CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY BEQUEST OF STEWART HENRY BURNHAM 1943 DATE DUE ^'"^ — "^ - 'iV^'^S -if 'P i-W-Ht ~ CAVLOBO PRINTEDIN U.S A. BJ1691 .B6T"l90r """ '-"'™^ olin 3 1924 029 060 577 Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029060577 THE ROAD TO "SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG" (( The Road to Seventy Years Young" or The Unhabitual Way By Emily M. Bishop Author of "Health and Self-Expression" and "Interpretative Forms of Literature" "It is better to be seventy years young than forty years old.'" — Oliver Wendell Holmes NEW YORK B. W. HUEBSCH 1909 Copyright, 1 907, by B. W. HUEBSCH X First printing. May, 1 907 Second printing, October, 1 907 Third printing, September, 1 909 ^imv PRINTED IN U. S. A. CONTENTS CHAPTER Foreword I. Old-Age Bugaboos II. The Tendency of the Times III. No "Time-Expired" Men IV. Concerning Birthdays . V. Old Age a Condition . VI. Habit and Old Age VII. Keep Out of Ruts VIII. Body and Brain Commerce IX. The Habit of the Unhabitual X. "If To Do Were As Easy^— ' XI. Keeping the Body Young XII. Social Ruts XIII. Domestic Ruts XIV. Thinking and Feeling Ruts . [v] PAGB vii 3 13 25 33 47 57 73 85 95 "13 123 149 >73 191 FOREWORD Psychology teaches that " the antecedent step to getting a thing done is to suggest it forcibly, or, in everyday parlance, ' to put it into his head.' "* The purpose of this book is " to put it into the heads " of its readers that they can add ( i ) l|fe^ to_ thejr years and (2) years to their life. The suggestions given herein are addressed quite as much to those who are still young in years as to those who have lived two or more score of years. There inevitably comes a time, sooner or later, when every one is per- sonally interested in not growing old; and the earlier in life that one's attention is directed * Halleck's " Education of the Nervous System." [vii] FOREWORD to rational ways of postponing oldness, the better for the individual. The idea that the writer has tried to pre- sent, simply and practically, is that man's responses and reactions to life are virtually within his own control; that the quality and number of his responses and reactions deter- mine, to a large degree, his oldness or young- ness. Frequent references to the interrelation of mind and body have been made. It is ear- nestly hoped that no one may confound the statements regarding this interrelation with transcendental theories or unsubstantiated metaphysical dogmas. Care has been exer- cised that only such statements should be made as are warranted by recent physiological and psychological research and demonstration. [viii] "All men would live long, but no one desires to be old." — Swift. "The creed of the street is. Old Age is not disgraceful, but immensely disadvantageous. ' ' — Emerson. OLD-AGE BUGABOOS No sane person desires to be old. Some philosophic make-believers may declare that " they are looking forward to a good old age," or that " they do not mind being old." Such declaration is only a gracious bowing to what they believe to be the inevitable. But is old age at a certain year-period inev- itable? May not the venerable belief that it is, be one of those " false beliefs decked in truth's garb which tangle and entwine man- kind with error " ? May we not be tangled and entwined in error of mistaking old-age bugaboos for old age? Before seeking ways and means to the at- tainment of Seventy Years Young, let us, [3] SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG first of all, distinguish between organic old age and some of the most prevalent of these old-age bugaboos. The worst hobgoblin of all is years. Years, the mere arbitrary measurement of time ! In themselves they are nothing — intangible, im- ponderable, invisible. And yet who entirely escapes their paralyzing influence? They have literally terrorized many a victim into premature oldness of mind and body. Every city and town have their quota of old men who gave up business and dropped all active interests while yet capable and vigorous, who, with pathetic acquiescence, allowed themselves to be relegated to Old-Agedom, simply be- cause the years had made a certain tally against them. The attitude of adult children toward their parents is not infrequently one of gross injustice, solely because of an erro- neous estimate of the weight of years. When their parents reach the age of about sixty, some children, from a sense of duty or be- cause of loving solicitude, assume the attitude of guardians toward them. " Father " or [4] OLD-AGE BUGABOOS " Mother " is then considered too old to have good judgment in business affairs or to bear responsibilities and, sometimes, even to know what he or she wants to wear, eat or say. Judging by our fear of years and our sub- servience to them, it would seem as if they have some occult control over our lives against which it is useless to struggle. For an allotted period — during youth and early maturity — the nature of this control is gra- cious, but, at a certain prescribed date, it becomes strangely malevolent. Did such fatalistic power inhere in years, we might well pray to die young; but, fortunately, it does not. True, our birthdays recur with unfailing persistency and the years accumulate on every one's record with never a slip — seven, seven- teen, seven times seven, seventy — but birth- days at worst can only indicate traditional old age; they have no power to induce organic old age — the only real oldness. Is a man daunted by the new days, new years, new joys and new experiences which [5J SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG the future holds for him when he says, " I dread to be old " ? No. The act of living attracts us involuntarily. We do not dread to live; we desire to live. Love of life lies in what to-morrow promises quite as much as in what to-day is. Dread of age is dread of certain untoward mental and physical con- ditions which usually, but not necessarily, accompany accumulated years. Other old-age bugaboos that stare from our mirrors and affright us are gray hair, expression-molded features and lines on the face. These physical incidents in themselves do not even denote that a goodly number of years have passed over one's head, much less do they denote organic oldness. A severe shock to the nervous system may turn one's hair white in a single night. Sometimes with- out any discernible cause the hair turns gray before a person is out of his teens. Lines on the face are the record of mental stress and struggle; anxiety, grief, worry, irritability, self-depreciation, and even intense thought lead to the contraction of the muscles which [6] OLD-AGE BUGABOOS causes wrinkles. Tennyson is scientific as well as poetic when he speaks of the " straightened forehead of the fool." The features are molded and informed not by years, but by experience and emotion. Sometimes the work of these invisible artists is beautifying, sometimes disfiguring; sometimes they work swiftly, again they dally and idle for long periods. When a man pulls himself together and, rising from his chair with an effort, says, " I feel pretty old to-day " ; he does not mean that he realizes there is an additional line or a new carving on his face, or that his hair has taken on a grayer tinge. Rather, he is con- scious of lowered vitality, or loss of elasticity, or of the absence of the lightness of spirit which gave zest to his young days. Another old-age bugaboo — a very minor one — that sometimes intimidates the inexpe- rienced, is experience. Wisdom seems old to the callow youth, but this bugaboo is the merest wraith imaginable; a moment's thought dispels it. We all know that oldness [7] SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG is not necessarily concomitant with extensive knowledge and varied experience. Measured in thought and feeling, in accomplishment, in travel and acquaintance with different nations and different phases of life, some people live more in the first thirty years of their lives than some whole families live in several generations. Other old-age bugaboos — literally " mere figments of the mind " — are pessimistic the- ories concerning life : such, for instance, as Max Nordau's, where the genius, the criminal and the foolish are alike theorized into de- generacy. Without doubt, pessimism inocu- lates not a few susceptible people with the mental virus of old age. The effect of mental contagion plus personal timidity Is seen in the prevalent subservience to social opinion. For a man to celebrate his fiftieth or even his fortieth birthday by acting as young as he feels — If he be blest with a .good liver and a sense of humor — for him to be just himself in outward expression without conventional re- serve or hypocrisy or affectation, requires a [8] OLD-AGE bugaboos: degree of individuality to which only a com- paratively small number of persons have yet attained. How often an old-appearing person de- clares, " I'm just as young in my heart as I ever was ! " Why, then, does not he or she live up to such youthfulness of heart? Gen- erally, there is no real obstacle to hinder. The obstacle that seems insurmountable to all save those who have seen " The Gleam " is, as Edward Bellamy puts it, " the blinding, bind- ing influence of conventionality, tradition and prejudice." Madame Grundy might point the finger of ridicule at any who dared to disregard the Take Notice sign that reads, " Conform to Custom." The majority of people are un- consciously afraid of what this satiric old lady might say should they venture from conventional moorings. There is, in reality, no valid reason for such deferential timidity. Madame Grundy is now, as she was when the playwright, Morton, created her, over a cen- tury ago, an arbitress of social destinies who [9] SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG herself never appears on the stage. It was Dame Ashfield's projected imagination that first made, " What will Mrs. Grundy say? " a matter of importance ; and it is our projected imagination and our cowardice that enthrone her to-day. Her sway is wholly dependent upon the homage paid to her by individuals. As soon as a person ceases to cower and cringe, her power over his life ceases. More- over, let a person make a declaration of inde- pendence, act for himself and succeed, then Madame Grundy and all her train will hasten to pay him the high compliment of imitation. No other cause would they espouse more heartily than that of successful venture In the art of postponing oldness. Let us, then, put by the " garments of make-believe." Let us have done with self- deceptions and slavery to bugaboos. Let us rid ourselves of useless fears and agonies of spirit, and without prejudice seek to find a way to postpone the advent of organic old age than which nothing Is more undesired and unlovely. [10] "I met a man the other day who owned to seven-and-seventy-years, and such was his boyishness, that I was almost surprised into feeling old my- , self, in comparison with him. In short, my young friends, this whole affair of old age, about which you hear so much talk, is a canard and a humbug. . . . Fools, and persons who take themselves seriously, are aged at forty; but so are they at any time. We need not consider them. Old age, in plain words, is a defect — a piece of moral or intellectual obliquity — and its source is to be sought, not in years, but in the temperament and character, congenital and acquired, of the individual." — Julian Hawthorne, " Cling to your youth. It is the artist's stock in trade. Don't give up that you are aging and you won't age." — Robert Louis Stevenson. II THE TENDENCY OF THE TIMES In all reforms a few path-blazers lead the way and show the possibilities. The conservative, the doubting, the timid, and those of little faith hang back until the path becomes an accepted thoroughfare; then they gradually try walking in it. The reform in the conduct of personal life which shall render people young at seventy, instead of old at forty, will prove no exception to the general rule. Some sturdy pioneers have already taken up and proven claims to prolonged youngness. By their accomplish- ment, they have established a precedent and made valuable records. Those of us who [13] SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG have sufficient individuality to do so can fol- low their lead and substantiate like claims. That those conditions which mark a man as in his prime are occasionally maintained long beyond the date that old age customarily brands Its victims, cannot be denied by even the most skeptical conservative. Among those whose lives attest this possible retention of mental and physical power are Goethe, who was a " great child " — not childish but childlike — at eighty-three; Tennyson writing the immortal lines, " Crossing the Bar," when he was past eighty ; Thiers, the French repub- lic's Washington, proving his country's savior when he was over four-score years wise; Chevreul, the French chemist, who was a vig- orous worker until his death at one hundred and three years ; John Wesley, who was " top- full of vigor " until his death at eighty-six, and who said, when he was eighty-two, " I am a wonder to myself. It is now twelve years since I have felt any such sensation as fatigue " ; Pope Leo XIII., " elected to the Roman seat at seventy and making his will [14] THE TENDENCY OF THE 'TIMES felt in every nook and corner of the civilized world for a quarter of a century thereafter " ; Mrs. Gilbert, cheerily playing a leading role on the metropolitan stage until, at eighty-five, death loosed the harness ; Cooper, the English artist, who exhibited at the Royal Academy for sixty-seven consecutive years, and of whose pictures, presented when he was ninety-seven, the critics said, " they show the painter's mastery and the unimpaired virility of his brush " ; Julia Ward Howe and Susan B. Anthony, addressing large audiences on re- form measures after more than eighty years of life experience. Miss Anthony said, when she was eighty-five years young : " Before I leave home (Rochester, N. Y.) for the Port- land Fair, I must arrange the birthday sur- prise party for an old lady who lives near me. She's ninety-four." Longevity, In and of Itself, is by no means always desirable. Life may become only a kind of vegetative existence, sans vigor, sans feeling, sans Intelligence. The foregoing records are not. however, merely records of [15J SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG longevity. They are records of the retention of power, of mental and physical activity, and of a live participation in the vital interests of the day. The lists of those who have given personal demonstration of essential youngness at seventy and more years of age might be mul- tiplied, such is the abundance of data. The current press frequently contains such para- graphs as : — " Harper and Brothers announce the seven- tieth edition of ' The Mechanics and Engi- neers' Pocket Book,' by Charles H. Haswell. Mr. Haswell has passed his ninety-fifth birth- day. He is, however, still in active life, car- ries himself erect, dresses most fastidiously, and usually wears a carnation in his button- hole." " Mrs. Frances Alexander is in her ninety- third year and has just translated from the Italian more than one hundred and twenty miracle stories, which are published by Messrs. Little, Brown and Company." " Miss Florence Nightingale celebrated [i6] THE TENDENCY OF THE TIMES her eighty-fourth birthday last month. Her life has been one of continued effort, mental and physical. Up to the present day she has been constantly at work." " Mrs. Freeman, of Redbank, Pa., who was born October 4, 1793, is, indeed, a re- markable old lady. . . . We found Mrs. Freeman and her eighty-two years' old son about a quarter of a mile from their house. To attain to the extreme age of one hundred and twelve years and still retain one's mental faculties and physical vigor Is an achievement that falls to the lot of very few. Mrs. Freeman's sight is good and she does not use glasses. Every day, except in ex- tremes of weather, she may be seen trudging about the hillsides near her home. In summer she spades and tills a good-sized garden." This ever increasing amount of irrefutable evidence which proves that physical and men- tal vigor can be retained to the ninth and tenth decade of life is, doubtless, partly the cause of the noticeable change that has taken place in public sentiment regarding age [17J SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG boundaries. Certain it is, that during the last few years public sentiment has been grow- ing decidedly in favor of extending these boundaries. Thirty years ago, nearly all novelists pic- tured their heroines as specimens of " budding womanhood." They gave sixteen and eight- een years as the prime of feminine attract- iveness. If one of their women characters were not married by the time that she was twenty-one or, at latest, twenty-three, she vir- tually was laid upon the matrimonial table with never an advocate to offer a resolution for her further consideration. Formerly, in real life, an unmarried girl twenty-five years of age received the unhon- orary degree of " Old Maid." Popularly interpreted, this meant old and unlovable at twenty-five — too old to hope ever to awaken love in the heart of any man. In recent works of fiction, the heroine in her teens has become almost obsolete. In her stead appear girls and women of widely differing ages; the majority are between [i8] THE TENDENCY OF THE 'TIMES twenty-two and thirty years of age. In some instances women with thirty-eight and forty years to their credit have been set forth as the central figure in a successful novel, nota- bly, Mrs. Faulkner in " The Choir Invisible." To-day, in real life, a girl only twenty-five years old is somewhat young to receive the most favorable considerations in the matri- monial lists. Statistics of the last decade show that the marrying age that is now most in vogue with women is twenty-nine. Popular " Bachelor Maids " have sup- planted unpopular " Old Maids." What sig- nificant changes, personally and socially, does the happier term imply! The "Bachelor Maid " is Independent, up-to-date, charming. Fler degree does not mean social ostracism on account of age. On the contrary, the self-possession, the experience, the awakened sympathy, and the enrichment of mind which are the happy bestowment of the few years between sixteen and twenty-five or thirty, give her distinctive advantage, socially, over the immaturity of her sixteen years' old sister. [19] SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG The fact that the " Bachelor Maid " is not married is no more placed to her discredit or counted against her attractiveness, to-day, than is the same single state put on the debit side of her bachelor brother's social account. It went without saying, formerly, that a woman who was a grandmother was an " old woman," or, at best, " a nice old lady." The proverbial chimney-corner chair, or some un- obtrusive position — such as that of general household helper — was tacitly conceded to be her legitimate place. To-day, instead of being retired or of becoming second-grade helpers, grandmothers are realizing that they are equipped to stand at the helm and steer. They are directors of homes, of business enter- prises, of women's clubs. They are society dictators, and even stars in grand and comic opera. The fact that a woman Is a grandmother or a great-grandmother does not deter her from taking a four years' course of prescribed study, mastering a foreign language, being a member of a physical culture class or a dan- [20] THE TENDENCY OF THE' TIMES cing class, studying music, organizing a relief association, going into commercial life, financing large industrial enterprises, writing scientific and popular books, or taking a trip around the world. Indeed, it is quite the popular thing for grandmothers to " im- prove " themselves In such fashion. What woman Is there, rich in the expe- rience of many years of growth and accom- plishment, who will not sympathize with the feeling expressed by Mrs. Antoinette Brown Blackwell at a meeting of The Woman's Pro- fessional League of New York City? The subject for the day's discussion was " Prog- ress." Mrs. Blackwell — the first woman reg- ularly ordained as a minister In this country — was one of the speakers. A preceding speaker had exhibited a foot-stove, such as In more primitive days used to be carried to church to keep the feet warm. When Mrs. Blackwell rose, she said : " I have been made to feel to-day as If I were my own great- grandmother 1 I used to carry one of those little ' foot-warmers.' So, you see, I have [2lJ SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG belonged to a period of society whose fashions are to-day historical curiosities; but, notwith- standing this previous participation in a life now quite obsolete, I feel that I am also a vital part of this present wonderful age of progress. I am in hearty accord with the purpose of this organization of women. Am I not a 'feature' on to-day's programme? Can you not understand, then, how the sight of that little foot-stove takes me generations backward from my present life and interests, and makes me feel as if I were my own great- grandmother? " May not an exceptional woman who lives long enough to be her own great-grand- mother, and who is still vigorous in interest, sympathy and action, be the exemplar of many fortunate women in generations to come? The tendency of the times points that way. [22] " Hear, O my son, and receive my saying; And the years of thy life shall be many. " I have taught thee in the way of wisdom " — Proverbs iv, i o- 1 1 . " For by me thy days shall be multi- plied. And the years of thy life shall be increased. " — Proverbs ix, 1 1 . Ill NO " TIME-EXPIRED " MEN " This preachment about being seventy years young," declared an ultra-orthodox woman, " is not only contrary to nature, but it is also sacrilegious ! It is like setting an individ- ual's petty opinions against divine authority! There is no reason for doubting that the Biblical allotment of ' three-score years and ten,' for the average length of man's life, is a divine ordinance as much as anything else in the Bible is." It takes a long hark back to the days of superstition and religious bigotry, when to neglect and scourge the body were deemed essential to the salvation of the soul, to under- [25] SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG stand how anybody in this progressive twen- tieth century can be troubled in spirit by such self-torturing questions. Atavism must be the explanation. Strange, too, that so many per- sons are mistaken regarding this personal bit of Biblical lore. Even Mark Twain made