at last we have put our finger on the tragedy that
threatens us in the forties. Why is it?

The reason is not far to seek. The fact is that at forty a man must
drop something. He has been all his life accumulating until he has
become really overloaded. He has maintained his interest in all the
things that occupied his attention in youth; and, all the way along the
road, fresh claims have been made upon him. His position in the world
is a much more responsible one, and makes a greater drain upon his
thought and energy. He has married, too, and children have come into
his home. There has been struggle and sickness and anxiety. Interests
have multiplied, and life has increased in seriousness. But,
increasing in seriousness, it must not be allowed to increase in
sordidness. A man's life is like a garden. There is a limit to the
things that it will grow. You cannot pack plants in a garden as you
pack sardines in a tin. That is why the farmer thins out the turnips;
that is why the orchardist prunes his trees; and that is why the
husbandman pinches the grapebuds off the trailing vines. Life has to
be similarly treated. At forty a man realizes that his garden is
getting overcrowded. It contains all the flowers that he planted in
his sentimental youth and all the vegetables that he set there in his
prosaic manhood. It is too much. There must be a thinning out. And,
unless he is very, very careful, he will find that the thinning-out
process will automatically consist of the sacrifice of all the pansies
and the retention of all the potatoes.

Now, when I address my congregation of people who are celebrating their
fortieth birthday, I shall make a most fervent appeal on behalf of the
pansies. Potatoes are excellent things, and the garden becomes
distinctly wealthier when, in the twenties and thirties, a man begins
to moderate his passion for pansies, and to plant a few potatoes. But
a time comes when he must make a stand on behalf of the pansies, or he
will have no soul for anything beyond potatoes. Round his potato beds
let him jealously retain a border of his finest pansies; and, depend
upon it, when he gets into the fifties and the sixties he will be glad
that, all through life, he remained true to the first fondnesses of
youth.

Not that he will have to wait for the fifties and the sixties. As soon
as a man has faced the situation, taken his stand, and made his
decision, he begins to congratulate hims