en more timid and precise if they
are of the middle class--serves, in these days, to accentuate the
difference of age and add a distinction to gray hairs. But their
superiority is founded more deeply than by outward marks or gestures.
They are before us in the march of man; they have more or less solved
the irking problem; they have battled through the equinox of life; in
good and evil they have held their course; and now, without open
shame, they near the crown and harbour. It may be we have been struck
with one of fortune's darts; we can scarce be civil, so cruelly is our
spirit tossed. Yet long before we were so much as thought upon, the
like calamity befell the old man or woman that now, with pleasant
humour, rallies us upon our inattention, sitting composed in the holy
evening of man's life, in the clear shining after rain. We grow
ashamed of our distresses new and hot and coarse, like villainous
roadside brandy; we see life in aerial perspective, under the heavens
of faith; and out of the worst, in the mere presence of contented
elders, look forward and take patience. Fear shrinks before them "like
a thing reproved," not the flitting and ineffectual fear of death, but
the instant, dwelling terror of the responsibilities and revenges of
life. Their speech, indeed, is timid; they report lions in the path;
they counsel a meticulous[31] footing; but their serene, marred faces
are more eloquent and tell another story. Where they have gone, we
will go also, not very greatly fearing; what they have endured
unbroken, we also, God helping us, will make a shift to bear.

Not only is the presence of the aged in itself remedial, but their
minds are stored with antidotes, wisdom's simples, plain
considerations overlooked by youth. They have matter to communicate,
be they never so stupid. Their talk is not merely literature, it is
great literature; classic in virtue of the speaker's detachment,
studded, like a book of travel, with things we should not otherwise
have learnt. In virtue, I have said, of the speaker's detachment--and
this is why, of two old men, the one who is not your father speaks to
you with the more sensible authority; for in the paternal relation the
oldest have lively interests and remain still young. Thus I have known
two young men great friends; each swore by the other's father; the
father of each swore by the other lad; and yet each pair of parent and
child were perpetually by the ears. This is typical: it