this statement at his seventieth birthday ban- quet: "Three-score years and ten — it is the scriptural statute of limitation. After that you owe no active duties ; for you, the strenu- ous life is over. You are a ' Time-Expired ' man, to use Kipling's military phrase." The Bible does not admonish man to be prepared for a three-score years and ten limit to earthly existence; it does not suggest that it would be wise to chloroform people or to put them out of commission at that age; it does not teach that to conduct one's life so that one shall be young, practically, at seventy years is contrary to divine or to psychologic law. The Ninetieth Psalm is not prophetic; it is " A prayer of Moses, the man of God." In it he makes this statement to the Lord concerning his own people and his own time : [26] NO "TIME-EXPIRED" MEN "The days of our years are threescore years and ten. Or even by reason of strength fourscore years." Moses does not say that the years of the following generations shall be so limited, or that they ought to be. Simply that the years of his own people are thus and so. One can but wonder why mankind has not chosen the leader's life, instead of the lives of those who were led, as a standard for the span of their preordained life. The Biblical authority re- garding Moses' age is, " He was an hundred and twenty years old when he died;" and, " his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated." And note the words of Isaiah. Isaiah does not make statements about the existing condi- tions of his own time. He speaks in the future tense; he prophesies, saying, " The spirit of the Lord is upon me." Part of this hopeful forecast of the good times that are in store for the righteous is that " the child shall die an hundred years old." The expression, " a child an hundred years old," is, of course, figurative. A child in [27] SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG literal definition is a person who has lived only a few years — any number less than ma- turity. We outgrow the especially distinguish- ing marks of childhood during life's first score of years. The physical body reaches man's or woman's stature. Mentally, one becomes accustomed to the universe and all the marvels thereof. The brain having been continuously and variously acted upon by ex- ternal environments becomes habituated to such action. The individual loses the charm of childhood's wonderment. At twenty he takes the perpetual miracles of daily life — birth, death, day and night, the sun, moon, the seasons, the life of a bee, and the growth of a blade of grass — as a matter of course, unfortunately much as middle-aged and eld- erly people do. May not " a child an hundred years old " be prescient words that foretell to what life may eventually attain when men better under- stand and obey the laws of their being? May they not Imply that It is within man's ability so to conserve and economically utilize his [28] NO "TIME-EXPIRED" MEN vital energy that he may live an hundred years of rich, abounding life, that he may appro- priate all the wealth of experience that those years yield, and yet remain in spiritual atti- tude a child? May he not, in very truth, be childlike, i.e., interested, enthusiastic, genuine, spontaneous, receptive of mind and sympa- thetic of heart? May he not be a child in normal physical manifestations, i.e., be health- ful, sturdy, thoroughly alive and alert; free, flexible, mobile in every movement; harmoni- ous and joyous in expression? It would be no more wonderful for man thus to control the building forces of his brain and body, through an understanding of their operative laws, than it is wonderful that, through a partial mastery of certain laws of physics, he controls the forces swirling around the world sufficiently to speak across eighteen hundred miles of ocean without a material medium for the transmission of vibrations. [29] "I go to concert, party, ball — what profit is in these? I sit alone against the wall and strive to look at ease. The incense that is mine by right they burn before her shrine ; And that's because I'm seventeen and she is forty-nine." — Rudyard Kipling. "At sixty-two life has begun; At seventy-three begin once more; Fly swifter as thou near'st the sun. And brighter shine at eighty-four. At ninety-five Shouldst thou arrive. Still wait on God, and work and thrive." — Oliver Wendell Holmes. IV CONCERNING BIRTHDAYS The regular reckoning of birthdays makes for old age. What good fortune it would be if people in general were to forget the year of their birth, as they forget the incidents of the first years of their lives. Many persons who are now staidly and uninterestingly se- date would be quite different and younger in expression if they were uncertain whether twenty or sixty years had slipped by since they were born. Civilized man cannot entirely lose this per- sonal reckoning with his own past, but he can refuse to dwell on the figures of his life as they climb up. It Is quite possible to keep only an Indifferent tally on them — one subject to [33] SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG shrinkage. Why, after all, are the years of one's life given such importance? If you are my friend, does it matter to me in what year you were born? Do I love you because of your age, or because of what you yourself are ? If you are a stranger and have a message for my spirit, is your year record of any more in- terest to me than is your height or weight rec- ord? Does it make any difference whether Emerson was twenty-three or sixty-three when he wrote "The Over-Soul"? Were Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning less ideal types of lovers because she was thirty-nine and he was thirty-three when they first met ? Did it signify to the hundreds of wounded soldiers ministered to by the " Good Gray Poet " in what year he was born ? Does the mere inci- dent of age by itself ever increase or decrease the area of sympathy between two men or two women ? Do we not sometimes cordially dis- like people of our own age, and are we not often devotedly attached to people of an age much greater or less than our own ? It is not the age element, primarily, but the content of [34J CONCERNING BIRTHDATS a person's being, plus his or her attractiveness or unattractiveness in personal expression, that endears or repels in human commerce. Birthday records have a demoralizing influ- ence on our mental attitude toward ourselves. We feel as young, as full of life and enthusi- asm as we ever did; but a birthday announces that we have lived twenty-eight or forty or fifty-five years. Some figure — according to our preconceived ideas of propriety — means for us a parting of the ways. It is time to "settle down"; so we do it, mentally and physically. Whoever so settles and allows daily life to degenerate Into dull routine opens wide the door to old age. William Dean Howells says, " Whatever Is established is sacred — to those who do not think." Lack of thought, lack of sympathy with the other person's viewpoint must be the explanation of the sacred atmosphere with which many people, sentimental and prosaic, surround birthdays, especially the birthdays of those advanced In years. Would It not be con- siderate to omit progressive birthday parties ? [35] SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG Does not the secret pain they cause outweigh any transient pleasure they may give? Can any alive adult be made happier by being reminded every twelve months of his or her increasing age? If friends desire to give a dear one a pres- ent, or to burn candles in that one's honor, why, let it be done occasionally, not on a stated occasion — the birth anniversary. Cer- tainly, the custom of rating ourselves and others on Life's lists according to the year in which each happened to be born is one from which no advantage accrues and, often, much disadvantage. Such rating is sometimes un- kind to the point of cruelty. A person of capable mind and vigorous body must feel much as does an innocent per- son imprisoned for crime, when he is con- fronted with age statistics that debar him from being a candidate for official, political, professional, clerical or commercial recogni- tion. There is no equity in a personal rating based on years. " Some are old in heart at [36] CONCERNING BIRTHDAYS forty, and some are young at eighty," said Charles Reade. The same wide latitude must be allowed to mental and physical abilities. Violent exercise might prove dangerous to most men after the age of sixty, but a man now eighty-four years of age has taught boxing in New York City for the last half century and " is still actively following his profession." He declares that he finds that exercise exhil- arating to mind and body. William Cullen Bryant, writing " Thanatopsis " at nineteen years of age, had a mental grasp far beyond the reach of many people at any age ; making a standing jump of several feet when he was sixty-three, he was younger than the average man of half that number of years; translating the " Iliad " at seventy-six, he was not old in the true sense of the word. When birthday records are clearly such unreliable standards of measurement of man's physical condition, intellectual abilities and personal attractiveness, is it not strange that the great majority of people revert to them so persistently? From the cradle to one's [37] SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG epitaph, the years of one's life are naggingly flaunted before one. If a man marries or dies, commits a crime or founds a hospital, one of the first questions is, " How old is he? " Pos- sibly the emphasis put upon years by those dealing with young children is largely the cause for the unwarranted influence that years have over adult minds. Who has not been guilty of magnifying the importance of years to young children? It is the exceptional one-in-a-thousand adult who, in " making conversation " with children or in trying to be " nice " to them, does not fall back on the trite questions, " What is your name?" and "How old are you?" While from parents, grandparents, aunts and cousins, a little child is ever and again hear- ing about its age. Psychology teaches that, " According as a function receives daily exercise or not, the man becomes a different kind of being later in life." The habit of so continuously calling a child's attention to its age tends to ingrain deep among the first and most enduring impres- [38] CONCERNING BIRTHDAYS sions on the " brain-stuff " a wrong estimate of the importance of years, per se; moreover, its direct Influence on the child may be bad — negatively so on a child of self-assertive tend- encies, and positively so on a child of a timid, sensitive nature. A boy of self-assertive tendencies often comes to look upon his " so many years old " as a personal aggrandizement. Such a little fellow will boast, " I'm seven years old, and Bobbie's only six ! " He takes credit to himself for his years as something for which he deserves reward or praise. To the shy, backward child, the conscious- ness of his accumulating years is shame. He shrinks before them, humiliated. His sensi- tive spirit quivers under such accusations as, " He is small for his age, isn't he? " or, " He hasn't grown an inch in two years ! " Or, "Ten years oldl Is it possible! Why, he isn't any taller than my Harold, who is only eight!" If a child has not gone through certain books at a certain age, in accordance with the prescribed grind, he is known at [39] SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG school as " not very bright " or " dull " or " stupid "; and at home receives, at best, in- dulgent pity. All this is immeasurably wrong. Most children have intermittent pe- riods of growth, mental and physical. Because a longer time than is usual happens to inter- vene between some of these periods in the development of some children, there is no war- rant for making them self-conscious and mis- erable by taunting them about their age. A child who is not up to the average expectancy in development at a certain age may be ahead of it three or four years later. Slow develop- ment is not the sign of final under-develop- ment any more than youthful precocity is the sign of adult mental preeminence. Seventy years old, not young, people are given to harping tediously on their age — not infrequently in a boastful spirit. Is not such tiresome iteration, also due, at least partly, to the fact that from babyhood up their atten- tion has been too much focused on the mere time measurement of life? Have not birth- day records been a potent factor in leading [40] CONCERNING BIRTHDAYS them to think about the years they have lived and the years they hope to live, to the gradual exclusion of thinking about living any year or day in the most helpful and healthful man- ner ? The vital question concerning any man at any age is, What is he doing with his life? not. In what year was he born? . Birthdays, if recognized at all, should be celebrated in a similar manner to the celebra- tion of Christmas, when it is spiritual in char- acter — that is, in the spirit of love and of thankfulness for our Saviour's life-lesson. We do not truly celebrate any birthday unless we rejoice because of what the love of and for that child, parent, brother, sister, husband, wife or friend means to us; otherwise, such celebrations are merely unthinking adherence to an established custom. Certain young women in society, who are perennially " past twenty-two," and who step with graceful agility from out their own set when It Is thinned out by Cupid's arrows Into the ranks of the next younger set, inaugurate a fashion that is worthy of universal adoption. [41J SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG All women who have passed their thirtieth birthday, and most men who have passed their fortieth, wish secretly, if not avowedly, that they could stop the hands on life's dial. And why should they not? Why should they not follow the example of the charming French- woman who " forgot to remember her birth- days " ? If there must be some specific nu- meral attached to the day on which one's family and friends especially express their gladness because one was born, why not let each adult choose a figure to his or her liking and then live up to it, or, more probably, down to it? As a fascinating young grand- mother wrote to her husband on a birthday spent apart from him, " Dear, to-day I'm having another thirty-third birthday." Often a birthday sets a man to philoso- phizing in this vein: " Well, I'm forty-eight, or fifty-two! There ought to be fifteen or twenty years more of work in me. I must make the most of them and try to get ahead somewhat more." Frankly interpreted, these words mean: " Old age is after me! I must [42j CONCERNING BIRTHDAYS " hurry up and make all the money I can before it overtakes me." (It makes no difference in his mental attitude if he already possesses more than enough for comfort and ease.) " I must discount the present and prepare for the future. I cannot afford to give any time to the enjoyment of the passing hour." This is relinquishing two birds in the hand for an uncertain one in the bush. Courageously to challenge the present day to yield us its fullest measure of growth and happiness is to make the best, as well as the " most," of all the years of one's life. Res- olutely to refuse even in one's secret thoughts to set an age limit to one's ability to work and to enjoy is far-seeing wisdom — the wisdom that safeguards us from old-age habits. [43] "Would you know the secret of the far-famed elixir of life, perpetual youth? It is versatility — the power to coax and capture the new. The ever young means the ever new." — "Some Philos- ophy of the Hermetics. ' ' "The greatest loss any person can sustain is that of his childhood. So long as the child survives in the man he is Kving, but when that is gone he is no better than a mummy-case. A childlike man is far better than an old- manny boy." — W. W. Story. OLD AGE A CONDITION Father Time is, at worst, only " accessory to the crime " of killing our youth when we are two- or three-score or a few more years of age. It is the way in which the years are lived which determines whether their effect on any individual shall be for growth and health, or for stagnation and death. After we say good-by to our 'teens the impress of the years upon us is generally of a somewhat deadening and destructive nature, and becomes ever more and more so, as the years pile up against us. But it is possible so to live that their impress on our lives shall be as it was on Agassiz's life, of whom David Starr Jordan says: " When Agassiz died, ' the best friend [47J SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG that ever student had,' the students of Har- vard laid a wrea,th of laurel on his bier, and their manly voices sang a requiem, for he had been a student all his life long, and when he died he was younger than any of them." All of us instinctively shrink from decrepi- tude, infirmity, stiffness of body, loss of facul- ties, chronic invalidism. And well we may, for these are essential attributes of the condi- tion called old age. Some of the more subtle attributes are setness of mind, chronic garrul- ousness, avarice, self-centeredness, loss of attention and a creeping paralysis 'of the affections. It makes no difference at what calendar record this deteriorating condition com- mences, whether it be at twenty-five or sev- enty-five years of age ; it, in itself, is genuine oldness. Such deterioration means that a person has not the ability, or perchance the inclination, to act with unconscious spontaneity as he once did. He who is, in very truth, old, has lost much of his physical vigor and rebound, his [48] OLD AGE A CONDITIO^ enthusiasm has waned, his interests have nar- rowed and become stale, and his affections have become anaemic. Professor Elie Metchnikoff, who is one of the most authoritative biologists of the pres- ent time, says that old age is a disease in the literal sense of the word, and that it may be combated as any other disease is; that it belongs to the group of disease known as " atrophies," and that " senile atrophy " (old age) " is the combination of many lesser atrophies." Specifically considered oldness means mus- cular setness, immobility; youngness means muscular freedom, mobility. Oldness means weak, flaccid muscles; youngness means strong, firm muscles. Oldness means a stiffness of joints as contrasted with the flexibility of " supple-jointed " youngness. Oldness means a stooped or stiff attitude as contrasted with the erect, pliant attitude of youngness. Old- ness means inertness, heaviness of movement, as contrasted with the alertness and buoyancy of youth. [49] SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG To be old In thought and feeling is to be dull, blase, apprehensive, calculating. To be spiritually young Is to be fresh in interest, light of heart, trustful. To be old is to be conservative, timid, reiterative. To be young Is to be venturesome, courageous, versatile. To be old Is to be fogified, opinionated, sel- fish, unloving. To be young is to be eager, receptive, generous, loving. Oldness means a preference! for sameness, monotony, the established order — good or bad — as con- trasted with change, reform, innovations. It means a despondent, harking-back mental habit as contrasted with the just-be-glad spirit of expectant youth. Whoever will, may earn a long postpone- ment of these dire old-age conditions. The word " earn " is used advisedly. There is no royal road, no purchasable right of way to the El Dorado of Seventy Years Young. All who there arrive must work their way. Not only Is " eternal vigilance " necessary, but eternal Interest and eternal activity, mental and physical. [50] OLD AGE A CONDITION " There Is no danger so great, so universal, as mental arrest. Decadence is sure to fol- low."* Only by daily harmonious use of all of one's being — faculties, functions, senses, muscles — can one earn the right to prolonged possession of them. Everywhere, from the jelly-fish to man, activity signifies life. Stag- nant water Is foul. Non-use or under-use of a faculty or a muscle causes deterioration, atro- phy, old age. Excess of activity, or the wrong use of any part of the organism, depletes, weakens, ages. Those who would live long and be young, then, should avoid : ( i ) Under-activity — easy indolence of mind, dulled sensibilities and in- ert physical expression. (2) Over-activity — intellectual, emotional and physical stress con- tinued to the point of exhaustion. (3) Per- verted activity — In any of the well-known ways. In order that we may be resistant to old-age disease, the wear and tear of daily life must be made good by new blood — physical re- * Dr. G. Stanley Hall, Chautauqua Herald, August 4th, 1905. [51J SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG building — and by new and ever finer control of the spiritual energies. The energy re- ceived through rest and the vital processes must be equivalent to that expended in mental, emotional and physical activity. Dr. W. G. Hammond, former Surgeon-General of the United States Army, says, " If such equilib- rium could be established, there is no physio- logical reason why man should not live on indefinitely." A mlllenium condition, say you ! Not possible in the hurry-up times of the twentieth century! Every recognized good is approximately possible, right here and now. Arthur McFarlane, in his interesting arti- cle, " Prolonging the Prime of Life,"* says : — " Professor Metchnikoff, who describes himself as ' an optimist on scientific grounds,' believes that man does not live the natural span of life, that the score of years now al- lotted to the state of ' middle age ' should, and will be In the not distant future, two-, *McClure^s Magazine, September, 1905. [52] OLD AGE A CONDITION three-, or four-score. This is modern science returning to the ' hundred and forty years ' which Buffon set down as man's natural life from the logic and evidence of comparative zoology." The vital balance between the day's dam- age and the day's repair will not be struck off by any one single effort. There must be a growing series of penny savings in the daily output and of penny gains in the daily replen- ishment of one's physical capital, in order to make such a balance even approximately pos- sible. Every time we gain a wiser, a more economical guidance of our nervous energy in the performance of any physical act, as walking; every time we stimulate an inactive organ, as a sluggish, melancholic liver by ex- ercise ; every time we make a better condition for a restorative process, as deep breathing; every time we conjure mental serenity by the physical expression of that state, as in relax- ing the jaw when one is impatient; every time we shift our mental slides and replace an ugly, disheartening picture by a pleasing one; in [53] SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG short, every time we use our dynamic will- energy toward self-government and health, instead of succumbing to the insidious tend- ency to deterioration, we are saving and making pennies of that wealth which Emer- son ranks as first, namely, health. Every ad- ditional health-penny lifts a person one re- move further from the physical and mental bankruptcy of old age. [54] "In habit and interest we find the psychological poles corresponding to the lowest and the highest activities of the nervous system. . . . "The nervous process passes from the stage of fresh accumulation to the stage of habit by the law of downward growth. . . . New relations are in- teresting; the nervous growth is 'up- ward,' involving higher integrations." — James Mark Baldwin. "A settled, unchangeable, clearly foreseeable order of things does not suit our constitution. It tends to melan- choly and a fatty heart!" — Henry Van Dyke. VI HABIT AND OLD AGE " We must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can, and we should guard against the growing into ways that are likely to be disad- vantageous to us as we would guard against the plague."