Feb.
Very few men and certainly no women welcome the approach of middle age. When youngest address one as "Sir" and appeal to us as people with long ye: of experience behind us, we ma try to persuade ourselves. that we are flattered but in our he of hearts we feel that we are already lucked on ax back numbers. We may of course pretend that we still possess all the qualities of youth. We may urge our stiffening joints into taking part in sports that we ought to have dropped years ago, we may even join with on: Juniors in the "rags" and: prac tical jokes that appeal to thos: in the twenties, but our attempts to retain our youthful propensities will serve no good purpose. whatever. Our contemporaries: will regard our feeble efforts at sport and our futile efforts xo ive participation in as being both foolish and undignified, while the younger generation with whom we try to mix will sooner or later, 9 bably sooner, make it qu plain to us that we have neither part nor lot with them in thos> thing. which they look upon as being for themselves only. In fact, instead of earning their respect, we shall only gain their contempt, and be held up to ridicule and scoffing, On the other hand, although we may find that the enemy of middle age means restriction on ical activities, and that expected to preserve certain amount of dignity suitable to our years, there reason why our mental activities Jshould be curbed. One of the greatest mistakes into which we are likely to fall is to think that we are using our mental faculties to their greatest extent. As jo matter of fact most of us are not employing our intellect fifty per cent. of its capacity. and it is a great error to feel that after middle age we ought to cease trying to learn anything new. Many do indeed let their minds lie fallow after the forties are reached, on the excuse that, being half-way through life, they must take things easy. But in actual fact much of the greates work in the world has been done by men of forty-five und up-0 possibly had never thing much before. The ease is on record of one man who learnt four languages after he was sixty-seven, and made himself a fluent speaker in each one of them. A very fine ama-painting un such examples could multiplied indefinite ly, Fortun-rely the old in regard to middle age are gradually changing. The "too old at forty" ery is quite exploited.
The fact is, perhaps, that the complexities of modern life ci for longer periods of preparation than was formerly the case, and thus it is, that provided aman has spent his earlier years wisely, he ought to be capable of his best work from the ages of say forty to sixty-five or seventy. done their ing the idea of old-fogeyism. Thousands of government servants have bee! retired on a pension:
age when they might have proved themselves more valuable never to the nation, which, through hide-bound rules and re gulations, is thus deprived of some of its best servants. That f}a man is as old as he feels is a wefty safe rule to act upon, and normal: person can school inst the mental atrophy and narrow outlook which Jare the foes of all fresh endea our, and the conventional marks middle age. we cannot think of anyone bette:
fied than Sir Frederick Whyte to assist in this direction.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.