UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 AT LOS ANGELES
 
 /'J
 
 THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN
 
 Books by 
 Ralph Bergengren 
 
 THE PERFECT GENTLEMAN 
 THE COMFORTS OF HOME 
 
 Each $1.00 
 
 For 
 Younger Readers 
 
 JANE, JOSEPH AND JOHN 
 
 Boxed, $3.00
 
 The 
 
 SEVEN AGES of MAN 
 
 BY 
 
 RALPH BERGENGREN 
 
 The Atlantic Monthly Press 
 Boston
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY 
 RALPH BERGENGREN
 
 PS 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 I. Baby, Baby .... I 
 
 II. To be a Boy .... 17 
 
 III. On Meeting the Beloved . 33 
 
 IV. This is a Father ... 47 
 V. On Being a Landlord . . 64 
 
 VI. Old Flies and Old Men . 78 
 VII. The Olde, Olde, Very Olde 
 
 Man 94 
 
 203745
 
 BABY, BABY 
 
 In meeting a baby, one should behave as 
 much as possible like a baby one's self. 
 We cannot, of course, diminish our size, 
 or exchange our customary garments for 
 baby- clothes; neither can we arrive in a 
 perambulator, and be conveyed in the 
 arms, either of a parent or a nursemaid, 
 into the presence of the baby whom we are 
 to meet. The best we can do is to hang, as 
 it were on the hatrack, our preconceived 
 ideas of what manner of behavior enter 
 tains a baby, as cooing, grimacing, tick 
 ling, and the like, and model our deport 
 ment on the dignified but friendly reticence 
 that one baby evinces in meeting another. 
 - BABY : HIS FRIENDS AND FOES. 
 
 OF the many questions that Mr. Bos- 
 well, at one time and another, asked his 
 i
 
 THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN 
 
 friend, Dr. Johnson, I can hardly recall 
 another more searching than one that he 
 himself describes as whimsical. 
 
 "I know not how so whimsical a 
 thought came into my head," says Bos- 
 well, "but I asked, 'If, sir, you were 
 shut up in a castle, and a new-born child 
 with you, what would you do?' 
 
 "JOHNSON: Why, sir, I should not 
 much like my company. 
 
 "BOSWELL: But would you take the 
 trouble of rearing it? 
 
 " He seemed, as may be supposed, un 
 willing to pursue the subject: but, upon 
 my persevering in my question, replied, 
 ' Why, yes, sir, I would ; but I must have 
 all conveniences. If I had no garden, I 
 would make a shed on the roof, and take 
 it there for fresh air. I should feed it, 
 and wash it much, and with warm 
 water, to please it, not with cold water, 
 to give it pain.' 
 
 2
 
 BABY, BABY 
 
 "BOSWELL: But, sir, does not heat 
 relax? 
 
 "JOHNSON: Sir, you are not to imag 
 ine the water is to be very hot. I would 
 not coddle the child." 
 
 It appears, too, that the Doctor had 
 given some thought to the subject, al 
 though never expecting to be a mother 
 himself: his immediate insistence upon 
 fresh air promises well for the infant, 
 and the frequency with which he pro 
 poses to wash his little companion indi 
 cates that, so long as the water-supply 
 of the castle lasted, he would have done 
 his part. A cow in the castle seems to 
 have been taken for granted; but, in 
 1769, even Dr. Johnson would have 
 known little or nothing about formulas, 
 nor would it have occurred to him to 
 make a pasteurizing apparatus, as so 
 many parents do nowadays, out of a 
 large tin pail and a pie-plate. Here the 
 3
 
 THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN 
 
 baby would have had to take his eight 
 eenth-century chance. And I wish, too, 
 that he might have had a copy of "The 
 Baby's Physical Culture Guide," that 
 modern compendium of twenty-four 
 exercises, by which a reasonably strong- 
 armed mother may strengthen and de 
 velop the infant's tiny muscles; for I 
 like to think of Dr. Johnson exercising 
 his innocent companion in his shed on 
 the roof. "Sir," he says, "I do not 
 much like my employment; but here 
 we are, and we'll have to make the 
 best of it." 
 