* " Growing into ways " — either good or bad — is simply being dominated by habit. Some habits are advantageous, and some are " dis- advantageous " to us. As a conserver of nervous energy, the auto- matic or habit-way of physical action is highly * James*s "Psychology.** [57J SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG advantageous. It Is in the nature of " ex- plaining the obvious " to say that the sover- eign control that habit early assumes over the multiplicity of our daily acts gives to our higher faculties the freedom necessary for their best growth and development. Other- wise, one's time and energy would be con- sumed in the execution of such ordinary acts as standing, walking, bathing, dressing and eating; while reading, writing, sewing and dancing would be overwhelmingly laborious and imperfect processes. As it is, habit makes the performance of these and innumer- able other acts of daily life almost automatic. The thinking, willing, loving self gives little more than the initial impulse to their execu- tion. Obviously, to wish to be free from habit's control, in these essential daily acts, would be wishing for unbearable burdens; but, as Edward Howard Griggs says: " It is as necessary that one should be able to break the routine of habit for adequate cause as it is that one should relegate much of life to the ' custody of automatism.' , . . To trust [58] HABIT AND OLD AGE to the mechanism of habit alone is to Invite moral atrophy or disaster."* As an enslaver of body and brain to the old, to the accustomed, the habit-way is most " disadvantageous " to us. It is the aging way. Unless we are vigilantly on guard we shall be caught napping and awake to find ourselves habit-bound, prejudiced, set, old. Like presumptuous, grasping people, who take an ell if they are given an Inch, habit is ever lying in wait for a chance to monopolize the whole domain of man's being. Such ab- solute despotism over the whole domain by a ruler, who commands excellently well in cer- tain minor provinces, would be disastrous In the extreme to man's progress and his higher possibilities. The phrases " good habits " and " bad habits " are generally used restrlctively. They stand sponsor for a certain few well recog- nized virtues and vices. A " peculiar habit " stands for some glaring mannerism or eccen- tricity of expression. Not infrequently, we ♦Griggs's "Moral Education." [59] SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG hear a person boasting that " he has no bad habits," or he may confess to a single, lone one. As a matter of fact, the most scrupulous and conscientious person doubtless has a dozen or more habits that are " disadvan- tageous " to him or her — really had habits. Over-conscientiousness is in itself a pernicious habit. Many so-called " regular habits " are chronic, bad, aging habits. Habits include not only our personal cus- toms, but our manners, our expressions, and our ways of doing things, great and small. The way a man sits, stands, walks, the way he carries his head and the way his head carries his hat ; the way he bows, smiles, frowns ; the way he eats and drinks; the way he ties his necktie and unties his shoes ; not only the way he speaks and acts, but, also, the way he refrains from speaking and acting — his inhi- bitions — are all habits that tend to fasten themselves on him and ever afterwards to repeat themselves as much as does the habit of drink tend to enslave a man — once let It get hold of him. [60] HABIT AND OLD AGE Behind all external habits are thought and emotion habits — the habit of tick-tack, tick- tack thinking; the habit of imaginative, bright thinking; of humorous and of dolorous thinlc- ing; of profound, comprehensive thinking and of narrow, bigoted thinking; of analytic and of synthetic thinking; of pessimistic and of optimistic thinking. There are habits of despondency, surliness, procrastination, gen- tleness, hopefulness, ambition, selfishness, as.- plration, happiness. All habits come Into being in much the same way. The person who is to be blessed or cursed by them is usually quite unconscious of their birth and growth. Some stimulus from the outside world causes a current of nerve energy to be carried to the brain over nerves of sensation, sight, sound, smell or taste. This current makes an impression on the brain. What is called a " discharge " then takes place ; this means that a current of nerve energy goes downward from the brain Into some of the muscles and vital organs. The path this current makes is the beginning [6i] SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG of a habit. The next time that the brain re- ceives a similar impression, the nervous dis- charge from it to the outlying bodily territory will tend to be over the same path that the previous discharge took ; for that route is the easiest, just as it is easier for man number two to follow in the footsteps of man number one who plowed his way through a deep fall of snow, than for man number two to make an entirely new path for himself. It is still easier for man number three to follow the two preceding men, and so on, until soon every pedestrian, automatically, takes the same path. This process of habit-forming which in- volves outward stimulus, brain impression and motor reaction, is described somewhat differently by different psychologists. One authority states that the impression on the brain " sets up a vibration of nerves and cells; and that cells and nerves would repeat pre- vious vibrations more easily than make orig- inal ones." But it matters not whether actual paths are ingrained in the brain substance, or [62] HABIT AND OLD AGE its cells are vibrated without making any such record. The fact Is Incontrovertible that fa- cility comes by repetition. Thus are habits born. Habits of action are, clearly, subject to man's volition. A man whose habit It is tc stand stoop-shouldered, drink beer and use slang, can, if he will, stand erect, drink water instead of beer and use good English instead of perverted. With habits of thinking and feeling, it may appear to be different; they often seem to be insidiously self-operative. We think and feel along certain lines for no traceable reason and quite against our will. Simply, we so think and feel — and " that's the end of it." It may be the end of it, but It is not the beginning. For thinking and emotional habits originate in the same way that a habit of the feet or any other part of the body does. Thoughts and feelings are not primarily self-inducing. They are dependent for their first impulse upon some stimulus from the out- side world. Something exterior must first [63] SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG make an appeal to the brain, or some object must first arouse the affections. After a line of thought has been initiated, or an emotion experienced, memory and imagination can re- peat them and make them habitual without any outside help. One awakens in the dead of night when darkness and silence shut out all the usual brain exciting stimuli and immediately falls to pondering a mathematical problem, plan- ning a business scheme, or rehearsing some distressful event that has occurred — or that may never occur. One might plausibly rea- son : " If memory and imagination can be the exciting causes of such habits, is not the per- son who so thinks powerless to protect him- self? Who can help remembering what he remembers? To try to forget is only to remember more vividly." That is true or not, according to the forgetting process employed. To say that one must forget, must not dwell on distressful events and, at the same time, mentally to image and rehearse the details of the incident that is to be forgotten, only [64] HABIT AND OLD AGE makes the original impression deeper in the memory-wax Instead of obliterating or ob- scuring It. The volitional guidance that shall enable us to get somewhat the better of pernicious mental habits, will proceed in manner other than this. It will rout the undesirable mental state not by denial, but by substitution. By a push of the ivill the attention will be directed to other subjects than the one that seeks monopoly of the thoughts. That is the first step; the second is to arouse some degree of interest, however reluctant and feeble it may be. In the new subject by establishing a motor relationship with it. For instance, suppose some frightful calamity has deprived me of the one person dearest to my life. The shock comes with such Impelling force, the brain impression is so vivid and the tendency to its motor reactions Is so strong, that the abil- ity to respond to anything else beneath the stars seems gone. A deadening mental and physical apathy settles upon me. Now, mem- ory and Imagination, uninterrupted and un- [65J SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG checked, would lead me to re-live, over and over again, the harrowing details of the calamity, and to dwell despondently upon the loss sustained, to the exclusion of all other thoughts and emotions. Melancholia is but a few removes from such reiterative, depress- ing mental action. But some friend, or some incident, or some chance word, makes me aware of my perilous mental condition. My will now consciously enters the field against memory and imagination. It forces my reluc- tant and listless attention elsewhere; perhaps to some unfulfilled obligation, to some one's necessity which I might relieve, or even to some simple household duty. It then re- enforces the hold of these subjects upon my attention by making me act in relation to them. It compels me — albeit much against my inclination — to visit the lawyer or agent; to contribute to the needs of another by physi- cally exerting myself, or to employ my hands in household ministering. Physical action, the mere objective doing of something, is the medicine that often pre- [66] HABIT AND OLD AGE serves the mind's balance in times of great emotional stress. The psychological expla- nation is that such motor action itself becomes a new stimulus to the brain; it diverts the nerve energy from its stressful and limited territory, and sends it over paths other than those established by the shock of sorrow. This diversion of the mind's activity brings alleviation. Nature's restorative processes can now have fair play. Rest, recuperation, newness of life follow. Sanity is thus main- tained. Self-centered, reiterative habits of. think- ing, whether the subject thought upon be reli- gion, reform, chess, sorrow or sin, should be fought against with all the strength of one's will. In very truth, " that way madness lies." Many people instinctively reahze this. We hear people who perhaps have never given a moment's study to the action of the mind make such remarks as, " Well ! I simply could not stand itl I had to get away! I think I should have gone crazy if I had heard that over again!" or, "I felt as If I should [67J SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG scream ! He so insistently said the same thing over and over ! " Reiterative mental processes are more de- structive whenever a personal feeling or an emotion is Involved, but dangerous mental stress also results from those of a wholly im- personal nature, such as monotonous work. The case of a young woman typewriter which came under the writer's notice is an illustra- tion in point. She received a commission for several thousand copies of the same letter to be executed as soon as possible. Great as was her desire to do the work speedily, she found each day that after carrying the same sentences in her mind quite a number of times, It was absolutely Imperative to have mental change, to read, or talk, or get Into the open air, or even to typewrite something else. In describing the effect of the ceaseless mental repetition of the same words, she pathetically said, " It was simply horrible ! I could not endure It! " This discussion of mental states, of habits — their coming and possible overcoming — [68] HABIT AND OLD AGE may seem far afield and quite unrelated to the main theme of this book. It is not, however, a by-the-way digression. The conclusion forced upon us by the study of the mind's action, pushed a step farther, leads logically to the way suggested in the following chap- ters for retaining youngness of mind and body. If too exclusive concentration upon one line of thought, or too dominant usurpation of the mental realm by one kind of emotion, will produce the abnormal condition of the mind called insanity, is it not justifiable to conclude that the restriction of the mind to a few lim- ited lines of thought, and to a few well-worn emotions, which are outwardly manifested in nearly the self-same semi-automatic physical actions, must inevitably tend to lessen interest and mental vigor, to lessen physical strength, elasticity and resistance? And is not such lessening of powers oldness, or, at least, its beginning? [69] " There is in every society the dan- ger of settling down into fixed forms. Hence the need for the perpetual affir- mation of the individual will and ideal.' ' — Edward Howard Griggs. "It is monotony which eats the heart out of joy, destroys the buoyancy of spirit, and turns hope to ashes; it is monotony which saps the vitality of the emotions, depletes the energy of the will, and finally turns the mir- acle of daily existence into dreary com- monplace." —Hamilton W. Mabie. VII KEEP OUT OF RUTS Keep out of ruts — ruts of thinking, feeling, talking, acting, living! That is the physio- logical and psychological recipe for prolonged youngness. Every person who would keep old age at bay should seek newness of experience, of thought, emotion, environment, association and personal expression. He should eagerly seek to do old accustomed acts in a new way. To do only what it has been our habit to do, is to lose the power to do the new. Dr. Hal- leck in " Education of the Nervous System " says : " The purpose of education is to make reactions from impressions numerous and per- [73J SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG feet." Reactions from impressions are, at least, partially voluntary. By responding en- thusiastically to new stimuli, we retain the power to respond. When a man loses this power, when he no longer has zest for growth, when he is unwilling to take the initiative In behalf of his youth, he joins the ranks of these who are marching heedlessly over the smooth, broad highway to Old-Agedom. " We are as lazy as we dare to be," says Emerson. Many of us are too daring in this respect for our own safety. We are nega- tively good-natured; we are temperamentally inclined " to let things slide." We do not realize how we jeopardize the very conditions that make life prized when we allow our- selves to fall into self-indulgent grooves, men- tal and physical. The self-complacency that prides itself in " taking things easy " may lead to degeneracy; for not only is self-activity of mind and body essential to growth, but it is also essential to the retention of what one now possesses. In no other way can one hope to hold one's own. Verily, it behooves us [74J KEEP OUT OF RUTS to be interested and to express our interest, objectively. " One may mope Into a shade through thinking, or else drowse Into a dreamless sleep and so die off! " To yield to the habit of easy acquiescence, indifference, lassitude or inertness is gradually to paralyze the faculty of effort. Such paraly- sis is a sure sign that the years are beginning to down the man. The cure — or better, the ounce of prevention — is, " Keep the faculty of effort alive by giving it a little gratuitous exercise every day," as Professor James ad- monishes. Dr. Lavender advises in the same vein when, speaking of a neighbor, he says: " He's allowed himself to grow old. Hasn't walked down the hill and back in three years. . . . For my part, I have made a rule about such things, which I commend to you, young man : As soon as you feel too old to do a thing, DO it!"* By " energetic volition " we must keep our- selves free from the too restrictive dominance * Ddand's "The Awakening of Helena Richie." [75J SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG of habit. Restrictive not only in bodily ac- tions, but also in our higher mental processes; for, unless we safeguard ourselves by resolute will-action in the opposite direction, our thoughts and emotions are liable to fall into the realm of automatism — practically, to do themselves. As Dr. Carpenter says: "Our nervous systems have grown to the way in which they have been exercised, just as a sheet of paper once creased or folded tends to fall forever afterward in the same Identical folds." Man must summon his judgment, will and im- agination to the rescue, and protect his future against this old-age tendency of the nervous system. He must make himself do the new act, make himself take the new mental atti- tude, make himself listen without prejudice to the new doctrine, and make himself not oppose the " new-fangled " enterprise because it Is new. Ruts are hazardous to Intellectual keenness, to spiritual perception and to youngness of body. As an unknown writer says: " Variety Is not only the spice of life; It Is a necessary [76] KEEP OUT OF RUTS ingredient. Unbroken monotony is inconsist- ent with mental vigor; and the more sensitive the mental tissue the more it cries out against monotony." Change, change is the law of Nature, the law of life abundant. To live in the rut of dull routine inevitably narrows one's whole life and shortens the life of one's youthful- ness, if no more. Routine there must be in the great majority of occupations — house- keeping, teaching, farming, in all mechanical, manual and clerical work. Still the out- look Is not so bad. While routine must ac- company the machinery of daily civilized life, it need not be dull, unvaried routine. Each person must here be his own keeper — the keeper of his youth. When we cling to old ideas, old prejudices, old styles of dress, old business custonis, old Vi'ays of doing things, little and big, in short, when we live in ruts, we transgress against the fundamental law of change; sooner or later, we must pay the penalty. Nature is an exact accountant; she never forgets nor for- [77] SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG gives, but always balances the debits and credits on each man's account with inexorable justice. " Ignorance of the law excuseth no man," is a maxim of natural law as well as of criminal jurisprudence. Monotony wearies, depletes, enervates, be- numbs, ages. Solitary confinement leads to mental deterioration and physical deformity. It is among the severest punishments in penal institutions. More persons go insane, propor- tionately, following the dreary isolated task of sheep-tending than in any other occupation. Farmers' wives are second, statistically, on this dread list of unfortunates. The cause is easy to discover. Monotony, unvaried rou- tine, lack of new stimuli for the brain, lack of new, safeguarding physical actions I We hear much about the terrible nervous strain of life in a great city — not without appalling evidence, too — and much about the wholesoraeness of life in the country. But what of the ultimate human products of these two environments? Compare any average fifty farmers between the ages of forty-five [78] KEEP OUT OF RUTS and sixty years with any fifty business, pro- fessional or political men — who have not de- pleted their vitality by dissipation — of similar ages in a large city. The latter will be straighter of back, quicker and lighter of movement, physically more adaptable and resistant, and mentally more alert and vigor- ous. The majority of them will seem, nay, be, in reality, five to eight years younger than their brothers from the country. Nor does the manual labor done by farmers, and their early and long hours of work during the sum- mer, account for the difference in the condi- tions of the two sets of men. Physical labor is less taxing upon the vitality than intellectual labor, and, taking the whole year through, many business men in cities put in more hours of actual work than do farmers. Besides this, men living in the city often work hard until late hours seeking amusement, whereas men living in the country generally retire early. Clearly, the farmers are more favorably con- ditioned, hygienically, but the ultimate mental and physical states are usually against them. [79] SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG The difference in the variety and the inten- sity of stimuli to the brain which the two environments afford is the chief factor that makes the difference in the two human products. To Wordsworth and Burns, country Hfe ever afforded a fresh stimulus to the creative powers; but, to the average country person, the environmental stimuli are virtually the same from Christmas to Christmas. In the city one's attention Is jogged and jostled at every turn. There Is always " something doing," always something out of the ordinary transpiring which challenges the attention. Only a dull, insensate person can escape be- ing somewhat responsive to the intense and stimulating life around him. Unconsciously to himself, a man living In the city spreads out mentally In many directions. "Eyes, ears took in their dole. Brain treasured up the whole." But neither the city nor the country — in fact, nothing outside of one's self — is primarily [80] KEEP OUT OF RUTS responsible for any one's adjustment to life. " Life