There is some meaning in the
old theory about wild oats; and a man who has not had his
green-sickness and got done with it for good is as little
to be depended on as an unvaccinated infant.
*
When we grow elderly, how the room brightens and begins to
look as it ought to look, on the entrance of youth, grace,
health and comeliness! You do not want them for yourself,
perhaps not even for your son, but you look on smiling; and
when you recall their images--again it is with a smile. I
defy you to see or think of them and not smile with an
infinite and intimate but quite impersonal pleasure.
*
To speak truth there must be moral equality or else no
respect; and hence between parent and child intercourse is
apt to degenerate into a verbal fencing-bout, and
misapprehensions to become engrained. And there is another
side to this, for the parent begins with an imperfect
notion of the child's character, formed in early years or
during the equinoctial gales of youth; to this he adheres,
noting only the facts which suit with his pre-conception;
and wherever a person fancies himself unjustly judged, he
at once and finally gives up the effort to speak truth.
*
So, as we grow old, a sort of equable jog-trot of feeling
is substituted for the violent ups and downs of passion and
disgust; the same influence that restrains our hopes quiets
our apprehensions; if the pleasures are less intense, the
troubles are milder and more tolerable; and in a word, this
period for which we are asked to hoard up everything as for
a time of famine, is, in its own right, the richest,
easiest, and happiest of life.
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