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 befel 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
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.
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