Sweets Of Old Age

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 113, 6 February 1937, Page 17

Sweets Of Old Age

“It is when we have time to survey the years that are past that we can look with keen, critical eyes at the part we played throughout them,” writes Sir Herbert Barker in the “Daily Herald” (London).

“There can be no harsher court than the tribunal of self-judgment when it sits in age upon the errors ami omissions of the years.

“In a way, each of us gets the old age he deserves. And when I write that I am not thinking of material rewards, but of those consolations that no man c,an steal from another. “For just as the bee gathers honey against winter, so we, too, fill the storehouse of our futures with the trash or treasure of our choice.

“For when the heat of the day is passed and evening is come, we shall draw upon whatever we have garnered through the years. “Then to whoever has stored his heart and brain with sweet and noble tilings, with charities and daily kindnesses, and whoever has drunk deep of the beauty of the world, will know a deep content and fulfilment. “But what of those who have nothing but a memory of a market-place? They will be empty in the evening of their day. For in old age, beyond the minimum of needs, there is but one want. The old desire to be loved. “To be old and unwanted —and who has not seen this tragedy?—is not always a sad commentary upon the young and vigorous.

“For, as one poet says, ‘Human love needs human meriting.’ We are loved as we deserve to be loved.”