n when he
was seventy-eight. Defoe was fifty-eight when he published "Robinson
Crusoe." Newton wrote new briefs to his "Principia" at eighty-three.
Plato died writing, at eighty-one. Tom Scott began the study of Hebrew
at eighty-six. Galileo was nearly seventy when he wrote on the laws of
motion. James Watt learned German at eighty-five. Mrs. Somerville
finished her "Molecular and Microscopic Science" at eighty-nine.
Humboldt completed his "Cosmos" at ninety, a month before his death.
Burke was thirty-five before he obtained a seat in Parliament, yet he
made the world feel his character. Unknown at forty, Grant was one of
the most famous generals in history at forty-two. Eli Whitney was
twenty-three when he decided to prepare for college, and thirty when he
graduated from Yale; yet his cotton-gin opened a great industrial
future for the Southern States. What a power was Bismarck at eighty!
Lord Palmerston was an "Old Boy" to the last. He became Prime Minister
of England the second time at seventy-five, and died Prime Minister at
eighty-one. Galileo at seventy-seven, blind and feeble, was working
every day, adapting the principle of the pendulum to clocks. George
Stephenson did not learn to read and write until he had reached
manhood. Some of Longfellow's, Whittier's, and Tennyson's best work
was done after they were seventy.

At sixty-three Dryden began the translation of the "Aeneid." Robert
Hall learned Italian when past sixty, that he might read Dante in the
original. Noah Webster studied seventeen languages after he was fifty.
Cicero said well that men are like wine: age sours the bad and improves
the good.

With enthusiasm we may retain the youth of the spirit until the hair is
silvered, even as the Gulf Stream softens the rigors of northern Europe.

"How ages thine heart,--towards youth? If not, doubt thy fitness for
thy work."

CHAPTER XIV.

"ON TIME," OR THE TRIUMPH OF PROMPTNESS

"On the great clock of time there is but one word--NOW."

Note the sublime precision that leads the earth over a circuit of five
hundred millions of miles back to the solstice at the appointed moment
without the loss of one second,--no, not the millionth part of a
second,--for ages and ages of which it traveled that imperiled
road.--EDWARD EVERETT.

"Who cannot but see oftentimes how strange the threads of our destiny
run? Oft it is only for a moment the favorable instant is presented.
We miss it, and