SWEETS OF OLD AGE

Evening Star, Issue 22576, 18 February 1937, Page 14

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), ...FILL UP... — ' “ There can be no harsher court than the tribunal of self-judgment w T hen it sits in age upon the errors and 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 can 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 whoever has stored his heart and brain with sweet and noble things, 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 » 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.”