could never be thoroughly dull to a child of Rebecca's temperament," says Kate Douglas Wiggin, " her nature was full of adaptability, fluidity and receptivity." That's the anti-rut prescription ! Adaptahility — meeting new conditions graciously, not with the grim (and aging) virtue of martyrdom which endures what can't be cured; fluidity — easily changing the current of one's thought and emotion; receptivity — hospitably giving ready audience to new ideas, customs and creeds. People who are quite deficient in these im- pressionable qualities may be antagonized by the mere idea of seeking newness in daily experience. They only give willing audience to suggestions that run parallel with their con- firmed habits and prejudices. As a certain health officer, speaking of cremation, said, " Oh, it's sanitary, all right, but it does vio- lence to all my traditions and sentiments, and ril not advocate it." Old traditional ideas, like old dresses, must be freshened up and [8i] SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG made over, else their possessors will find them- selves out of step with the times. Gail Hamilton says : " If there is one thing I cannot abide it is settling down into any- thing. Do you know the great trouble is that people ' marry and settle.' They would better be hanged. ' Settle ' is just another word for growing set and crusty and rou- tiney." To-day, only the bigot boasts of settled, unalterable convictions. Science has unsettled many of the accepted beliefs of half a century or less ago; it has revolutionized man's ideas of creation and many other events and things. Science itself is preserved from rutward ten- dencies by such investigators as Luther Bur- bank who produces a new species — a " scien- tific impossibility." [82] •' New habits can be launched on condition of there being new stimuli and new excitements. Now life abounds in these, and sometimes they are such critical and revolutionary ex- periences that they change a man's whole scale of values and system of ideas. In such cases, the old order of his habits will be ruptured; and, if the new motives are lasting, new hab- its will be formed, and build up in him a new or regenerate nature." — William James. "It is only when there is no inter- est that the weary flesh takes the full- est and bitterest stamp of age. Of course, the moral is: Be interested and keep young." — Margaret Deland. VIII BODY AND BRAIN COMMERCE You would be " Seventy Years Young," fel- low traveler? Good, but you plead guilty of now being forty years old? Well, while that is not so good, it does not necessarily doom you to continued and ever-increasing oldness; not, unless your own will dooms you. It is a primary tenet of psychological law that a man's conduct is the result of his domi- nant controlling thought. Biblical teaching is the same — " As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." A person forty years old has by some mishap — illness, neglect, ignorance, self- indulgence, despondency or what not — lost the mental alertness and stamina and the [85J SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG physical vitality and elasticity which are the essential elements of youth. Some parts of his body are contracted, or weakened, or semi- atrophied, and his brain does not grapple eagerly with new problems, as it Is the nature of growing brains to do. He can achieve his youth's redemption by nothing less than a master motive that compels him persistently to pay heed, to arouse the faculties of atten- tion and Interest and to express aliveness by voice, word and act. Reciprocity Is the law of Intercourse be- tween brain and body. By its activity each gives stimulus to the other, and receives, in turn, stimulus from the other's activity. There are distinct motor areas of the brain whose aliveness Is primarily dependent upon the energetic activity of the muscles and bodily functions correlated to them. In those deaf from birth there Is a certain brain area in which the cells never develop. On the other hand, never is an impression made upon the brain — either by the blood supply or through a sense avenue — that does not In some degree [86] BODY AND BRAIN COMMERCE affect the physical being. " What happens patently when an explosion or a flash of light- ning startles us, or when we are tickled, hap- pens latently with every sensation that we receive."* In order that this body and brain commerce may be of a vivid, youth-endowing character, man's continuous quest must be for new mer- chandise, i.e., new interests, sympathies, ex- periences and physical activities. The staple modes of thought, feeling, movement and ex- pression are not enough; as " Buster Brown " says: "What was good for us at one stage of the game won't do now. Superstitions and fool Ideas have had to go when their useful- ness was gone." Dullness of life, as of trade, attends the man who deals only In old, much handled goods. The personal output of each succeed- ing year of life should rival In richness, in variety and beauty, that of the preceding. Each year, new lines of traffic should be opened up through the agency of new stimuli. * James's ** Psychology," [87J SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG This Is not too high a price to pay for con- tinued vivid, organic life. To circumscribe one's self of to-day to one's self of yesterday is to face rearward. There is no dead calm in the sea of life where, self-satisfied, one can anchor, neither progressing nor retrograding. What we to-day possess of mental and physi- cal strength must be vitalized by to-day's activity, else there is loss. If we find that we are less capable of ad- justing ourselves to changing conditions than we once were, it is a sign that we are begin- ning to succumb to the " growing conserva- tism " of years. Only heroic treatment can save us. The pendulum of our activities must swing to the other extreme. We must become the veriest radicals in our efforts to uproot the established order of our daily customs. We must make ourselves frequently take the initiative In action, for, at any cost of effort, we must lift ourselves out of the groove of use and wont. In no way can one afford to abandon life, its Interests, activities, demands and appeals. [88] BODY AND BRAIN COMMERCE Children are ever receiving new impressions from the world through their five senses and are ever responding to them. These new im- pressions and their motor reactions have a determining effect upon the quality of physical development. An idiot whose brain centers have not capacity to receive impressions may develop to the full stature of a man in physical bulk; the texture and quality of his muscles will, however, be as different from a man's that have been normally reacted upon as the texture and grain of a sappy, pithy hemlock are different from those of a resistant, sturdy oak. The reactionary effect on the body of differ- ent orders of mental impressions is by no means confined to the period previous to phys- ical maturity. Maturity is not synonymous with being stationary. Man is never a fixed, unalterable structure. His body is not exempt from the law of all living tissue; the law of continual change, transformation, reconstruc- tion. Who shall say that the quality of this perpetual transformation is not greatly modi- [89J SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG fied by the quality and intensity of one's men- tal activity? Every thought and emotion, it must be remembered, has its motor reactions. If the thought be fresh, optimistic, dynamic, constructive, must not the making-over processes that are continually transpiring in the body be correspondingly beneficent? Cor- respondingly malevolent, aging, must be the physical effects of petty, fretful, pessi- mistic, aggressive and reiterative self-centered thoughts. Dr. Newell Dwight Hillis says, " Nothing foretells futurity like the thoughts over which we brood." It is enough to keep one awake o' nights from sheer pity when one realizes how thoughts that are aging constitute the habitual daily regimen of so many people. But man's attitude toward himself is be- coming more hopeful. As never before he is to-day seeking to fulfill the old Delphic injun- tion, " Man, know thyself," and there is little doubt that he will improve upon acquaintance with himself. In the past man has not known the vital physiological effects of thought and [90] BODY AND BRAIN COMMERCE emotion, or the different effects upon the brain of stimuli, stale and fresh. Modern physiological psychology is furnishing this self-knowledge in popular form — comprehen- sible to laymen as well as to scientist. " We know now from the study of the brain that It keeps on growing in those particular cells in the third layer which are most closely concerned with mental life, until at least the age of sixty-three."* Dr. C. Hanford Henderson calls the long educational period subsequent to school and college life, " The Experimental Life." The term is significant. Whoever lives the " Ex- perimental Life" welcomes the new; he experiments with It, learns Its lesson and absorbs whatever of good and growth It con- tains into the content of his own being. Such sympathetic response to each day's offering is one of the best protections against the nar- rowing, benumbing effects of habit. To take the vital elements of life — friend- * Dr. G. Stanley Hall, Chautauqua jiacmhly Herald, August 4th, 1905. [91J SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG ship, love, religion, sacrifice, patriotism, hero- ism, work, art, beauty — as a matter of course, is deliberately to invite prosaic, common-place oldness. " To let go of our enthusiasm is to let go of our youth." [92] "To live well we need to form good habits, but it is even more nec- essary that these should be constantly controlled and frequently revised by conscious reason." — Edward Hoiiiard Griggs. " Life is a series of surprises. We do not guess to-day the mood, the pleasure, the power of to-morrow, when we are building up our being. People wish to be settled; only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them."— Emerson. IX THE HABIT OF THE UNHABITUAL The man or woman, who daily lives up to the habit of the unhabitual, will never become dull, uninteresting, prejudiced — nor as old, in any sense, as otherwise might be. " There is an everlasting struggle in every mind between the tendency to keep un- changed, and the tendency to renovate, its ideas."* To wage warfare against this tend- ency to keep not only our ideas unchanged, but our physical actions, our associations, and all of our self-presentations unchanged, and to ally ourselves enthusiastically with the op- *James's "Psychology.'* [95J SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG posite inherent tendency, Is to take the safest road across the intervening years from Now to Then — to the kingdom of " Seventy Years Young." At his seventieth birthday banquet, Mark Twain explained how he had " beaten the doc- tor and the hangman for seventy years." He said: " Since forty I have been regular about going to bed and getting up — and that is one of the main things. I have made it a rule to go to bed when there was not anybody left to sit up with; and I have made it a rule to get up when I had to. That has resulted In an unswerving regularity of Irregularity." *' Unswerving regularity of Irregularity " are only other words for the habit of the unhabit- ual. What a swing of the pendulum Is Mr. Clemens's doctrine from that of Poor Rich- ard's Almanac! •'Early to bed and early to rise. Makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise." Farmers are " early to bed and early to rise " people, but they are not as a class wealthy, [96] HABIT OF THE UNHABITUAL especially healthy — or long lived — nor are they noted for their exceptional wisdom. Such proverb platitudes, that sound well but do not prove up well, make for the habitual, for oldness. Many people become victims of the habit- ual through subservience to artificial, conven- tional codes. Their ideal is always to dress, act and speak in strict accordance with the " they say " proper standard. The living down to such an ideal — if ideal it may be called — results in the sacrifice of individuality, of simple sincerity of expression and of youth- ful spontaneity. Custom tyrannizes less over men of great natures than over men of average endow- ments. Perhaps that is one reason why they are great. Life with them is less a calculation of petty social and politic accounts than it is with others. They are more nobly spontane- ous and true. They are, and do not have to seem to be. How emancipated from the conventional, the habitual, was Macaulay. Notwithstand- [97J SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG ing his father's austere discipline and melan- cholic gloom, and the weight of unusual responsibilities, in his home life he was like a gleeful child. Frolic and fun was the order of the hour when he came home. One writer says: "His visits shot the gloom through with sunshine, and when he went away, even the neighbor's children were in tears. His health and enthusiasm infected everybody he met." Conformity to convention means to be calm, to repress, to inhibit, to be formal in manner. It means to dissemble, to affect an indifference and immobility that is known as " the correct thing." In time, pretense be- comes habit. Then it is no longer pretense, it is the man. He is as old, as set, as unrespon- sive, in mind and body as he originally forced himself to seem to be. Thus do we blindly make the doom we dread — premature old age. "Sow a thought, reap an act; Sow an act, reap a habit ; Sow a habit, reap a destiny." [98] HABIT OF THE UNHABITUAL Dreading decrepitude, infirmity, garrulity, se- nility, people hasten their unwelcome advent by this " thought-act-habit-destiny " process. In his " Psychology " Professor James says, in substance, that it is the old fogyism element that tends to keep ideas unchanged. This old fogyism tendency which according to his estimate begins to gain mastery over the majority of people by the time they are twenty-five years of age, resents the new — the new fact, the new idea, the new methods — " while genius in truth means little more than the faculty of perceiving in unhabitual ways." Unless we offer self-protective resistance to the neural tendencies of our beings, we shall become with the passing years tiresome repetitions of our former selves; each repe- tition being less vigorous, capable and attrac- tive than the previous one. Our bodies and our minds will become less buoyant and mobile, less capable of responding to new stimuli; we shall yield more and more to in- ertia. We shall become " set in our ways " — in a word, unquestionably old. Contrariwise, [99] SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG if we continuously offer a counter-force to the inherent tendency that makes for automatism, we may keep our world and ourselves young. The habit of the unhabitual is not akin to fickleness, irrationality or irresponsibility. Unquestionably, in every well-balanced char- acter there must be what Edward Howard Griggs calls a " permanent center." No dependence can be placed on a person's atti- tude toward love, friendship, work, patriot- ism, religion, morality, truth or even toward his own life whose character is not based on such a center of stability. But tenacity of purpose, sincerity of motive and diligence are altogether consistent with marked variety in objective expression. As Dr. C. Hanford Henderson says: "The great people of the world have had this large versatility. You recall the tremendous sweep of Cassar's activities. You see Michaelangelo painting Madonnas and building bridges, frescoing ceilings and shaping David. You picture Leonardo leading all Florence spell-bound by the charm of his many-sided genius. In [loo] HABIT OF THE UNHABITUAL Goethe, you have the poet, philosopher, statesman, scientist, artist, man of letters. . . . In Franklin, you have a man distin- guished, if I have counted rightly, In at least eleven different directions."* The habit of the unhabitual means newness in our every day relations: First, new hab- its in our bodily actions; second, new habits in our relation to people; third, new habits in relation to our work and environ- ment; and fourth, new habits of thought and feeling. No general revolution in one's mode of living is necessary in order to form the habit of the unhabitual. One need not give up one's present occupation, or move into a new country, or part company with old friends. Albeit, radical changes in one's life sometimes work wonders. Some natures are like certain kinds of quartz. They are so tenacious of what they possess, so repellent to everything that is dif- ferent from themselves, and so reluctant to * Henderson's **Education and the Larger Life." [lOlJ SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG change their form, that it takes a shock hke a dynamite blast to force them out of the aging rut of the habitual. On the other hand, many persons are a-hun- ger for change in themselves. They are tired of their monotonous thoughts, feelings and self-expressions. They are tired of playing the same old role, in the same old way, on the same old stage. They long to have a different viewpoint, to do something out of the ordi- nary, to feel the stimulation of new associa- tions and environment. They are stirred by the " divine discontent " that points to higher realizations. Their tendency toward the un- habitual is so well established that they turn toward whatever is new in thought, discovery and opportunity as instinctively as the sun- flower turns toward the light. I recall an incident relating to a certain ninety-one-years- young great-grandmother who was of such nature. When bicycle riding was alarmingly new, one young woman who dared this " un- womanly " manner of locomotion called forth the hearty condemnation of an unfriendly [102J HABIT OF THE UNHABITUAL cousin. This cousin " wondered what great- grandmother would say to such an unladylike spectacle ! " Being possessed with a trouble- some sense of duty, she reported the matter to their mutual great-grandmother. But the little German great-grandmother who still " helped " in her garden, did her own house- work, read the periodicals of the day, and thought nothing of walking two miles to town, instead of being shocked, said: "What's that you tell me ? Gertrude rides a bicycle ? Well, I'm glad she does. I've thought some of learning to ride one myself! " Bless her! In spite of four-score and ten odd years, she was young in inclination and in habit. The habit of the unhabitual is subject to the same process of establishment that all habits are. If to-day we do some unhabitual thing, perhaps at the cost of a positive wrench of effort, to-morrow another unhabitual act, mental or physical, can be executed with a little less volitional pulling of one's self to- gether for the onset, and so on with decreas- ing effort from day to day. [103] SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG People who have passed the thirtieth year- stone have no occasion to agonize in spirit if they do not spontaneously respond to many of the appeals of life. Should the mind require spurring before it will pay heed, why, then, spur it. In very truth, the will must often spur us away from the ruts of indiffer- ence, indolence, pseudo-superiority, avarice and all narrowing trends. Tussles between our inclinations and our will indicate that we are still alive to our ethical responsibility in the fashioning of our lives. They are the " growing pains " of the spirit. Even in childhood this struggle must be fought over and over, else no self-control, and no power of adjustment to life's varying con- ditions and calls are developed. The signifi- cance of this Inner struggle is practically the same whether the boy has to spur his mind toward his lessons away from the woods and fishing of his inclination, or the man has to spur his mind toward outdoor activities that make for youngness away from the easy-chair and the favorite book of his Inclination. [104J HABIT OF THE UNHABITUAL The psychological point on which emphasis is here laid is the necessity of daily stimulation of the will in some way or other — the more unhabitual the way, the better. " Nerve cells should be exercised to the point of reasonable fatigue, so as to be put in the proper condition for being made stronger by the nutriment which they will then be in condition to assimi- late. Memory is directly dependent upon nutrition."* So is the imagination, so is the will. To keep the imagination fresh and active is to be childlike In spirit; to keep the will alert, sturdy and reliable is to protect one's self from senility at the hundredth or the hun- dred and " anythlngth " year. If the will fails us, we fail. Enthusiasm often enables one to make a startling half- back rush toward a desired goal, but It Is only a resistant and persistent will that gives one the hardihood to gain ground and hold it against the opposing line of well-organized combatants; i.e., inherited tendencies and * Halleck*s "Education of the Central Nervous System.'