 Such an experience, no doubt, would 
 have been good for Dr. Johnson, and 
 good for the baby (if it survived) . ' ' That 
 into which his little mind is to develop," 
 says "The Baby's Physical Culture 
 Guide," " is plastic like a wax record, 
 ready to retain such impressions as are 
 made upon it"; and on this wax some, 
 4
 
 BABY, BABY 
 
 at least, of the impressions left by Dr. 
 Johnson must have been valuable. But 
 on the real mystery of babyhood the 
 insoluble enigma that the "Guide" can 
 only in small measure dispose of by com 
 paring the rearing of an infant with the 
 home-manufacture of a record for the 
 gramaphone the experience would 
 have thrown no light. 
 
 The Doctor, I dare say, would have 
 written a paper on the feeding and wash 
 ing of infants, and later dictionaries of 
 familiar quotation might perhaps have 
 been enriched by the phrase, " ' The baby 
 is grandfather to the man.' JOHN 
 SON." But of this grandfather the man 
 has no memory. His babyhood is a past 
 concerning which he is perforce silent, a 
 time when it is only by the report of 
 others that he knows he was living. 
 His little mind seems to have been more 
 than a little blank; and although gifted 
 5
 
 THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN 
 
 novelists have set themselves the imag 
 inative task of thinking and writing 
 like babies, none, in my reading, has 
 ever plausibly succeeded. The best they 
 can do is to think and write like little 
 adults. I recall, for example, the honest 
 effort of Miss May Sinclair, whom I 
 greatly respect as an adult, to see Mr. 
 Olivier through the eyes of his baby 
 daughter Mary. "Papa sat up, broad 
 and tall above the table, all by himself. 
 He was dressed in black. One long 
 brown beard hung down in front of him 
 and one short beard covered his mouth. 
 You knew he was smiling because his 
 cheeks swelled high up in his face, so 
 that his eyes were squeezed into narrow, 
 shining slits. When they came out 
 again, you saw scarlet specks and smears 
 in their corners." A fearsome Papa! - 
 and, although I have no way of knowing 
 that fathers do not present themselves 
 6
 
 BABY, BABY 
 
 in this futurist aspect to their helpless 
 offspring, I am glad to think otherwise. 
 At all events a baby is, and must be, 
 well used to living in Brobdingnag. 
 
 It would be a surprising thing, if it 
 were not so common, that a man shows 
 so little curiosity about this forgotten 
 period of his life. But such curiosity 
 would be impossible to satisfy. Existing 
 photographs of him at that time are a 
 disappointment: he seldom admits see 
 ing any resemblance, and, if he does, the 
 likeness rarely, if ever, gives him any 
 visible satisfaction. Nor can anything 
 of real and personal interest be found 
 out by interviewing those who then 
 knew him. Of a hundred, nay, of a 
 thousand or a million babies, and 
 though I cannot speak as a woman, it 
 seems to me (except, perhaps, for a live 
 lier interest and pleasure among them in 
 their infant appearance) that everything 
 7
 
 THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN 
 
 I am saying applies equally to babies 
 of that fascinating sex, the trivial 
 details observed by those who are near 
 est them are practically identical. They 
 thump their heads. They chew their 
 fingers. They try to feed their toes; and, 
 sillier yet, they try to feed them with 
 things that are obviously inedible. And 
 so forth. And so forth. If Dr. Johnson, 
 actually shut up in a castle, and a new 
 born child with him , had kept a record , the 
 result would have been very much like 
 the records that mothers now keep in 
 what, unless I am mistaken, are called 
 " Baby Books." If you Ve seen one Baby 
 Book, as the cynical old man said about 
 circuses, you've seen all of 'em. 
 
 Nor does any man take pleasure in 
 preserving and reading over his own 
 Baby Book. Hercules, to be sure, might 
 have been interested to read in his 
 mother's handwriting, 
 8
 
 BABY, BABY 
 
 " Tuesday. An eventful day. Two 
 big, horrid Snakes came in from the 
 garden, and got in Darling's cradle, 
 frightening Nurse into hysterics; but 
 Darling only cooed and strangled them 
 both with his dear, strong little hands. 
 He gets stronger and cunninger every 
 day. When the horrid Snakes were 
 taken away from him, he cried and said, 
 'Atta! Atta!'" 
 
