"DON'T GROW OLD!"

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 243, 14 October 1925, Page 10

"DON'T GROW OLD!"

TALISMAN OF ETERNAL YOUTH. THE PETER PAN HABIT. BEATS ROUGE AXD PUTTING THE CLOCK BACK. It is quite useless putting your birthday back; you must keep up with Anno Domini. The amiable habit some ladies are 6aid to possess of discreetly dropping a year or two when they reach that chill region called euphemistically "an uncertain age" is understandable but it avails nothing. It is not years that make a man or a woman old or young. • "Call him not old whose visionary brain holds o'er the past its undisputed, reign," said a rather charming old gentleman who kept the heart of a boy all his life. You may remember his droll account of the elderly professor who had a delightful right out with "the boys'' and added to his academic knowledge (after a merry dinner) the rather unacademic truth tbas you can get a fine bass out of a door panel by rubbing it in a peculiar manner with the flat of the hand. Frivolous trifle, but it is quite certain that the University did not suffer from this gift of eternal youth with which the old chaps were endowed. Peter Pan, the boy who refused to grow up, finds an echo in the hearts of most of us, and the charm of Barry's phantasy is nothing more or less than the touching by the hand of genius of those cords which may be dormant but are never absent from the make-up of even the most kiln-dried among us.

No, rouge, and juggling with the calendar, are not the tricks by which we can recover some of the delightful attributes of the finest thing in the world. You must keep the heart young and the rest of your anatomy will look after itself. Some men are old at twenty, and some are young at sixty, to that cheerful old optimist, Charles Reade. Cheery Old Boys. These elderly boys are among the most delightful people in the world. Charles Lamb was always a child at heart, Pepys, that garrulous and very venial old hypocrite, kept the enthusiasm of youth right through a full and busy life.. - He never lost that tireless enthusiasm that is .the sign manual of youth, and nothing staled that insatiable curiosity, which is the privilege of youth and the bane of their unquestioned elders. Oliver Wendell Holmes, quoted above, is another of the band of immortal youths, and so one could go on underlining names that stand out in one's memory in letters that never tarnish.

Of the other kind, the ones who cling to the outward signs and insignia of juvenility, while missing the very essence and meaning of the divine . age, Major Pendennis springs to the mind as a very opposite Illustration. He refused to grow old in quite a different way, and with the aid of the indefatigable Morgan, his discreet "man" the old gentleman succeeded to a certain extent, hut at what a cost? Thackeray has drawn nothing more subtle or more sad. The likeable old scamp Falstaff also had hankerings after youth, but there was something of the old major about it, and you may remember the cutting remark of the Chiei Justice when the shameless old knight attempts in his airy way to excuse himself under the privilege of youthful irresponsibility.

No, the only way to remain young is to refuse to grow old in your heart — the only part of your anatomy that is immune from the soiling fingers of time. You must never harbour hatred, which is the worst ager of all, and you must think more of others than of yourseii. A few innocent hobbies are a wonderful help in staving off chilling old-age, and some of them should undoubtedly be of the active out-door kind, which keep the body-as well as the mind supple. Much of the lethargy that creeps over the mind begins in the body, and there is nothing essentially respectable in stoginess, however often we may see it accompany increasing years. A Bartered Gift. Keep up some of the fascinating curiosity of the child in the world and your fellow-man. There is no earthly necessity to lose it. A learned don of Cambridge who used to delve into the mysteries of embryo life in fishes and other dull forms of the things that inhabit the waters, once told the writer that he considered our modern system of education largely to blame for the sinful damping of that heavenly curiosity and insatiable "want-to-knowness" of youth, which makes the world such a magic- place to live in. Why, this learned person used to ask regretfully, should we ever lose that God-like-gift? Civilisation's blight, with its senseless craving for excitement, its vulgar chase after merely material gain has much to answer for, but no mother's son is compelled to follow in the ruck and if he willingly with his eyes open, barters his birthright for a mess of pottage, the . blame be on his own head. The gift of youth is a gift of the gods, and it you throw it away you must not mumble with, your toothless gums against old . Father Time, who after all has no home of his own. He is a wanderer with a acythe, and if you give him house room , in.your heart you are doing him no kind- [ ness and you will find him but a very scurvy lodger and you are sure to fall over that inconvenient scythe of his.