* [105] SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG deeply ingrained habits that assert themselves with pernicious facility. " Always keep the stream of thought run- ning," says Matthew Arnold. Living accord- ing to the habit of the unhabitual allows this stream scant opportunity to become a placid pool or to stagnate. In the pathetic story, " Avis," Elizabeth Stuart Phelps suggests a way out of the eddying pools of thought. She says : " On Monday when the fire smokes, on Tuesday when the bills come in, on Wednesday when the children cry, it is not more smoke, more debt, more tears, we want ; tell us, rather, how a statue grew, or how a poem sprang, or how a song was wrought, or how a prayer was conceived." Smoke, debts and tears are here the habitual. The soul cries for moments of release from such distressing details. It cries for inspiration from something unhabitual to the daily domestic struggle. To bring moments of art, poetry, song and spiritual aspiration into the content of daily life, would be to give unhabitual stimuli to [io6] HABIT OF THE UNHABITUAL thought and emotion In the lives of very many people. Dally life, uninspired by high ideals, tends to submerge people in the realm of the matter-of-fact, tends to make them selfishly appropriate the highest blessings of human association — love, one's children, one's wife or one's husband — and to treat them as if they were just a customary part of the equip- ment for the business of living. They are the young In spirit who are able to keep life above the plane of ordinariness. Some of the best protections against dull " low levels " of living are to cultivate varied and ever-varying interests; to make the area of contact with all phases of life as large as possible; to spread out in many directions mentally, sympathetically, motorly, and to penetrate deeply In some, or, at least. In one. A play-business Is as necessary as a work- business. No man or woman who seeks self- realization can afford to be without one. An avocation is as profitable, ultimately, as a vocation. When any vocation whatsoever completely absorbs one, It is, in very truth, a [107J SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG " getting that impoverisheth." Men thus exploit their own future. One man who had gambled with his life in such fashion, recently confessed his failure to a friend. He said : " I have made money. I am now one of the ' multis,' but I am poor and sick in spirit — and I know it. Things, people, books, bore me ! Even my family — well, the whole truth is, / have lost tJ}e capacity for happiness. The only thing my brain responds to is some scheme for making more money! And my reason shows me the uselessness, the barren- ness of such effort." Darwin, late in life, deeply regretted that " his mind had become a machine for grind- ing out general laws," and realized that if his devotion to his research work had not excluded other lines of interest, " parts of his brain now atrophied would doubtless have been kept alive." That college professor proved himself a practical psychologist who, while delivering a course of lectures on psychology at one of the Chautauqua summer schools, incidentally [io8] HABIT OF THE UNHABITUAL attended the School of Domestic Science, and learned how to make bread " just to surprise his wife." That which is a vocation to one may be an avocation to another. At the time when Dr. Alice Freeman Palmer was president of Wellesley College, she made some of the joys of housekeeping her avocation. Once, being asked what was the happiest moment of her life, Mrs. Palmer thought for a moment, then laughingly replied, " When the jelly jellied." Whether it be making bread or jelly, read- ing or making books, running or inventing a machine, playing the violin or playing farmer, cultivating roses or teaching settle- ment children, the spirit of youth requires that we should have lines of interest other than those that are habitual, or coincident with our daily vocation. Hobbies, fads, " isms," are good mental tonics. They give restful variety to the worker from his work and save many of the idle rich from the fatal occupa- tion of " killing time " — killing time, which [109] SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG means killing one's interest, enthusiasm, youngness. The habit of the unhabitual can be fostered in a hundred little ways. It is fostered when- ever we catch ourselves up and refrain from telling some old story or stale joke, when- ever we willfully direct our line of thought or reading into a new channel, whenever we express an old idea in an original dress, when- ever we sympathetically relate ourselves to people who are not of our set or clique, or to those whose experience has been radically different from our own. It is fostered every time we decline to take ourselves and our experiences too seriously, every time that we look an unkind Fate in the face and smile, every time that we can see the funny side of a perplexing situation. In short, it is fostered every time that we think, feel, say or do any- thing that makes the " stream of thought " somewhat change its ordinary course. [no] "A little girl's bad brother set a trap to catch birds. She knew it was wrong, cruel, against the laws of kind- ness, altogether inexcusable from her point of view. "She wept at first, then her mother — two hours later — noticed that she had become cheerful once more. '"What did you do?' asked the mother. '"1 prayed for my brother to be made a better boy.' '"What else?' '"I prayed that the trap would not catch any little birds.' '"What else?' " 'Then I went out and kicked the old trap all to pieces.' " — Anonymous. X " IE TO DO WERE AS EASY " " If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do," not only " chapels had been churches, and poor men's cottages princes' palaces," but straightway there had been as marked revolutions in man's personal estate — his thoughts, passions, character and body. But " easy " or not, to do is the only way to keep young in mind and body. " It is the motor act that gives the set to character."* And it is the motor acts that in the last analy- sis chiefly determine man's physical condition. Failure to do what it " were good to do " and what one has the capacity for doing con- stitutes the death-warrant of many a person's ♦James's "Psychology.** [1I3J SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG youngness. The would-be author who sat down before a " potential bottle of ink, and thought of the thoughts he ought to think," but did not think them, was his own exe- cutioner. Due and right guidance of the motor ac- tivities makes for the retention of youngness in three specific ways : ( i ) One is thus en- abled to modify if not to oust thoughts and feelings that are " likely to be disadvanta- geous"; (2) The motor areas of the brain are stimulated; (3) The body Is kept vigor- ous, flexible — ^young. Psychology speaks authoritatively regard- ing the inevitable reactionary effect of the body's activities on the brain. " Whenever the fingers are flexed, the arm extended, the muscles of a leg moved, the body bent, the expression of the face changed or a word spoken, there is a corresponding motor modi- fication of the brain."* " It is easy to demon- strate that such bodily exercise as gymnastics, fencing, swimming, riding, dancing and skat- * Halleck's '^Education of the Central Nervous System.*' [1I4J "IF TO DO WERE AS EA"5Y— " ing are much more exercises of the central nervous system, of the brain and spinal mar- row than of the muscles."* The mutual reactionary effect of inner psy- chic states and outer physical ones is much as Lawrence Sterne puts it: "A man's body and his mind (with the utmost reverence to both I speak it) are exactly like a jerkin and a jerkin's lining — rumple the one, you rum- ple the other." A dejected physical attitude induces a dejected mental state. A brave out- ward expression stimulates the nerve-gang- lion that begets courage. The half-frightened boy who whistles his loudest when passing a " spooky " place in the dark is developing courage according to psychologic law, even though he never heard the word psychology. It is a mooted question among students of the mind and body whether a man is old because he stoops, or stoops because he is old; whether he is glad because he laughs, or laughs because he is glad. Whichever may be the cause and which the effect, certain it * Du Bois Reymond, Popular Science Monthly, Vol. XXI. [1I5J SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG is that indirect control of the thoughts and emotions, through the activities and expres- sions of the physical self, is easier than is con- trol by direct assault. It is little short of impertinence to admon- ish a friend " not to give way " to grief, worry, despondency, passion or nervousness, or not to fear disease, old age or other per- sonal disaster. Everybody of ordinary intelli- gence knows that such mental states are injurious; but knowing does not enable one to cease so feeling and thinking. It is not " as easy to do as to know what were good to do." A friend is a genuine benefactor who helps another out of a mental or emotional slough by persuading him to some physical activity that shall vigoruosly tense his mus- cles. Increase his breathing, and speed the blood through his arteries at a quickened rate. These physiological changes must Inevitably react wholesomely on the Inner psychological state. A nervous state can often be vanquished by [ii6] "IF TO DO WERE AS EASY—" a tramp through the woods, an exhilarating mountain climb, , a brisk game of tennis or golf, a gallop on a spirited horse, a swim, a good pull at the oars, even a plunge into a bath, followed by fresh clothes, five minutes of stimulating physical exercises, or the dramatic oral reading of some stirring bit of literature where one thinks and feels intensely with the author: anything serves that furnishes new stimulus to the imagination and demands posi- tive physical expression. It is good to be thoroughly aroused; good to lose all conventional and habitual restraint — as at a 'varsity boat race or a baseball or football game ; good to clap the hands, stamp the feet, stand on benches, jump up and down, throw the hat in the air and cheer to the limit of the lungs — good for the thoughts, the emotions and the body. If one is heavy of heart or down on his luck or melancholic, he should compel himself to show forth cheerfulness in his objective expression — not necessarily by words, but most necessarily by actions. He should stand [117] SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG erect and show a brave front to the world, Hft the drooping eyelids, walk, with light, buoy- ant step, romp with children, take a brisk run in the fresh air or dance a few turns around the room. Dr. G. Stanley Hall, speaking of the influence of rhythmical bodily movements, says : " It is probable that man gets nearer his lost paradise when he is danc- ing than at any other time. If a person is nervously tired he should dance the minuet; if he is apathetic, something faster. Dancing has great curative powers. Men at fifty or eighty years of age ought to dance." Of course, one does hot feel inclined to vigorous or animated objective activity when one is subjectively inert, apathetic, or de- pressed. It is a question of inclination, self- indulgence and oldness on the one side, and of keeping alive while we live on the other. Which will you choose? Nothing is more conclusively proven by physiological psychology in its study of the baby, child, youth, young man, adult, and aged person, than the fact that human life is meant, [ii8] "IF TO DO WERE AS EASY—" first of all, for activity, not for idleness; that it is only through positive expression — not mere passive existence — that a human being can approximate his possible self-realization. It is a primary tenet of psychology that high thinking counts for little, and strong emotion for less than nothing (because it weakens the character) , unless they are carried over into some concrete activity. We grow mentally and physically by activity; we are educated by activity; our influence is largely dependent upon it, and only by it can we hope long to retain our youngness. Our vigilance must never languish or lapse, if we would not be lured by inclination and inertia into degenerating inactivity. It is so easy not to do, so easy to accept petty personal comforts at the sacrifice of mental stamina and physical hardihood. We baby ourselves in innumerable ways, especially when there is no financial necessity to urge us to exertion. Often, we are self-hypnotized by our clever excuses for inactivity — the storm, the heat or cold, a headache, a feeling of lassitude, an [119J SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG expected caller, a little sewing, letter-writing or the latest magazine, becomes to us a reason instead of a subterfuge for our being guilty of what David Starr Jordan calls " the sin of undervitalization." [120] "We forget that every good that is worth possessing must be paid for in strokes of daily effort. We post- pone and postpone untU these smiling possibilities are dead. By neglecting the necessary concrete labor, by spar- ing ourselves the little daily tax, we are posit'.vcly digging the graves of our higher possibilities." — William James, "The care of the body and the care of the soul are not two duties, but two parts of one duty." — Phillips Brooks. XI KEEPING THE BODY YOUNG Youngness of body is menaced continually by foes from without and within. The very earth seems against us ! Gravity is in league with the old-age demon. It is ever trying to get the better of us, to make us yield the erectness of youth and become bent, stoop- shouldered — old, physically. We must in very truth " brace up," muscularly and men- tally, if we would not be worsted by it. Some of the foes from within that work for our physical downfall are fatigue, exhaus- tion, apathy, ennui, and all introspective trends of thought, be they sad or otherwise. Whenever the nervous force or physical vital- ity is subnormal — from any cause whatsoever [123J SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG — or when one is " buried in thought," the muscular tendency is toward a relaxed, semi- unalive condition ; the chest tends to sink, the torso to sag, the shoulders to droop, and the head to incline forward. It matters not whether the person be a lad of fifteen or a woman of seventy ; the order of bodily expres- sion is the same in either case. The degree of relaxation, of course, depends upon the intensity of the inciting cause. Gravity, physical and mental subnormal states and all introspective trends of thought ! Formidable and unavoidable foes, you say? True enough, and we can insure the mainte- nance of our youngness against their lifelong assaults only by habitually living above the line of least resistance. This means that we cannot self-indulgently " float with the cur- rent," or " let things slide," or " laugh and grow fat," or " trust to luck." If we would live above this line of physical and mental decadence, we must row against tide and weather, must shape things and events that relate to our welfare, must resist the fat [I24j KEEPING THE BODY YOUNG disease, and we must know that the only luck on which we can safely depend is the luck that persistent self-effort brings. Lest the idea of ceaseless effort be dis- couraging to some, let it be stated at once that the most effectual means for the retention of our bodies' youngness is to cultivate two simple habits — habits eminently ethical and altogether personally attractive — namely, the habit of health and the habit of cheer and courage. In a certain sense, these are paradoxical habits. They do not thrive by repetition, nor is their nature toward crystallization ; instead, they are often solely dependent upon new thoughts, new activities and new responses to life. The mental vigor and stimulation implied by the habits of cheer and courage are, in truth, the major part of the subjective side of the habit of health. And a most important side it is I The effect of mind-states upon the body's chemistry is, in its marvelous results, akin to the claims made by the alchemists of [125J SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG old. The extreme effects of the mind's action are universally recognized. This is evidenced by such current expressions as " trembling with fear," " frozen with horror," " purple with rage," and '* bowed with grief." Many physicians to-day, in their diagnoses, are as searching in their scrutiny of mental states as of physical ones; and every one readily rec- ognizes certain conspicuous functional effects of mental states on bodily states, such as arrested digestion from grief, sudden diar- rhoea and swooning from fear, and the thump- ing of the heart under excitement, or its losing a beat under suspense or fright. We do not, however, practically realize that every mental state^ — because of the mechanical in- terrelation of the brain and the organs of circulation, respiration and digestion — must affect, for better or for worse, the vital proc- esses. " All mental states are followed by bodily activity of some sort. They lead to inconspicuous changes in breathing, circula- tion, general muscular tension, and glandular or other visceral activity, even if they do not [126] KEEPING THE BODY YOUNG lead to conspicuous movements of the muscles of voluntary life."* The vaso-motor nerves — an elaborate sys- tem of minute nerves that penetrate the mus- cular coats of all the blood vessels — are the immediate connection between a depressed mental state and lowered physical tone, as poor circulation. These nerves make it im- possible for any mental state not to affect the physical stamina. Not only are the circulation and respiration directly affected by our thoughts and emotions, but all of the glands of the system are affected; the digestive fluids may be dangerously polluted or arrested by anger. Such ethical mental states as cheer and courage are pre-eminently wholesome and dynamic, physically. Romanes says: "A prolonged flow of happy feeling does more to brace up the system for work than any other influence operating for a similar length of time."t * Jameses ** Psychology." •]■*' Science and Philosophy of Recreation,** Popular Science Monthly ^ Vol. XV. [127J SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG Just how the habits of cheer and courage are to be maintained in the face of the seem- ingly untoward and depressing conditions that sometimes confront nearly every one, is a problem with as many different right answers as there are people to solve it. Moreover, each person must ever and again re-solve it because new, unknown factors may daily enter into any personal equation. A few general suggestions are given in the following chap- ters that may prove helpful toward the mas- tery of mental states. But each individual must find his or her own way to the spiritual heights where cheer and courage prevail despite near-by clouds. The habit of health is only another name for the normal physical state. All deviations from it are abnormal conditions — the results of the violation of some law of right living. They bear witness to man's folly or Ignorance, direct or Inherited. The constant renewal of the cells which nature untiringly carries on in man's physiological laboratory is the funda- mental basis of the habit of health. Formerly, [128] KEEPING THE BODY YOUNG it was held that all the cells of the body were replaced by new ones once in seven years. But modern physiology holds that this replace- ment of cells occurs practically every few weeks. It is, therefore, evident that this renewal of cells affords man an opportunity, in a large degree, to mold his own future. " The constant change of the tissues due to the nutritive process of waste and repair in the body makes new habits possible to the latest day of life, because the new tissue ' sets ' itself naturally to the latest ' pathway ' and ' tends to corroborate and fix the impressed struc- tural modification.' "* The harmonious conduct of " the nutritive process of waste and repair," i.e., digestion, and its sister processes, circulation and respira- tion, constitute health. But in the cultivation of the habit of health, we must seek indirectly, rather than directly, to regulate these vital processes, for they are primarily automatic. Our immediate business is rightly to order certain voluntary activities which, in turn, ♦ James's "Psychology." [129] SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG have a tremendous Influence on the so-called involuntary processes. Chief among these acts are : ( i ) Mental and emotional states; (2) Right use of the body in all necessary daily acts, and (3) Physical exercise. ( I ) Mental and Emotional States. The best mental tonic for the vital processes are the habits of cheer and courage. Not " spells " of happy confidence which are more than offset by " spells " of doubt, of timidity and of poisonous fear, but an habitually posi- tive cheer-courage outlook. Of course, think- ing and feeling are not strictly voluntary acts, but it lies within the domain of one's volitional power to select the kind of thoughts and feelings which shall receive hospitable encouragement. (2) Right Use of the Body. To neglect, over-tax or in any way to " put upon " the body is an injustice that never fails to beget its legitimate penalty, however [130] KEEPING THE BODY YOUNG long delayed it may be. When the body is treated with due consideration, it is a willing hand-maiden of the spirit; but when it is sub- jected to indignities and misuse, the whiplash of the will or some stimulant is necessary to urge it to response and work. Moreover, misuse often transforms it into a complaining, harassing tyrant that prohibits free play of the higher faculties. It is a tragedy, silent and terrible, to be young in spirit and old in body; to have the desire and ambition to do as the mature- young do, the desire to be an active factor in the world's arena of accomplishment, but to be prohibited by an infirm, worn or painfully rebellious body. It is, in very truth, " a house divided against itself." Bitter, indeed, are the tears of spirit when a person is forced to confess that he or she is responsible for the body's early desertion from the fine battle of life. The way the body is used in the habitual daily acts of life has much to do with its last- ing qualities. This flesh machine is not only generally racked but parts of it are weakened, [131J SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG injured and displaced by rough and unseemly usage; much as similar usage damages an inorganic machine — a watch or an engine. Everybody knows that muscles grow by use, that prolonged disuse causes them to become weakened and finally atrophied. Everybody must acknowledge, also — when he stops to think about it — that bodily agility, flexibility, dexterity, suppleness, are maintained through exercising the body In unhabltual ways, or, more definitely, in ways different from the routine ways that the ordinary daily acts of man's life necessitate. The lightness and grace of a dancing mas- ter do not betoken that he possesses abilities inherently different from those possessed by a clumsy, slouchy day-laborer. The two men were each endowed with similar possibilities of movement and expression; but for years they have used their bodies in radically dif- ferent ways, and this difference In use has pro- duced the different results in the bodily ex- pression of the two men. The bodies of an overwhelming majority [132J KEEPING THE BODY YOUNG of society women, home-makers, school teach- ers, sewing girls and domestics are, by the age of thirty-five or forty, awkwardly stiff and set. Their attitudes are uninterestingly ugly, because lacking in ease, freedom and grace. Even their movements are characterized by a woodeny unyieldingness. But there is no constitutional physiological difference between the mass of such women and such a type as Madame Bernhardt. This actress, of up- wards of sixty years, is as lithe, supple and as muscularly versatile and responsive as might have been the real, impetuous, poetical boy of sixteen whom she represents in " L'Aig- lon." Again, It is difference In the