Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 by Various

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My friend, the Professor, began talking with me one day in a dreary sort
of way. I couldn't get at the difficulty for a good while, but at last
it turned out that somebody had been calling him an old man.--He didn't
mind his students calling him _the_ old man, he said. That was a
technical expression, and he thought that he remembered hearing it
applied to himself when he was about twenty-five. It may be considered
as a familiar and sometimes endearing appellation. An Irish-woman calls
her husband "the old man," and he returns the caressing expression by
speaking of her as "the old woman." But now, said he, just suppose a
case like one of these. A young stranger is overheard talking of you as
a very nice old gentleman. A friendly and genial critic speaks of your
green old age as illustrating the truth of some axiom you had uttered
with reference to that period of life. What _I_ call an old man is a
person with a smooth, shining crown and a fringe of scattered white
hairs, seen in the streets on sunshiny days, stooping as he walks,
bearing a cane, moving cautiously and slowly; telling old stories,
smiling at present follies, living in a narrow world of dry habits; one
that remains waking when others have dropped asleep, and keeps a little
night-lamp-flame of life burning year after year, if the lamp is not
upset, and there is only a careful hand held round it to prevent the
puffs of wind from blowing the flame out. That's what I call an old man.

Now, said the Professor, you don't mean to tell me that I have got to
that yet? Why, bless you, I am several years short of the time when--[I
knew what was coming, and could hardly keep from laughing; twenty years
ago he used to quote it as one of those absurd speeches men of genius
will make, and now he is going to argue from it]--several years short
of the time when Balzac says that men are--most--you know--dangerous
to--the hearts of--in short, most to be dreaded by duennas that
have charge of susceptible females.--What age is that? said I,
statistically.--Fifty-two years, answered the Professor.--Balzac ought
to know, said I, if it is true that Goethe said of him that each of his
stories must have been dug out of a woman's heart. But fifty-two is a
high figure.

Stand in the light of the window, Professor, said I.--The Professor took
up the desired position.--You have white hairs, I said.--Had 'em any
time these twenty years, said the Professor.--And the crow's-foot,--_pes
anserinus_, rather.--The Professor smiled, as I wanted him to, and the
folds radiated like the ridges of a half-opened fan, from the outer
corner of the eyes to the temples.--And the calipers, said I.--What
are the _calipers_? he asked, curiously.--Why, the parenthesis, said
I.--_Parenthesis_? said the Professor; what's that?--Why, look in the
glass when you are disposed to laugh, and see if your mouth isn't framed
in a couple of crescent lines,--so, my boy ( ).--It's all nonsense, said
the Professor; just look at my _biceps_;--and he began pulling off his
coat to show me his arm.--Be careful, said I; you can't bear exposure to
the air, at your time of life, as you could once.--I will box with you,
said the Professor, row with you, walk with you, ride with you, swim
with you, or sit at table with you, for fifty dollars a side.--Pluck
survives stamina, I answered.

The Professor went off a little out of humor. A few weeks afterwards he
came in, looking very good-natured, and brought me a paper, which I
have here, and from which I shall read you some portions, if you don't
object. He had been thinking the matter over, he said,--had read Cicero.
"De Senectute," and made up his mind to meet old age half way. These
were some of his reflections that he had written down; so here you have

THE PROFESSOR'S PAPER.

There is no doubt when old age begins. The human body is a furnace which
keeps in blast three-score years and ten, more or less. It burns about
three hundred pounds of carbon a year, (besides other fuel,) when in
fair working order, according to a great chemist's estimate. When the
fire slackens, life declines; when it goes out, we are dead.

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
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 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 buttonwood
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 natures."

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 an _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 that 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.

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 clockwork. 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 assume 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 circumstances. But habit, you see, is an
action in present circumstances from past motives. It is substituting 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
asserted 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 analysis 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 pass 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 illustrations which a modern writer would look at the back
of, and toss each to its pigeonhole. I think ancient classics 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 passing 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,"--"Tribunus
Quirinalis,"--"Praeco Romanus," and the rest) gave abstracts of it, one
of which I have translated and modernized, as being a substitute for the
analysis 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, vestitusque_) 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 quoedam 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 haud 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.--Nobody 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 passed away. At
last one of the years threw a snow-ball, and after that no year let
the poor girls pass without throwing snow-balls. 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 _Ai, ai!_ 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.

Might we but share one wild caress
Ere life's autumnal blossoms fall,
And Earth's brown, clinging lips impress
The long cold kiss that waits us all!

My bosom heaves, remembering yet
The morning of that blissful day
When Rose, the flower of spring, I met,
And gave my raptured soul away.

