness enchances mildness; solemnity splendor."
EXPERIENCE.
"Old age was naturally more honored," says Joubert, "in times when
people could not know much more than what they had seen." There are
still many avenues of learning in which practical experience seems to be
paramount in value. In business its great worth is never underestimated.
You have heard of the partnership built on a contribution by one
firm-member of the money, and by the other of the experience; and of
the dissolution of that firm, leaving the one who put in the money with
all the experience, and the one who put in the experience with all the
money! The practices of law and medicine are famous for the need of age,
which they harness anew with the labors and exertions ordinarily
demanded of youth.
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