daily use of the body and mind that accounts for the difference in effects. The only sufficient use Is variety of use — Invigorating variety. Madame Bernhardt never allows a day to pass, no matter how taxing the work of study, travel, receiving, rehearsing and acting, that she does not devote at least thirty minutes to physical exercise which embodies movements other than those naturally required In ordl- [133] SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG nary daily life. Thousands of women, those, too, who consider themselves cultured, do not devote thirty minutes a month or a year to the training of their bodies for freedom of expression. And their tense or awkward or weak or nervous or corpulent old bodies bear witness to this neglect. It is a case of " As ye sow." A man is as old as his back is. One can put on or take off twenty years in appearance by the way one stands. A standing or sitting position where the back is hooped outward, the chest contracted and sunken, and where the trunk sags forward so that its weight presses. heavily upon the deli- cate unprotected visceral organs, is most in- jurious and aging. Such position interferes with the functioning of the vital organs and leads to poor circulation, distressed digestion and insufficient breathing. To prevent Old-Age Habits in the Daily Use of the Body: — Stand easily erect without apology or self- [134J KEEPING THE BODY. YOUNG assertion, simply strong, free and self- respectful. Stand with the weight of the body on the balls of the feet, instead of settling back on the heels. Keep Nature's double-curve of beauty in the back, instead of a stiff, straight line or a single disfiguring outward curve. Stand with the chest in front of the abdo- men instead of allowing the abdomen to make one look old and heavy by its unseemly for- wardness. Remember that the head Is the topmost, not the foremost, part of the body. Keep the shoulders free from all awkward restraint. Bend from the hip joints — not from the waist line — when leaning over a desk, table or stove. Walk with a light, free step and with econ- omy of nervous energy. Cultivate, in every possible way, lightness and ease in the movements of the body or any part of It. Move the head, hand, arm, trunk, [135J SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG and the feet, not as if they were leaden weights, but as If they were the willing agents of a happy, young spirit — one that found pleasure in exertion. Above all. It Is essential to learn how to refrain from senseless, destructive muscular tension. Learn how to relax, to let go physi- cally, how to untie the fuss and worry knots. This means the ability to rest, the ability to put ourselves, at will, in a condition to gain vital reinforcement than which nothing Is more protective of our youngness. The will should act as a governor-valve for shutting off as well as turning on steam in our human machine. It is not the work we do, but the way we work and the energy we waste when we are not working, that exhausts and ages us. The ability to concentrate on one thing to the exclusion of everything else — save as remote " fringe consciousness " — and then com- pletely to drop that before turning the atten- tion to some other activity. Is one of the secrets of conserving nervous energy. Perhaps in this day and generation, one KEEPING THE BODY YOUNG needs must " step lively " or be distanced in the race. But it is possible to step lively without stress and strain; possible to move quickly without hurry; possible to think ef- fectively without worry. If it should require much time and patience to cultivate the grace which enables one to be " a holy vegetable," now and again, it will be time well invested, for, verily, 'tis a youth-saving grace. As James Whitcomb Riley says : "Let us pause and catch our breath. On the hither side of death." (3) Physical Exercise. In order that the habit of health may per- sist decade after decade, it must be daily fortified by upbuilding exercise. In some way — the more unique and changeful and playful the way, the better for the body's prosperity — every muscle and vital function should be stimulated at least once every day of one's life. This order of organic stimulation — which is widely different in effect from the inorganic stimulation of drugs and liquors — keeps the [137J SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG vital organs in tone and makes their chemical processes more perfect; it causes more thor- ough and speedy elimination of poisonous waste substances; it sends a richer supply of blood and nerve energy to all parts of the organism ; it makes the body and brain more resistant to the disease microbes that are ever alert to attack a weak place in our physical defense. By means of it the food nourishes, rebuilds and re-creates the body better than Nature could accomplish these results without such co-operation on our part. The question now is, what kind of exercise will produce such beneficial results? Many an off-hand answer would be : " Why, farm- work, housework, taking care of the furnace and shoveling off the walks, any kind of good, honest manual labor. Exercise that amounts to something! No fancy folderols are nec- essary! " Gladstone found chopping down trees first- rate physical exercise. Tree-chopping is man- ual labor that brings all the muscles of the body into vigorous play, that creates the im- [138] KEEPING THE BODY YOUNG perative demand for increased respiration and quickened circulation. As a cure for dys- pepsia such exercise is unexcelled, for it espe- cially strengthens and stimulates the trunk of the body and the trunk's vital contents. But much manual labor Is of a directly opposite nature. It Is restrictive, using only a few sets of muscles. These are often used to the point of exhaustion while other muscular areas are practically unexercised. Again, the position necessitated by many kinds of manual labor, instead of strengthening the trunk as does tree-chopping, is such that the muscles of the trunk are weakened, the vital organs cramped and even crowded out of their rightful places. Consider such manual workers as farmers, farmers' wives, washer-women, charwomen, navies, miners and factory employees. These are far from ideal types, physically. As a class, they are heavy and clumsy of movement; their bodies early become stiffened, stooped and shrunken; they age early; they wear out early. Verily, " All work and no toy, makes Jack a dull boy " — mentally and physically. C139J SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG It is the vivifying element of newness in exercise, or the out-of-the-ordinary direc- tion of the nervous energy, that best mo- bilizes the muscles and quickens the mind and body. Of course all exercise is, in some degree, stimulative ; but any exercise becomes less and less so as it becomes more and more automatic. That is why the exercise of the brain and body attendant upon any routine occupation, from that of the ditch-digger to that of the United States Supreme Court Judge, is inad- equate to keep all parts of the organism constructively active and young. To illus- trate : Physiologically considered, a movement of the body or of any part of it is worth much or little in proportion to the amount of blood sent to the parts used — these parts being the afferent and efferent nerves, the ganglionic center, whether spinal or cerebral or sympa- thetic, and the muscle or muscles. Tests of measurement made by the plethysmograph show that the supply of blood sent to the entire circuit by physical movements varies [140] KEEPING THE BODY YOUNG in a decreasing ratio to the degree of the auto- matism of the movements. The activities, mental and physical, attend- ant upon daily civilized existence, and those attendant upon any line of routine work, be- come more and more automatic by years of repetition; hence, the blood supply that such activities induce is meager and not sufficient to sustain youthful vitality. On the other hand, unhabitual movements that require the co-operation of the attention and the dy- namic will in their execution necessarily in- volve the sending of a richer blood supply to the parts used. If this supply be generous enough to replace in full measure the inevita- ble daily wear and tear of living, it is plain to be seen that the depletion of forces concom- itant of oldness may long be delayed. Exercise that makes for the habit of health must be vivifying, not exhaustive; it must be freeing and harmonizing, not restrictive. There must be dynamic will-action behind it. The psychic state of youngness is zest; that of oldness, dull indifference. [141] SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG All exercise, whether it be games, athletic sports, walking, running, gardening, pitching hay or cleaning house, which is characterized by the play-spirit, is rejuvenating. As chil- dren, we unconsciously expressed our vitality and vigorous spirits through spontaneous physical exercise. We ran, jumped, rolled, kicked, tumbled, bent, twisted, wrestled, skipped, stood on tiptoes, on one foot, turned somersaults, frolicked generally. If we grown-ups for even one generation should keep up the frolicsome games and habits of early childhood, innumerable old-age condi- tions, as well as " the cares that infest the day," would " silently steal away," or, better still, would never put in an appearance. Outdoor sports and games have lifted years from many a pair of shoulders. It is much to be regretted that only a comparatively few men and women do, or probably ever will, take an active part in them. If, then, manual labor is inadequate to pro- duce the desired results and outdoor sports are not accessible or acceptable to the large [142] KEEPING THE BODY YOUNG majority of adult people, some other kind of exercise must be found to rescue the body's youngness. Certain Health Exercises — that can be taken at any time and in any rational costume — seem best to meet this need. Such as simple exercises for general invigoration, relaxation, flexibility and mobility, strength, endurance, symmetry, for developing quick and ready co-ordination, for quieting the nerves and for preventing and overcoming corpulency. These exercises to produce the desired results must not be mechanical and stereotyped — mere dead motions; they should be characterized by spontaneity, individuality and the joy of physical exertion. It is not the purpose of this book to de- scribe specific physical exercises; but two or- ders of gymnastics must be mentioned because they are such potent agencies in the retention of health and youngness of the body, and because just to mention them induces some degree of almost involuntary response, so natural are they. These exercises are stretch- ing and breathing. [143J SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG Stretch when you are tired, stretch when you are sleepy, stretch yourself awake, stretch when your body has been in a fixed position for some time, stretch corpulency and settled maturity out of the body, and stretch mobility, grace and beauty of figure into existence. Stretch the arms, stretch the hands, stretch the legs, stretch the back, stretch the sides, stretch the chest, stretch the throat and stretch the diaphragm. Stretch standing, stretch sit- ting and stretch lying. Work and stretch, laze and stretch. Stretch and yawn, stretch and relax. Stretch ! Stretch I Stretch ! As for breathing, suflSce it to say that gen- erous breathing is the most urgent require- ment for full, abundant life. Meager, upper- chest breathing is a menace to our health and youngness. It is doubtful if there be people who are actually " too lazy to breathe," but there certainly are many persons, even of the bustling, hustling sort, who are too careless, or indifferent, or ignorant to breathe suffi- ciently to fortify themselves against old-age atrophies. [144 J KEEPING THE BODY YOUNG To counter-check the influence of gravity and of introspective trends of thoughts, not only should Health Exercises be faithfully practiced for a few minutes every day, but the principles of action and control on which they are based should be applied to the use of the body in every-day acts, every day. Obviously, the earlier in life that one be- gins to practice the means that make for health and youngness, the better, but it is a mistaken idea to think that one " is too old to learn gymnastics " (Health Exercises, not athletic feats). The writer has personally known hundreds of persons over forty years of age — some even over eighty — who, by the practice of Health Exercises and right use of the body in daily acts, have produced trans- formations youthward hardly credible to any save eye-witnesses. She has seen stooped and shoulder-burdened women and men gradually emerge from the weight of years and stand erect, buoyant, young; has seen old, rounded backs inflexibly set, yield — albeit reluctantly — and regain flexible mobility; cramped, nar- tH5J SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG row chests of adult people fill out and broaden from one to four inches; short waists of grandmotherdom lengthen to ideal propor- tions; disfiguring corpulency disappear; inert, listless Invalidism supplanted by spontaneous, youthful vigor; the heavy, dragging steps of age " shuffled off," and the elastic, buoyant gait of youth become the established order of movement. These are a few of the many outward telltale signs of what may be accom- plished by " taking one's self in hand " with a will. Equally noticeable are the mental changes wrought In many persons who have been " transformed by the renewing of their minds " plus a physical backing of unhabitual, invigorating exercises. [146] "Beware of the commonplace, that mood where you yawn and stretch and hunt out your aches and pains as old people do who gloat over disease and decay." — "Some Philosophy of the Hermetics." «' We grizzle every day. I see no need of it . . . infancy, youth, re- ceptive, aspiring, abandons itself to the instruction flowing from all sides. But the man and woman of seventy assume to know it all, they have outlived their hope, they renounce aspirations, accept the actual for the necessary, and talk down to the young." — Emerson. XII SOCIAL RUTS One of the social ruts Into which years betray the unwary is the looking-backward rut. Those who belong to a generation that has arrived must be on guard lest this mental habit of " tedious old fools " gets them in its clutches. Those who belong to the coming generation are self-protected. 'Tis the na- ture of youth to be anticipatory, as 'tis the tendency of years to be retrospective. Tendencies, however, are not established conditions; they are driftlngs, inclinations that are subject to government by the will. It is for each individual to say whether a [149] SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG given tendency shall be cultivated into an habitual state, or held in leash, or annihilated by counter-check acts. There is imperative need for all who would retain their youth to keep the present moment alive — intensely so. They must stoutly com- bat the retrospective tendency from its first symptoms. When a man or woman overhears himself or herself saying, " Why, that was a long time ago when I was only so old," or, " Let me see ! That must have been more than umpty-umpty years ago," it is time to make a quick turn. " When a man begins to reminis, he Is getting old." We should look forward to life — to the life of to-day and to-morrow — not backward at life. Past days, events, things and associa- tions have had their innings. The present day issues claim the diamond now. Socially, one of the best ways of keeping in touch with this-world, present-day issues is to have active sympathy with the coming gen- eration; sympathy that makes their Interests, ambitions, aspirations, accomplishments and [150] SOCIAL RUTS joys our own. Then may we, too, keep " coming." New stimulus always brings new reactions and growth. Parents desirous of giving their children everything for their best growth can do nothing wiser than to grow and develop with them. In " The Luxury of Children," E. S. Mar- tin happily says: "The boy coming home from school for Christmas holidays adds new turns to the language of the family vocabulary, acting in various ways like a fresh lump of yeast in the family dough." Lives unleavened by any new fermenting stimulus from one year to the next cannot escape becoming stale, old. An effectual way of putting one's self out- side the pale of young people's companionship is to harp on the themes " When I was young," and " In my day." Are not these " your days," and mine, whatever our ages happen to be? They are, unless we fail to relate ourselves to them because our only vista on life is from the looking-backward rut. [151] SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG History — political or personal — must be of vital, dramatic nature to be of more than passing interest to the young mind whose natural bent is to look forward, not back- ward. " The good old times " were doubt- less all right in their day, but every young person believes that these present times are better than any old ones. Assuredly, they are the living times with which the young and mature alike have to deal. There is the insidious temptation — espe- cially to people of small affairs and contracted experience — to try to make one's self or one's personal interests, the chief object of every- body's attention. It would seem as if very many people were suffering from an uninter- mittent run of a disease that might aptly be called the Personal History disease. Sometimes this disease appears in an inof- fensive, albeit an uninteresting, form; those thus afflicted give detailed accounts of their trivial past experiences, and present intents and doings to any and all who will listen. More often the Personal History disease ap- [152] SOCIAL RUTS pears in virulent and vulgar form, where not only personal acts and what " he said " and " I said " are rehearsed, but where, also, physical ailments, past, present and expected, are shamelessly exploited. This disease is not dependent upon weather, place or season. It breaks out at any time on the slightest provocation. To give a civil " How do you do ? " greeting to a person whose brain is infected with it is risky. One is in danger of being deluged with a minute account of aches and pains, " symptoms " and " developments " ; or even of being made the unwilling recipient of harrowing confidences about " my operation." While the mention of a physician, a nurse, a hot-water bag, cli- mate, travel, or anything whatsoever remotely associated with some physical inharmony is enough to start the Personal History disease raging at high temperature. If good taste, refinement and consideration for others are not sufficient to make people positive against this malady, then self-interest and one's future welfare should do so. Re- [153J SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG picturing sickness, suffering and sorrow is extremely devitalizing, aging. In " Mind Building" Dr. Elmer Gates says: "Weari- some, unpleasant memories weaken the health and do not generate thought energy. They should be expelled by a crop of pleasant mem- ories. This process of upbuilding by substi- tution can be applied up to the period of decrepitude." There Is no denying that life ever tends toward the personal. Each individual is more Interested in self than in any one or anything else. Even the self-sacrificing mother Is devoted and self-sacrificing because it is her pleasure to be so. But, while each person Is the center of his or her world, only those who are morbidly personal make self also the circumference of their world. It is worthy social service to sidetrack people when their conversation starts off on any Self line. Justice to one's self demands that one switch them off on another hne, if possible, when they begin to unload their woes wholesale upon one. [154J SOCIAL RUTS A friend to whom this conversational side- tracking had been suggested, writes of her experiment with a summer guest. She says: " Mrs. A — 's life seemed pitched in a minor key. I determined to strike for a major. Every time she commenced on a doleful re- cital of past events I managed to change the conversation, to introduce some subject of interest that was alive, right here and now. (Oh, how I hate these catacombs-habits of thinking and living ! With never ' a glad ' for the sunshine of to-day I) Whenever she sighed — which she did often — I immediately called her attention to something cheery, or 'comfy,' or funny. Dear! dear! How my bump of ingenuity has been exercised! I made her do things, too, instead of moping and thinking that she was miserable — the children, the dog, the enticing weather and the lake were my allies. Result: Before the end of the first week she had brightened up perceptibly; second week, symptoms improv- ing; third week, a critical point. I proposed an all-day's rowing excursion up the lake. [155] SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG She agreed, although ' she hadn't been on the water since she went into mourning.' Then I took my courage between my teeth and told her it was time to come out of mourn- ing. She looked startled and went upstairs; but when she came down ready for our trip she was wearing Margery's white sweater. After that it was easy sailing (by land as well as by sea). At the end of two months she was rejuvenated. Why, she was positively gay, almost hilarious at times! And she looked fifteen years younger. Poor dear ! She had exiled herself so long from the joy of being a part of to-day that her spirit was starved and her body discouraged." This is a good illustration of the effect of Lecky's prescription : " By throwing their whole na- ture into the interests of others men most effectually escape the melancholy of introspec- tion; the horizon of life is enlarged; the development of the moral and sympathetic feelings chases egotistic cares."