Flung from her eyes of purest blue,
A lasso, with its leaping chain
Light as a loop of larkspurs, flew
O'er sense and spirit, heart and brain.

Thou com'st to cheer my waning age,
Sweet vision, waited for so long!
Dove that wouldst seek the poet's cage,
Lured by the magic breath of song!

She blushes! Ah, reluctant maid,
Love's _drapeau rouge_ the truth has told!
O'er girlhood's yielding barricade
Floats the great Leveller's crimson fold!

Come to my arms!--love heeds not years;
No frost the bud of passion knows.--
Ha! what is this my frenzy hears?
A voice behind me uttered,--Rose!

Sweet was her smile,--but not for me;
Alas, when woman looks _too_ kind,
Just turn your foolish head and see,--
Some youth is walking close behind!

As to _giving up_ because the almanac or the Family-Bible says that it
is about time to do it, I have no intention of doing any such thing. I
grant you that I burn less carbon than some years ago. I see people
of my standing really good for nothing, decrepit, effete, _la levre
inferieure deja pendante_, with what little life they have left mainly
concentrated in their epigastrium. But as the disease of old age is
epidemic, endemic, and sporadic, and everybody that lives long enough is
sure to catch it, I am going to say, for the encouragement of such as
need it, how I treat the malady in my own case.

First. As I feel, that, when I have anything to do, there is less time
for it than when I was younger, I find that I give my attention more
thoroughly, and use my time more economically than ever before; so that
I can learn anything twice as easily as in my earlier days. I am not,
therefore, afraid to attack a new study. I took up a difficult language
a very few years ago with good success, and think of mathematics and
metaphysics by-and-by.

Secondly. I have opened my eyes to a good many neglected privileges and
pleasures within my reach, and requiring only a little courage to enjoy
them. You may well suppose it pleased me to find that old Cato was
thinking of learning to play the fiddle, when I had deliberately taken
it up in my old age, and satisfied myself that I could get much comfort,
if not much music, out of it.

Thirdly. I have found that some of those active exercises, which are
commonly thought to belong to young folks only, may be enjoyed at a much
later period.

A young friend has lately written an admirable article in one of the
journals, entitled, "Saints and their Bodies." Approving of his general
doctrines, and grateful for his records of personal experience, I cannot
refuse to add my own experimental confirmation of his eulogy of one
particular form of active exercise and amusement, namely, _boating_.
For the past nine years, I have rowed about, during a good part of the
summer, on fresh or salt water. My present fleet on the river Charles
consists of three rowboats. 1. A small flat-bottomed skiff of the shape
of a flat-iron, kept mainly to lend to boys. 2. A fancy "dory" for two
pairs of sculls, in which I sometimes go out with my young folks. 3.
My own particular water-sulky, a "skeleton" or "shell" race-boat,
twenty-two feet long, with huge outriggers, which boat I pull with
ten-foot sculls,--alone, of course, as it holds but one, and tips him
out, if he doesn't mind what he is about. In this I glide around the
Back Bay, down the stream, up the Charles to Cambridge and Watertown, up
the Mystic, round the wharves, in the wake of steamboats, which have
a swell after them delightful to rock upon; I linger under the
bridges,--those "caterpillar bridges," as my brother Professor so
happily called them; rub against the black sides of old wood-schooners;
cool down under the overhanging stern of some tall India-man; stretch
across to the Navy-Yard, where the sentinel warns me off from the
Ohio,--just as if I should hurt her by lying in her shadow; then strike
out into the harbor, where the water gets clear and the air smells of
the ocean,--till all at once I remember, that, if a west wind blows up
of a sudden, I shall drift along past the islands, out of sight of the
dear old State-house,--plate, tumbler, knife and fork all waiting at
home, but no chair drawn up at the table,--all the dear people waiting,
waiting, waiting, while the boat is sliding, sliding, sliding into the
great desert, where there is no tree and no fountain. As I don't want
my wreck to be washed up on one of the beaches in company with
devils'-aprons, bladder-weeds, dead horse-shoes, and bleached
crab-shells, I turn about and flap my long, narrow wings for home. When
the tide is running out swiftly, I have a splendid fight to get through
the bridges, but always make it a rule to beat,--though I have been
jammed up into pretty tight places at times, and was caught once between
a vessel swinging round and the pier, until our bones (the boat's, that
is) cracked as if we had been in the jaws of Behemoth. Then back to my
moorings at the foot of the Common, off with the rowing-dress, dash
under the green translucent wave, return to the garb of civilization,
walk through my Garden, take a look at my elms on the Common, and,
reaching my habitat, in consideration of my advanced period of life,
indulge in the Elysian abandonment of a huge recumbent chair.

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