The Joys of Living

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1913 edition. Excerpt: ... XXVI LONGEVITY AND HAPPINESS "The face cannot betray the years until the mind has given its consent. The mind is the sculptor." "We renew our bodies by renewing our thoughts; change our bodies, our habits, by changing our thoughts." "last Sunday a young man died here of extreme old age at twenty-five," wrote John Newton. George Meredith, on the celebration of his seventy-fourth birthday said: "I do not feel that I am growing old, either in heart or mind. I still look on life with a young man's eye." You cannot tell how old people are by the calendar. You must measure the spirit, the temperament, the mental attitude, to get the age. I know young men who are in their sixties, and old men who are in their thirties. "Old age seizes upon ill-spent youth like fire upon a rotten house." No one is old until the interest in life is gone out of him, until his spirit becomes aged, until his heart becomes cold and unresponsive; as long as he touches life at many points he can not grow old in spirit. "To live on without growing old, to feel alive and hold, to the last, whatever is best in youth-vigor of mind and freshness of feeling-- then, when the end has come, to find in the depths of the soul the belief of earlier years, and to fall softly asleep with a sure hope, is not this an enviable lot?" The youth cannot understand why the close of the day does not have that "wild gladness of morning"; it has riper, richer hues. The sunset is just as beautiful, and often more glorious than the sunrise. The last of life should be just as beautiful and grand as the first of life,--"The last of life--for which the first was made." Age has its pleasures. If the life has been well lived, the reminiscences are grand, the satisfactions beautiful. Indeed, what can...