* How many people exile themselves by self- * Lecky's "Map of Life." [156] SOCIAL RUTS centeredness not only from the joys of the present hour, but into dreary, unresourceful oldness! "Excessive grief is the enemy to the living," says Shakespeare. The rut of details tempts people of narrow interest. Of course, there is no positive harm in attention to details; in fact, many commercial positions are chiefly a matter of attending to details, while in all unselfish as- sociations every one must give due heed to various kinds of details. But to circumscribe one's interests to the petty details of ordinary daily " goings on " is negatively harmful. It shuts out wider sympathies and dwarfs one's growth. It cramps and dulls the power of attention and, in consequence, one's character and one's physical well-being inevitably suffer. Timidly egotistic people are especially given to verbal details. They are miserable if they do not receive the approbation of their asso- ciates and they seem harassed by the perpet- ual fear that they may have been " misunder- stood," so " explanations " are ever the order [157J SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG of the hour. Their tiresome, detailed expla- nations of unimportant happenings and re- marks often cause them to lose the very ap- proval they seek. Doers who are making history, here and now, have no time to listen to wearisome de- tails where the main idea " is lost in a laby- rinth of words." A mass description of all ordinary happenings, or even an indirect ref- erence to them, is usually sufficient to make one's meaning clear, and is certainly much less wearing on the listener than is a minutely detailed account. With which woman would you rather live, the one who builds the fire, fills the teakettle and puts it over, grinds the coffee, sets the table, poaches the eggs, makes the toast, calls the family to breakfast and sees that every one is helped to what he or she likes, or the woman who gets breakfast and serves it? The rut of sameness is another social pit- fall. Gelett Burgess has recently christened those who are mired in it " Bromides." He [158] SOCIAL RUTS says : " The Bromide has no surprises for you. When you see one enter a room, you must reconcile yourself to the inevitable. No hope for flashes of original thought, no illuminat- ing, newer point of view, no sulphitic flashes of fancy — the steady glow of bromidic con- versation and action is all one can hope for. He may be wise and good, he may be loved and respected — but he lives inland; he puts not forth to sea. He is there when you want him, always the same."* One of the reasons why little children are such objects of interest to all right-hearted adults is because their new acquirements, their progressive infantile imitations of our own acts and expressions, have the charm of the new, the unexpected. Suppose that a little child, one who was exceedingly " cute," " dear " and " roguish," was always cute, dear and roguish in the same way; that it had no variety, that for weeks and months it learned no new tricks. Would we not grow * Gelett Burgess's ** Are You a Bromide ?" [159] SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG tired of its expressions as we would of an intricate mechanical doll that could do some marvelous antics times without end, but could do never a new thing ? Repetition unleavened by variety always leads to diminution of attention. Fascinating people are those whose action, thought and mood we cannot anticipate, in whose presence we are always prepared for the unexpected; who lure us to realms of fancy away from the humdrum, who charm us by their resource- fulness, their versatility of sympathy and interest. It is far from complimentary to say that a person is " always the same." We know just what to expect — the same stale, old ideas, views, complaints, prejudices, attitudes, man- nerisms, tones and inflections. To feel that one can always rely on a person, that he or she is absolutely sincere and loyal is, of course, the only basis for enduring friendship; but, as we love living, let us have variety of objec- tive expression throughout the whole emo- tional gamut. Even such high virtues as [1 60] SOCIAL RUTS optimism, cheerfulness and kindness may lose much of their potency if they always appear in the same guise. There are many people to-day who par- tially, at least, realize that depressing and antagonistic mental states are as unhealthful as they are unethical. But not a few of these same people are so insistent in advocating " right thinking " that they become as irri- tating with their stock phrases, " Don't worry," " All is good," " Have faith," and " Cheer up," as the habitually pessimistic person is spiritually depressing. One may even nag about such altogether useful things as rubbers, overcoats, umbrellas, flannels, hours of sleep and articles of diet. A devoted mother sometimes loses " her hold " on her half-grown son because she is persistently too solicitous concerning his welfare. Were her affection to take a different form of expres- sion, were it to give the boy a chance to be the protector instead of the protected, her Influ- ence would be more secure. Another rut that must. Indeed, be guarded [i6i] SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG against " as we would guard against the plague," is the rut of iteration — the habit of telling the same incident or experience again and again to the same person or persons. Iteration and reiteration are pre-eminently signs of the mind's infirmity, of loss of co-or- dinate memory. We all know people in their dotage — may right living save us from it! — who will tell the same incident over twenty times in a day and be quite innocent of having mentioned it. Such maundering is one of the tragedies of old age which makes the heart grieve. But no indulgence is warranted toward people still in the strength of their years and vigorous in mind who allow themselves to fall into this most tedious of habits. Nothing is more irksome, more exhaustive to the fac- ulty of attention, than to listen to these ego- tistic repetitions. It takes large courtesy to endure such trials of patience patiently. And may it not be mistaken courtesy, ultimate un- kindness, to listen without protest to the unthinking iterations of a friend or acquain- [162] SOCIAL RUTS ' tance? Should we not drop a hint of the dangers ahead? Well would It be for each of us, if we were blessed with such outspoken companions as a little five-years-old friend of mine proved herself to be. This free little soul was stand- ing quietly by the window apparently giving no heed to the conversation of her older sister and a young gentleman caller; but when the young gentleman began to relate some inci- dent which he had told during a previous call, she turned to him and ingenuously said: " Sis- ter knows that. You told it to her the other day." It is an unwritten law, in a certain family of goodly numbers where the spirit of chum- miness is the presiding genius, that each one shall be protected by the others from the social sin of iteration. Each one is monitor over the rest. If any one commences to re- tell an incident or experience, some member is sure to hum, " One, two, Buckle the shoe," or to call out, " Once, twice and then again," or significantly to hold up two fingers. No [163J SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG one enters into this anti-rut custom more heartily than does the seventy-three-years- young grandmother. Every person has need to be an alert self-monitor In order not to be betrayed into this aging habit of reiteration. There is also an uninteresting sameness in our daily movements. In a little social gath- ering a woman seated herself on a stool near an open fireplace as unconsciously as a child would have done so. A gentleman caller glancing at her and then at his complaisant, conventional wife who, according to " good form," sat stiffly erect, he smilingly said: " I beg your pardon for being personal, but I must say I like the ease with which you sit wherever you want to. I should expect the stars would fall if my wife were so to make herself comfortable." Ruts ! ruts ! How many adults sit, stand, turn, walk, move the hands, head, hips, shoulders, eye- brows and lips, do all physical expressions in the same way, with little or no variation throughout the whole day! No wonder we often look stupid and are so. [1 64 J SOCIAL RUTS How about the emotional life of people whose voices are deadly monotonous — often monotonous on a high strained key ? Monot- ony of effect, monotony of cause! If the outer expression Is dull, so is the Inner feel- ing. If I had to choose a companion from a score of strangers, I should choose one who had vocal variety, for I should know that there was mental variety behind it. We may well pray to be protected from the friend who has no Intellectual and emotional " stops " and " variations." If any person doubts the tendency of people In general, and of himself or herself In partic- ular, to get into the rut of sameness In daily social Intercourse, let such one question those persons whom he or she frequently meets when off guard, so to speak. Could not the grocer, butcher, laundress, dressmaker, tailor, milliner, the janitor, postman, bell-boy and of- fice clerk give unmistakable character sketches of the different people whom they serve ? In- deed, yes, if they were sufficiently imitative. Reader, think of a score of your friends or [165] SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG acquaintances. Cannot you readily pigeon- hole nearly all of them according to their habitual trends of thought, their habitual tones and their habitual bodily expressions? One is always narrowly critical; one is ab- sorbed in petty household tribulations ; one is full of business — the stock market, insurance, buying and selling, everything brought to the scale of dollars and cents — one is always hunting for the mote in the eye of some one else, never seeing the beam in his own eye; another is interested in reforms; another is forever making a diagnosis of his or her phys- ical condition; another is given to inventory- ing the misfortunes or scandals in his or her circle of acquaintances. Occasionally one meets people from the Isle of Enchantment, where ruts are unknown. People who are young and lovely of spirit, no matter how many years they have lived; who are interested in art, music, literature, the stage, travel, philosophy, reforms, settlement work, and incidentally, but sufficiently and wisely, in personal matters — in business or in [i66] SOCIAL RUTS housekeeping: people who give freely, un- grudgingly of their inner, best self. To pass an hour in such a person's society is as invigo- rating as to breathe ozone from the moun- tain-tops. One of the social arts that makes most for youngness of life, is the art of lending our- selves generously, sympathetically, to people and in being positively, not passively, related to the immediate interests of the hour. Nearly all persons whose actual Interests seem lim- ited and exclusively personal, have enough possible interests to make them delightful companions. They should squarely face their social attitude and bestir themselves mentally to improve it. Expression — out-giving of one's self — changes the possible Into the actual. Interests grow by food and exercise as does the body. Would you, my prosaic housewife, make your social contribution less monotonous, more worth while ? When next a friend calls to see you — either because she Is fond of you or because she wants to square up her society [167] SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG debts — greet her in new fashion. If it has been your custom for years perhaps to say in a matter of fact, unemotional way, " Good afternoon; I'm glad to see you," say, instead, in your cheeriest tone something after this order: "Hello, dear! It's jolly of you to come to see me to-day ! Let's sit here in the sunshine and play we haven't a care in the world." Omit the customary dole of petty domestic problems. Instead of talking about your cook, or the weather, or disease, or neighborhood gossip, introduce topics of gen- eral interest. Speak of some work of art, some public movement; discuss the latest novel and compare it with " Adam Bede," or call her attention to a paragraph by some fav- orite author ; ask her opinion about the " Psy- chology of Mobs," or name an afternoon for her to spend with you reading Shakespeare. Tell a funny story or incident. Sing a snatch of an old song and ask if she remembers the rest. Show her an exercise for keeping the body supple or for preventing corpulency. Do anything that is different from your customary [i68] SOCIAL RUTS social output. Seize the opportunity to con- tribute something worth while, socially, for the gift of your friend's time and attention. Such manifestation of freshness of interest, of aliveness on your part, will assuredly in- crease your charm as a hostess. Moreover it will be a direct step upward for you and your guest out of the rut of trivial, unworthy social commerce. " It is very easy to be dull. It is very easy to give your second-best, to be less excellent than you might have been. It is very easy to decline accomplishments which require hard work, to decline a health and beauty which ask the price of sturdy living, to decline human service which involves an over- flowing measure of love and skill. It is very easy to call laziness patience ; to call meanness prudence; to call cowardice caution; to call the common-place the practical and mere in- ertia conservatism."* Emerson says, " Almost all people descend to meet." But why should they? The best one can give is none too good for a friend. * Henderson's "Education and the Larger Life." [169J SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG Richness of life comes not by being exclusive, but Inclusive in our sympathies. The art of living a beautiful, helpful life with one's kind, In the home and the community. Is the highest art of all, Is the highest achievement of civil- ization. Such living requires constant obe- dience to the Biblical Injunction, " Be ye renewed by the renewing of your minds." Unless the mind Is frequently renewed, one soon becomes a social dead-weight — old. Irre- spective of years. [lyoj "Old age is to feel but half, and feebly, what you feel." — Matthew Arnold. "It makes a tremendous difference what people are thinking about as they carry on their work. The principle of thought-direction is the basis of all scientific pedagogic effort." — C. Han- ford Henderson. XIII DOMESTIC RUTS " When In Rome do as the Romans do " ; that is, drop your old habits, your old way of doing things whenever you go Into a new environment. Drop the old, embrace the new, If you would see Rome. Change of scene, new environment, new associations with nature, art and people are transforming, rejuvenating agencies. They help to deliver us from the same old stimuli and the same old reactions, mental, emotional and physical. How often do people come home from a foreign trip, or from a visit to some part of their own country that was foreign to them, or from a month's camping in the pine woods, feeling " made over " ! As a general thing people who travel much, [173] SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG business men and women who seize vacation opportunities as eagerly as they seize business opportunities, bear fewer and less ugly ear- marks of their profession than do stay-at- home people. But if we fail to do " as the Romans do when In Rome," we shall miss the chief benefits of the new environment. When we take home and business cares and habits with us, why, Rome is not really a new en- vironment, only our old environment taken into a new locality. Men and women, the latter especially, need to be emancipated from the house rut. New stimulus to thought, emotion and action is not dependent upon travel or a new locality. It is ever just outside our own door. No reactions are more wholesome and vivi- fying than those which result from hours spent in " God's great out-of-doors." Yet, " pity 'tis, 'tis true," thousands of women who virtually command their time are so enslaved by the tyranny of things — the making of things, the doing of things, the collecting of things, the care of things, the worry [174] DOMESTIC RUTS about things — that they seldom have a free hour for self-realization and refresh- ment out in the great organic universe. No prophet ever saw with clearer vision than Emerson when he said, " Things are in the saddle and ride mankind." This was concretely brought home to me to-day in a letter from a friend, a woman of unusual ability and clear discrimination. She writes : " I am busy, too busy. It troubles me to find that circumstances do not seem to make much difference, either. I am forced to conclude that the habit is upon me of taking on a little more than I can do, so that the situation al- ways seems to be driving me instead of my controlling the situation." The soul of many a woman who is early growing old gives unconscious echo to Rich- ard Hovey's words : "I'm sick of four walls and a ceiling. I have need of the sky. I have business with the grass." A paying business for every man and woman, a need common to all humanity I [175J SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG The monotonous, inorganic stimulus af- forded by " four walls and a ceiling " is the primary cause of much of the nervousness and the aging irritability to which civilized woman is heir. The change most needed is from the inside to the outside of her own door. To say that one " has not the time " to enjoy a glorious spring morning, or a walk, through the fields, or an hour under the trees, is equivalent to saying one " has not the time to keep young." How many otherwise sensi- ble women are guilty of moral short-sighted- ness when it comes to an issue between things or appearances and their own " spiritual hygiene." The young wife who, fagged and jaded, was putting in the remnant of her nerv- ous energy, one sweltering August afternoon, on a new gown, is only a type of a large class. In reply to her husband's remonstrance, " Do stop sewing, my dear ! You look so tired and worn," this young woman replied, " Yes, Henry, I know it, but one has to if one's clothes are to look fresh and pretty." [176] DOMESTIC RUTS The magnetism and vital exhilaration of outdoor life looses the shackles of senseless conventionalities and lets one's spirit come into Its own. But here, as everywhere, the individual must do his part. In order to gain most he must give freely, must respond. As we accustom ourselves more and more to respond to the sky, the sunshine and the pure air — be It warm, cold or damp; as we lend ourselves to the sensuous beauty of the pure outline of the mountains against the sky, the flicking light on tree-trunks In the woods, the color glory of the sunset; as we yield our- selves more and more to Nature's upbuilding influences; as webreathe more deeply and let go the strain, contraction and worry of busi- ness and of Indoor life, increasing delight and multiplied reactions will attend the hours spent out of doors. People living In the country often fail to receive the richest influences from their en- vironment because they are not sympathetic- ally, may I say, spiritually, related to it. They see no poetry in their surroundings, only dull [177] SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG prose. " The good brown earth " is common dirt to them. Outdoor life is commonplace to any indi- vidual in just the degree that he fails to give quickened response to it. Nature sings her songs for all, but people must be awakened in sense and soul to receive in full the minis- trations of which John Muir writes: " Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into the trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves." Life indoors, also, may be varied and in- teresting or monotonous, benumbing and ag- ing. Some may claim that whoever does housework must, perforce, get into a domes- tic rut ; that housework, at its best, is monoto- nous, and that it is impossible to idealize it. We may not be able to put poetry into all kinds of work, but there is a tonic effect in the realization that any work is better for us than no work — better for brain and body. [178] DOMESTIC RUTS " My daily task, whatever it is, that is what mainly educates me."