 But Hercules was an exceptionally in 
 teresting baby; and the average Baby 
 Book records nothing that a grown man 
 can regard with pride,- and much, if he 
 has any sensitiveness at all, that must 
 make him blush. Nothing but respect 
 for his mother, it is almost safe to say, 
 would withhold him from hurrying the 
 incriminating document to the cellar, 
 and cremating it in the furnace. 
 
 For in the beginning Captain William 
 Kidd, George Washington, Dr. Johnson, 
 9
 
 THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN 
 
 the writer of this essay, and even the 
 editor of the ' 'Atlantic Monthly, ' ' looked 
 and behaved very much alike. And so, 
 for that matter, did little Moll Cutpurse 
 and little Susan B. Anthony. So far as 
 anybody could then have said, Captain 
 Kidd might have become a thoughtful, 
 law-abiding essayist, and I a pirate, 
 handicapped, indeed, by changed con 
 ditions of maritime traffic, but uncon- 
 scientiously doing my wicked best. 
 
 As the twig is bent, says the proverb, 
 so is the tree inclined; but these little 
 twigs are bent already, and I humbly 
 submit, with all respect to my scientific 
 friends, and their white mice and their 
 guinea pigs, that where and how it hap 
 pened remains an insoluble mystery. 
 Little as I know about myself, I know 
 that I am neither a white mouse nor a 
 guinea pig. And this, mark you, is 
 no mere conceit. Scientists themselves 
 10
 
 BABY, BABY 
 
 have decided that when babies, in that 
 remote past when they first began really 
 to interest their parents, and the human 
 mother, the most pathetic figure of that 
 primitive world, first began the personal 
 and affectionate observation that was 
 to develop slowly, over millions of years, 
 until it found expression in the first 
 Baby Book scientists, themselves, I 
 say, have decided that, then and there, 
 you and I, intelligent reader, began to 
 differ essentially from every other known 
 kind of mammal. There appeared 
 oh, wonder! something psychical as 
 well as physical about us; but where it 
 came from, they cannot tell us. " Natural 
 selection," so John Fiske once summed 
 up this opinion, " began to follow a new 
 path and make psychical changes instead 
 of physical changes." Little enough 
 there seems to have been to start with; 
 little enough, indeed, there seems to be 
 ii
 
 THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN 
 
 now yet enough more to encourage 
 us to believe that Baby is a lot further 
 along in the right direction than he was 
 a good many million years ago. And 
 with this helpful conviction, Baby him 
 self, whether he will grow up to write 
 essays or commit picturesque murder, 
 seems reasonably well satisfied. We 
 solemn adults, standing around the crib, 
 may well admire, not so much the pink- 
 ness and chubbiness of his toes, as the 
 pinkness and chubbiness (if I may so 
 express it) of his simple satisfaction 
 with the mere fact of existence, his sim 
 ple faith in the Universe. And when we 
 think how impossible it is to think of its 
 beginning, we, too, may capture some 
 thing of this infantile optimism. 
 
 It is by no means impossible (though 
 
 not susceptible of scientific proof) that 
 
 Baby may have a life of his own; and, 
 
 if we may assume Hercules weeping 
 
 12
 
 BABY, BABY 
 
 and saying, "Atta! Atta!" -because 
 shrewd observers of babyhood declare 
 it to be characteristic of babies to say, 
 "Atta! Atta!" when something desir 
 able, in this case two dead snakes, is 
 removed from their range of vision, 
 may we not assume also a universal lan 
 guage of babies, and a place, such as it 
 may be, from which they have emi 
 grated? Here, indeed, one follows M. 
 Maeterlinck, except that, in his judg 
 ment, unborn babies speak French. 
 Such a theory is no help to the novelist, 
 for in that case baby Mary Olivier's 
 impressions of Mr. Olivier must be 
 rendered in baby a language equally 
 unknown to Miss Sinclair and to her 
 readers. Babies have been heard to say, 
 for example, "Nja njan dada atta 
 mama papa'i attaina-na-nahattameene'- 
 meene'-meene' m6mm mftmma ao-u" 
 and who but another baby knows 
 13
 
 THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN 
 
 whether this may not be speech? The 
 assumption that this is an effort to speak 
 the language of the baby's elders is aca 
 demic, as, for that matter, is the assump 
 tion that they are his elders. There 
 may even be no baby at all; for, as 
 Schopenhauer has almost brusquely put 
 it. "The uneasiness that keeps the never- 
 resting clock of metaphysics in motion, 
 is the consciousness that the non-exist 
 ence of this world is just as possible as 
 its existence." But this, I confess, is far 
 too deep for me. 
 
