RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29802, 19 April 1962, Page 21

RANDOM REMINDER

ELIXIR OF YOUTH

One of the secrets of leading a happy life seems to be the ability to make the best of what it has to offer. Youth has no doubt at all that those over 30 are decrepit dead-beats, and rather tends to wonder why they bother carrying on at all. But it has been said somewhere that life begins at 40, and to those about that mark there seems no real reason to disbelieve it. They have at least a little of the best of both worlds still sufficient energy to propel themselves around tennis courts, but the experi-

ence to know when to stop. Yet there was that song sung by Maurice Chevalier, “I’m Glad I’m Not Young Any More,” in which he claimed, that, in the sere and yellow, he had "never been so comfortable before”. Then, too, there was the telephone call put through from this office to a woman who had just passed the century in years. The telephone was answered by a woman with a brisk, decisive voice who said that she was not the party sought. “Heavens, no,” she said.

“That’s my sister—l’m only 95.” There is a lady of our acquaintance, who happens to be 70 today. She is cheerful, bright of eye, usually smiling, although she has had her share of knocks in recent times. No regrets there for lost youth, or easier times. She has abandoned, a little reluctantly, the tennis court for the croquet lawn. But she is content. It makes one wonder whether the distant horizons at which many people stare hungrily for most of their days are not merely optical illusions.