* Dr. Henry Van Dyke voices psychological truth when he says, " Work, my blessing, not my doom." Doubtless that perverted mental attitude to- ward living which one has termed " the pas- sion for material comfort " makes housework seem more monotonous to some women than it really need be. This is not attempting to deny that there is much sameness about housework; so there is about nearly all occupations save those that are of a strictly creative nature. But the element of monotony — that element that makes drudgery of work and so degrades the worker — can be relieved here as else- where, if the right spirit is brought to the work. Take, for instance, one feature of housework, namely, the getting of meals : three meals a day for seven days in the week, for fifty-two weeks in the year, for years un- numbered. A monotonous outlook, indeed! How can new interest be provoked ? In many * Gannett*s "Blessed be Drudgery." [179] SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG little ways. Occasionally, prepare an unac- customed dish, have a meal at an hour other than the habitual one, change the order of the places at the table and allow one of the children to serve or pour the coffee instead of " mother " ; reverse the order of courses by serving a delicate sherbet first, or have wal- nuts with the toast at breakfast rather than for dessert at dinner ; surprise the family with a very light meal, say, bread and milk, where they are accustomed to have meat and vegeta- bles ; go to a restaurant for an occasional din- ner; put some sandwiches into a basket and have an impromptu picnic, or have breakfast on the porch or under the trees with apple- blossoms for a canopy. Such variation in meals may also serve to keep some of the family from the diet rut. An occasional change of food has been found essential for live stock; certainly, it is more so for human beings. If for no other reason than to protect our- selves from becoming " cranky " — ^which frankly means notional, old — we should disci- [i8o] DOMESTIC RUTS pline ourselves to partake of different kinds of food, or of the same kind of food differ- ently prepared. If our eggs have been boiled each morning for a week, that in itself is rea- son enough why they should now be poached or scrambled. A gentleman visiting a friend sat down to a tempting breakfast of fruit, chops, rolls and coffee. He declined every- thing except the coffee, saying that he had not eaten a breakfast in ten years without pan- cakes. He was in the pancake rut. How conspicuous is our slavery to environ- ment and to mere things when we cannot feel comfortable or " at home " unless all of the little customary details of living are adjusted to our habits and tastes ! A woman who had not lived more than fifty-five years, but had lived those in a very narrow, perpendicular groove, received a hint that doing every-day acts in different ways was conducive to young- ness. On Sunday she conscientiously started out to experiment. At church she sat in the middle of her pew instead of the end, as was her wont. The following day in relating her [i8i] SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG experience, she was emphatic in denouncing the idea of doing accustomed acts in a new way. She said that as long as she sat in the center of the pew she felt so out of place that she could not keep her mind on sacred things. Not until she moved back into the corner where she had sat for twenty years did the usual church feeling possess her. What a confession of bondage ! A place in her pew two or three feet removed from the customary one had power to expel all religious sentiments from the well-intentioned woman's mind! And the worst of it was, Instead of learning the lesson, laughing at herself and reforming, she condemned the idea, which if she had con- tinued to carry into motor expression, would have made it possible for her to worship in any attitude or any place. Blessed be anything that lessens bondage to the habitual In our daily objective life ! Fashions have been railed at as entailing a waste of time, money and nervous energy, but ever changing fashion has also another order of Influence. Dr. George E. Vincent [182] DOMESTIC RUTS says: "Fashions help to prevent social in- sanity, the constant change keeping the people from going crazy." A radical change In costume sometimes acts like a magician in transforming the wearer's very self. Golf, tennis and outing suits have brought new motor reactions in their train. They have put to rout not a little stiffness and aging staldness. Picture hats and their more demure relatives have been missionaries of youth and beauty to many a woman who, before succumbing to their transforming witchery, had been addicted to prim, severe bonnets. It is a social contribution to make a person look, act and feel younger. All hail to new styles of dress — especially to becom- ing ones 1 The change in the color and expression of women's clothes, which has quite generally come about during the last few years, is sig- nificant of the growing tendency among women to cling to their youth and to postpone the appearances of old age as long as possible. More white, and more colors — softer and [183J SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG lighter — are worn by them than formerly. The stimuli to the brain from these colors can- not fail in being more vivifying than that re- ceived from the leaden grays and dead browns that were so prevalent up to a score of years ago. Fortunately, too, the reign of black as the garb of mourning, which has so long pre- vailed, is being questioned by many people, and strongly opposed by some. Black is so unalive, gloomy and hopeless in its expres- sion 1 Its reactionary effect upon the feelings of those whose hearts are heavy laden must be depressing, even though its influence may be unrecognized. Moreover, an unrelieved black dress has a marked aging effect on the face of the wearer. Not all girls in their teens are superior to its effect. It is unkind to all save youth that is literally " round-cheeked," while it is positively cruel to thin faces with sharp features, and to faces deeply carved or furrowed by suffering. Black intensifies with a deeper shadow every hollow and line of the face, and gives the features a hard, drawn ex- pression. [184] DOMESTIC RUTS Those who would avoid old-age conditions should have the courage to get rid of clothes and other things that have been associated with soul-harrowing experiences — tragedies, sickness and death. Does such procedure seem, at first thought, hard and unfeeling? It is simply sane, sensible, psychologic. One's memory and imagination are unwholesomely stimulated by the sight of things having tragic associations. These reminders lead one to dwell upon past agonies, that, in justice to the present hour and to one's future, should be kept out of the foreground of consciousness. To be " near " and wear shabby, ugly old clothes when one can afford suitable new ones is economy that results in loss, instead of gain. Such parsimony, while anticipating a rainy day that may never overtake one, makes one look and feel old, mean and out-of-place in the sunshine of to-day. Worst of all, it shrivels the spirit. How impossible it is to conceive of a generous-spirited, open-minded miser. Another domestic rut is the furniture rut. [185J SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG Many people have a certain chair in which they habitually sit. Frequently a chair be- comes distinguished as " mother's chair," " sister Clara's chair," " Uncle John's chair." Such specifically pre-empted chairs usually have their particular places in the room from which they are seldom moved. It takes no gift of prophecy to foretell where we shall find certain chairs, and who will be occupying them in certain homes. Domestic animals are likewise rehable. The same cow goes to the same stall with great regularity every night. Dogs habitually find the same soft spots on the floor. But cows and dogs are not accredited with aspirations toward intellectual progress, nor are they sup- posed to be able to reason, to will, to have the power to weigh and to choose. They can afford to become largely automatic in their reactions, but with thinking, loving, willing, progressive man it is different. A woman who is swiftly traveling the road toward early oldness, recently moved into a beautiful new home. A friend who knows [i86] DOMESTIC RUTS her well remarked: "When Mrs. M once gets her furniture placed and the pictures hung, it is done for a lifetime. There is no such thing as change with her. She is too set." We all know these precise, exact, pain- ful housekeepers — old women, every one. An appreciation, half-humorous and half- pathetic, of his wife's setness was evidenced in a letter from a gentleman to his sister, who had visited them a few years before. She had asked if they still had the same lamp. He wrote : " Yes, the same lamp on the same mat on the same table, and the table on the same spot in the same carpet." Furniture, pictures, people, need new lights, new settings, to bring out all their variety and beauty. It is newness — change of activity, change of relation to things as well as to people — that affords the stimulus to new brain impressions and to new bodily reactions. A most charming seventy-odd years young woman laughingly said, when a gentleman rose and suggested that he had her easy-chair : [187] SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG " My chair ! I haven't any chair. I scorn to have a chair. Any kind of a seat — a bench, three-legged stool, straight back- or easy- chair — is all the same to me. I have seen too much of life to allow myself to get into a chair rut." That tells the whole story. We get into chair ruts, drinking ruts, eating ruts, sleep- ing ruts, dressing ruts, working ruts, and even recreation and amusement ruts. The salva- tion of our youthfulness requires that we un- flinchingly abandon these well-worn grooves, and direct our daily footsteps into unaccus- tomed byways, if not highways. [i88] "Few causes age the body faster than willful indolence and monotony of mind — the mind, that very princi- ple of physical youthfulness. — James Lane Allen. "Everything centers in the emo- tional hfe. To stunt and cripple and repress that is to make impossible a full life in other directions. Kill it and you have the dead souls of the social world. In childhood the emotional life is strong. Here, I think, and not in Florida, is to be found the fountain of perpetual youth. We should never grow old if in our hearts we could keep always the fiill flood of feeling. It is the drying up of this part of our natures that makes possible the dread- fiil indifference and paralysis of old age." — C Hanford Henderson. XIV THINKING AND FEELING RUTS A kind of mental laziness which for lack of a better term may be called inertia of the will — disinclination to vigorous mental effort — is, perhaps, the chiefest of all the causes of old age. It is easy to dawdle mentally; for no will-action is required when the wheels of thought aimlessly revolve in accustomed grooves. Such come-as-you-please thoughts are practically automatic — the undirected response to some stimulus. Directed thinking to some definite end — which is the only kind of thinking that makes for the retention of mental vigor — requires effort. " If you are going to use your mind, [191J SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG use it with all your heart. Thinking is almost a lost art in our country," says Edward Howard Griggs. A virile will takes the in- itiative; it is pioneering, daring and definite. Inertia of the will manifests itself in such mental habits as treadmill thinking, moon- ing, vain longings and wool-gathering. During the early part of life, the strong stimuli afforded by school and college study and sports, by the first few years of aggressive business and professional life, and by the nov- elty of home-making are sufScient to keep the brain quite generally active; but as time goes by, the early stimuli no longer stimulate. The result is that the average person of forty years thinks and feels principally in ruts ; and thoughts and emotions control his acts. It is well, occasionally, to take an inventory of our stock of ideas, of our staple lines of thought, and to close out those that have be- come " dead stock." To make room for the new, the old must go — old prejudices and superannuated ideas as well as outgrown clothes and old business methods. [192J THINKING AND FEELING RUTS True, this is setting a task that is difficult for some natures. But what matter, if growth follows ! It may even seem like losing a part of one's very self to give up certain long cher- ished ideas, for one's opinions and habits of thought are very intimately associated with the real primary " me." But if one's mental furnishings have become shabby, no matter what their associations, they must be dis- carded. " Angels must go, that archangels may come." If there be people, as 'tis reported, who are " intellectually and spiritually immune to a new idea," the knell of their youth has already sounded. Continued aliveness of the human mind is dependent not alone on vigorous exer- cise in some direction, but equally so on diversity of exercise. In fact, too exclusive thinking along any one line jeopardizes the mind's adaptabihty — its power of rebound from shock and stress. All of the so-called " faculties " must be frequently brought into play, else the mind as a whole suffers. No other part of our psychical equipment [193] SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG needs more discreet guidance than does the imagination. " Not the logical faculty, but the imagination, is king over us," says Car- lyle. The imagination is the creative power of the mind, and as such plays the leading role in many a life-drama. Its creations are by no means confined to symphonies, poetry, pic- tures, wonderland romances, nor to discov- eries, inventions and scientific investigations. Many a person who would declare and hon- estly believe that " he had no imagination " is largely controlled by his imagination, which not infrequently is perverted and distorted. Suspicion, cynicism, hypersensitiveness, hys- teria, morbidity and insanity are some of the misshapen children of perverted imagination. The fear rut — and who does not occasionally slip into its miasmic depths? — is crowded with people whose imagination has been al- lowed to run wild. Having no legitimate field of exercise, the imagination plays fan- tastic havoc with everyday affairs. Mothers worry themselves cross because the imagina- tion suggests possible catastrophes and malig- [194J THINKING AND FEELING RUTS nant epidemics. Wives fret themselves into unloveliness because an idle imagination makes mountains out of molehills. The un- employed rich imagine themselves into invalids. Regular habitues of the fear rut fear the impossible as well as the possible. They fear the things that have been, that are, that are to be and are not to be ; thus do they exclude present joy and invite future misfortune. People fear old age and dependence; and by so doing they not only hasten oldness, but, in imagination, live in the poor-house to-day. These are the poor in spirit who are not " blessed." Every person who worries is, in some de- gree, the victim of a perverted imagination. For what is worry but mentally crossing bridges before one comes to them, or, in imag- ination, repeatedly rehearsing something that has or has not occurred? A friend to whom this suggestion was made, said: " Yes, that is quite true of the many needless worries in which people weakly indulge, but what about [195J SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG worry where there is warrantable cause for it?" There never is warrantable cause for worry ; every intellectually honest person must acknowledge that by no process of reason can worry be proven to be advantageous or justi- fiable. Worry is loss of mental poise as much as a fit of temper is and, also, quite as devital- izing. Squarely facing a diflEcult situation, whether it be a temporary one or an abiding one, and clearly thinking out the best possible way of meeting it with the resources at one's command, is a radically different mental proc- ess from worry — the one is organically con- structive, the other organically destructive. A gentleman, who has had to meet many exacting situations during the past few years, gives the following recipe for overcoming small worries and for escaping the worst effects of a " warrantable " worry: " To over- come an army of small worries, let a big one enter the field; to escape insanity from a single big worry, get several of equal intensity." An atrophied imagination means, at best, a commonplace, unresourceful Gradgrind [196] THINKING AND FEELING RUTS person; one who deals in "nothing but facts," whose mental reach does not extend beyond the immediate report of his five senses. The practical is the only goal for which such a person strives — he is incapable of seeing those that are beyond. Practicality is a sturdy and a worthy characteristic, but it is by no means the whole of character. Every nature needs somewhat of its steadying influ- ence. Without such ballast one is, indeed, poorly equipped for life, for one is then sub- ject to every erratic, visionary impulse, to every passing whim. But to allow one's self to be buried in the rut of practicality means death to one's higher powers. Ruts of self-depreciation, self-pity and sati- ety are some of the other thinking and feeling ruts to which wayfarers surrender their young- ness. Self-depreciation is a kind of paralyz- ing negation. Continued indulgence in it produces physical inertness and loss of vital tone, while its mental effect is to obscure the judgment and gradually undermine the will. Often, it is his will that a self-slandering per- [197] SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG son attacks. He seems to find a weak will a convenient scapegoat. He — not Infrequently It Is she — will say in excuse for any shortcom- ing, " Oh, yes, I know; but my will Is weak. I can't help it." Every time one so thinks and speaks, the power of resistance, mental and physical, is lowered a jot. If I were to realize that the muscles of my back or arm were weak, would it be rational for me to say, " Well, I will strengthen them by persistently dwelling on what weak, good-for-nothing muscles they are?" Certainly not; rather, it would be the sane thing to say, " If they are weak, they must be strengthened by judi- cious exercises that shall invigorate them and rebuild their tissues." Apply the same line of reasoning to mental states. I recognize that my will is vacillating or halting. How shall I strengthen it ? Cer- tainly not by dwelling upon its weakness. The right psychological treatment would be to make and re-make a positive statement. To think and say: " My will can be toned up by exercise and It's going to be. I cannot [198] THINKING AND FEELING RUTS afford to go back on myself." " There is notHing more palsying than doubt and unbe- lief. The mere behef that we can do a thing becomes an extra cog in the power applied to move the wheel of progress."* Of course, the expression of belief in one's will should be immediately justified by one's doing some- thing that requires some degree of determina- tion. Nothing can be said in extenuation of that particular form of will-inertia whose mani- festation is self-pity. Ralph Connor calls it " the last and most deplorable of all human weaknesses." The rut of satiety is one of the most hope- less of thinking and feeling ruts. Two kinds of people are found therein, those who are decadent and those who affect the blase state. It is the pose of the latter to be "deadly bored" by life. The real blase state is men- tal wornness — pitiable oldness. It is next to impossible to inspire people who have become thus degenerate with even a desire to rise * Halleck's "Education of the Central Nervous System." [199J SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG above their subnormal state, much less with the will to do so. They have no Interest in work, people, books, art, current or historic events. Such a mental state is dangerously enervating, physically; unfortunates of the blase type soon become passe. Is it not a tremendously sad thing to have worn out — or to think we have — the great variety of world interests? Years, rightly lived, should bring a multi- plication, not a relinquishment, of interests. Even that which is very familiar contains something new for us if our senses are not holden. The musical scale has only eight fun- damental notes. Every piece of music illus- trates the new use of the old — from new combinations arise new harmonies. Surely, this world and the wonders and mysteries thereof are sufficient to hold one's interest for one lifetime — stretch the span as best one may. Certain emotional ruts lead precipitately to old age. These are ruts of anger, malice, envy, jealousy, suspicion, despondency, sad- [200] THINKING AND FEELING RUTS ness and grieving. A significant incident is related of a great singing master who smiled serenely when a would-be prima donna, beside herself with rage, abused him in the presence of others. To the remonstrances of a friend, the master replied, " I shall have my revenge in seeing her grow old." Antagonistic feeling, of whatever order, is aging. It is physiologically contractive, in- hibitive; it interferes with the free function- ing of the vital processes upon which health and youth depend. Depressed feeling of whatever order is aging. It is physiologically enervating; it lowers the tone of the entire system. Hopeful, joyous feeling of whatever order is upbuilding. It is physiologically magnetic and vitalizing; it especially relaxes the muscles of the arteries and bronchial tubes, thus promoting free circulation and respira- tion ; it makes for the harmonious activity of the whole organism. We cannot afford to carry chips on our shoulders, nor unlcindness in our hearts, nor afford to be morose or despondent, nor afford [201J SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG the " luxury of grief." The boomerang tendencies of thoughts and actions are sug- gested by Whitman when he says : " The song is to the singer and comes back most to him. The teaching is to the teacher and comes back most to him. The theft is to the thief and comes back most to him. The love is to the lover and comes back most to him. The gift is to the giver and comes back most to him. It cannot fail. " Youngness is likewise imperiled by emo- tional apathy and repression. All higher emotions — joy, love, hope, courage — are physically vivifying. No venture is more hazardous than to assume a Micawber-like attitude toward matters of the heart. If, in our superior self-estimate, we think to reserve our sympathy until something worthy of it " turns up," we shall waken some day to the bitter realization that we have lost the power to feel keenly, that we are hard and old at heart. Neglect a faculty, and in time it will neglect you. It is the part of higher selfishness and worthy living not to allow ourselves to be [202] THINKING AND FEELING RUTS either indolent or ignorant concerning the mind's and body's welfare. As the years crowd, the greater is the need to provide new stimuli for vivifying reactions. Who shall say if such new stimuli were abundantly provided during all the " days of our years " that our bodies need ever fall into fatal decrepitude ? Does some one protest : "It is foolish optimism to suggest such an unscientific possibility. With advancing years the body must, perforce, lose its plasticity. More lime accumulates in the bones and even the walls of the arteries take on old-age char- acteristics " ? Perhaps these physiological transformations are not preventable and, then, perhaps they are. It will take a few genera- tions of people who have lived according to the habit of the unhabitual, to prove whether these changes may not be chiefly due to the combined effect of " disadvantageous " men- tal states upon the re-building functions of the body, and the habit of subnormal activity in our physical, thinking and feeling selves. Dr. Madison. J. Taylor says: " The stiffen- [203J SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG ing of the tissues which is the sign and accom- paniment of age, is warded off by exercise. Self-indulgence in lazy ways is the sure way to senility." Sir Henry Thompson, the oldest member of the Royal College of Surgeons, England, " was still in the professional har- ness " at eighty-four, and declared that " his joints v/ere quite free from any stiffness, being as supple and mobile as they were in youth." Did natural law make an exception here? Hardly. From some natural cause this effect naturally resulted. May not science hope to penetrate to the cause and then command the effect ? If by different orders of treatment the shells of walnuts can be made to grow thick or thin and cacti to grow with or without spines, is it not reasonable to believe that man's brain and body will show marked effects from a new order of psychologic and physiologic treatment? Perhaps long before the millennium, the answer will be given by experience. Meanwhile, to-day faces us. How we re- act from the stimuli it offers will materially [204J THINKING AND FEELING RUTS affect our own future history. Any one who, for a few years, personally makes the test of getting out of ruts and keeping out, the test of cultivating the habit of the unhabitual In thought, feeling and act, will be persuaded that such living makes for protection against infirmity, decrepitude, senility, and " pre- cocious old age." And, better than knowing this fact, he himself will be a personal demon- stration of it. [205]