 Baby, baby in your cot, 
 Are you there? or are you not? 
 If you're not, then what of me! 
 Baby, what and where are we? 
 
 For all practical purposes, however, 
 Baby is sufficiently real substantial 
 enough, indeed, as "The Baby's Physi 
 cal Culture Guide" shows in Exercise 
 24, to be lifted by his little feet and 
 stood on his little head ; but, mercifully
 
 BABY, BABY 
 
 adds the "Guide," "do not hold Baby 
 on his head very long." For all practical 
 purposes we must, and do, assume our 
 own existence. "Here we are," as I 
 have imagined Dr. Johnson saying to 
 his innocent new-born comrade, "and 
 we'll have to make the best of it." No 
 body has thought of a better way, or 
 any other way at all, for us to get here; 
 and the familiar Biblical phrase, 'born 
 again,' may perhaps be more literal than 
 we are wont to imagine, and apply to 
 this world as well as the next. Baby 
 himself may just have been born again. 
 That innocent-seeming and rather silly- 
 sounding monologue, which we flatter 
 ourselves is an earnest attempt to imi 
 tate our own speech, " Nja njan dada 
 atta mama papai attai na-na-na hatta 
 meene'-meene'-meene' mftmm m6mma 
 ao-u, ' ' may it not be the soliloquy of a 
 gentle philosopher, or, again, the confes- 
 15
 
 THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN 
 
 sion of an out-and-out rascal, talking to 
 himself of his misdeeds, chuckling and 
 cooing over them, indeed, before he for 
 gets them in this new state of being? 
 May not Papa, waggishly shaking his 
 forefinger and saying, "You little rascal, 
 you," be speaking with a truthfulness 
 which, if known, would make him sick? 
 
 Meanwhile, as says "The Baby's 
 Physical Culture Guide," "Don't jerk 
 Baby round. Never rush through his 
 exercises, but talk to him in a happy, en 
 couraging way. When he is able to talk 
 he will be glad to tell you what great, 
 good fun he has been having." 
 
 So speaks, I think, a mother's imagi 
 nation; in sober reality, even the great 
 good fun of Exercise 24 will be forgot 
 ten. Which is perhaps why, although I 
 have heard men wish they could again be 
 children, I have never heard any man 
 say he would like to be a baby.
 
 II 
 
 TO BE A BOY 
 
 I love dearly to watch the boys at their 
 play. How gayly they pitch and catch 
 their baseball with their strong little hands! 
 How blithely they run from base to base! 
 How merrily their voices come to me across 
 the green; for, although I cannot hear 
 what they say, I know it expresses a 
 young, innocent joy in this big, good 
 world. Yet even in this Garden there is a 
 Serpent, and one day two of the little inno 
 cents quarreled and came to blows. A real 
 fight! I soon hurried out and stopped 
 that, but the sight of their little faces dis 
 torted with rage, and one poor boy bleed 
 ing at the nose, upset me for quite a time. 
 AN OLD MAID'S WINDOW. 
 
 IN "The Boyhood of Great Men," 
 published by Harper and Brothers, in 
 17
 
 THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN 
 
 1853, but now, I fear, very little read, it 
 is told of Sir Isaac Newton that "An ac 
 cident first fired him to strive for dis 
 tinction in the school-room. The boy 
 who was immediately above him in the 
 class, after treating him with a tyranny 
 hard to bear, was cruel enough to kick 
 him in the stomach, with a severity that 
 caused great pain. Newton resolved to 
 have his revenge, but of such a kind as 
 was natural to his reasoning mind, even 
 at that immature age. He determined 
 to excel his oppressor in their studies 
 and lessons; and, setting himself to the 
 task with zeal and diligence, he never 
 halted in his course till he had found his 
 way to the top of the class ; thus exhibit 
 ing and leaving a noble example to 
 others of his years similarly situated. 
 Doubtless, after this, he would heartily 
 forgive his crestfallen persecutor, who 
 could not but henceforth feel ashamed 
 18
 
 TO BE A BOY 
 
 of his unmanly conduct, while Newton 
 would feel the proud consciousness of 
 having done his duty after the bravest 
 and noblest fashion which it is in the 
 power of man to adopt." 
 
 We cannot all be Sir Isaac Newtons, 
 and, although I may wish for a passing 
 moment that some sturdy little school 
 fellow had kicked me too in the stomach, 
 the resulting sequence of events would 
 probably have been different, and the 
 world would have gained little or noth 
 ing by my natural indignation. Having 
 an impartial mind, I should like to know 
 also why Sir Isaac was kicked in the 
 stomach, and what became afterward of 
 the boy who kicked him. As his fame 
 grew in the world, the reflected glory of 
 having thus kicked Sir Isaac Newton in 
 the stomach would presumably have 
 brightened in proportion, but, lacking 
 Other distinction, the kicker served his 
 19
 
 THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN 
 
 evolutionary purpose and has now van 
 ished. 
 
 But this much remains of him that 
 his little foot kicks also in the stomach 
 the widely accepted fallacy that boy 
 hood is an age of unalloyed gold, to 
 which every man now and then looks 
 back and vainly yearns to be a boy 
 again. ' ' Oh ! happy years ! " so sighed 
 the poet Byron, "once more, who 
 would not be a boy? " And so to-day, as 
 one may at least deduce from his general 
 newspaper reading, sigh all the editors 
 of all the newspapers in the United 
 States. Not, indeed, for a boyhood like 
 Sir Isaac Newton's, but for the standard 
 American boyhood, to which, in theory, 
 every ageing American looks back 
 with tender reminiscence that happy 
 time when he went barefooted, played 
 "hookey " from school, fished in the run 
 ning brook with a bent pin for a hook, and 
 20
 
 TO BE A BOY 
 
 swam, with other future bankers, mer 
 chants, clerks, clergymen, physicians 
 and surgeons, confidence-men, pickpock 
 ets, authors, actors, burglars, etc., etc., 
 in an old swimming-hole. The democ 
 racy of the old swimming-hole is, in 
 fact, the democracy of the United States, 
 naked and unashamed ; and even in the 
 midst of a wave of crime (one might al 
 most imagine), if the victim should say 
 suddenly to the hold-up man, 
 
 "Oh, do you remember the ole swimmin' hole, 
 
 And the hours we spent there together; 
 Where the oak and the chestnut o'ershadowed the 
 
 bowl, 
 And tempered the hot summer weather? 
 
 Ah, sweet were those hours together we spent 
 
 In innocent laughter and joy! 
 How little we knew at the time what it meant 
 
 To be just a boy just a boy!" 
 
 the hold-up man would drop his 
 automatic gun, and the two would dis 
 solve on each other's necks in a flood 
 of sympathetic tears. 
 21
 
 THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN 
 
 It is a pleasant and harmless fallacy, 
 and I for one would not destroy it ; I am 
 no such stickler for exactitude that I 
 would take away from any man what 
 ever pleasure he may derive from think 
 ing that he was once a barefoot boy, 
 even if circumstances were against him 
 and his mother as adamant in her re 
 fusal to let him go barefooted. But the 
 fallacy is indestructible: the symbols 
 may not have been universal, but it is 
 true enough of boyhood that time then 
 seems to be without limit ; and this com 
 fortable, unthinking sense of immortal 
 ity is what men have lost and would 
 fain recover. One forgets how cruelly 
 slow moved the hands of the schoolroom 
 clock through the last, long, lingering, 
 eternal fifteen minutes of the daily life- 
 sentence. One forgets how feverishly the 
 seconds chased each other, faster than 
 human feet could follow, when one's little 
 
 22
 
 TO BE A BOY 
 
 self was late for school, and the clamor 
 of the distant bell ended in a solemn, 
 ominous silence. Then was the oppor 
 tunity for stout heart to play " hookey," 
 and to lure the finny tribe with a poor 
 worm impaled on a bent pin; and that, 
 in the opinion of all the editors of all the 
 newspapers in the United States, is 
 what all of us always did. But in the 
 painful reality most of us, I think, tried 
 to overtake those feverish seconds, seek 
 ing indeed to outrun time, and somehow 
 or other, though the bell had stopped 
 ringing, get unostentatiously into our 
 little seats before it stopped. And so we 
 ran, and ran, and ran, lifting one leaden 
 foot after the other with hopeless deter 
 mination, in a silent, nightmare world 
 where the road was made of glue and the 
 very trees along the way turned their 
 leaves to watch us drag slowly by. Little 
 respect we would have had then for the 
 23
 
 THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN 
 
 poet Byron and his "Ah! happy years! 
 once more, who would not be a boy?" 
 
 But even when time seemed to stand 
 still, or go too fast, we had no conscious 
 ness that the complicated clock of our 
 individual existence could ever run 
 down and stop; and so happily care 
 less were we of this treasure, that we 
 often wished to be men! "When I was 
 young," says the author of "The Boy's 
 Week-Day Book," another volume 
 that is not read nowadays as much as it 
 used to be, 
 
 I doubted not the time would come, 
 When grown to man's estate, 
 
 That I would be a noble 'squire, 
 And live among the great. 
 
 It was a proud, aspiring thought, 
 That should have been exiled : 
 
 I wish I was more humble now 
 Than when I was a child. 
 
 I wonder what proud, aspiring thought 
 
 Uncle Jones, as he called himself, just 
 
 then had in mind ; but it was evidently 
 
 24
 
 TO BE A BOY 
 
 no wish to be a boy again: perhaps he 
 meditated matrimony. 
 
 For my own part I cannot successfully 
 wish to be a boy; I remain impervious 
 to all the efforts of all the editors of all 
 the newspapers in the United States to 
 dim my eye; and there must be many 
 another eye like mine, or else it is unbe 
 lievably unique. I lean back in my 
 chair, close my undimmed eye, and do 
 my best; but, contrary to all editorial 
 expectation, I can summon no desire to 
 go barefooted, fish with a bent pin, or 
 revisit the old swimming-hole 
 
 Where the elm and the chestnut o'ershadowed the 
 
 bowl, 
 And tempered the hot summer weather. 
 
 I prefer a beach and a bathing-suit and 
 somebody my own age. Yet do not 
 think, shocked reader, that I am unsym 
 pathetic with youth. I am more sym 
 pathetic that is all with my con- 
 25
 
 THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN 
 
 temporaries; and the thought forces 
 itself upon me that boyhood is a narrow 
 and conventional period, in which my 
 own desire to go without shoes was ex 
 actly similar to my mother's determina 
 tion to wear a bustle. Equally anxious 
 to follow the fashion of our respective 
 sets, neither understood the other; and 
 I would no more have worn a bustle 
 than my mother would have gone bare 
 footed. My father, similarly thwarted 
 in a single desire, would have cared less : 
 his wider interests politics, business, 
 family, the local and world gossip that 
 immersed him in his newspaper, art, 
 literature, music, and the drama, to say 
 nothing of professional baseball and 
 pugilism (in which, however, many fa 
 thers and sons have a common interest) 
 would have absorbed his disappoint 
 ment. 
 
 But my narrower world, so to speak, 
 26
 
 TO BE A BOY 
 
 was all feet. An unconventional boy, as 
 I think the most erudite student of boy- 
 life and boy-psychology will admit, is 
 much more rare than an unconventional- 
 man ; and even then his unconventional- 
 ity is likely to be imposed upon him 
 "for his own good" by well-meaning 
 but tyrannical parents. " I have known 
 boys," wrote Uncle Jones, observing but 
 not comprehending this characteristic 
 fact, "when playing at 'Hare and 
 hounds' and 'Follow my leader,' to 
 scramble over hedges, leap over brooks, 
 and mount up precipices, in a manner 
 which they would not have dared to at 
 tempt, had it not been for the examples 
 set them by their school-fellows; but," 
 he adds, "I do not remember any in 
 stance of a boy imitating another on 
 account of his good temper, patience, 
 forbearance, principle, or piety." 
 
 Naturally not. You and I, Uncle 
 27
 
 THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN 
 
 Jones, might be expected to imitate each 
 other's good temper, patience, forbear 
 ance, principle, or piety, though I do 
 not say that we would, but from the 
 point of view of a boy these virtues are 
 unconventional. Their practice shocks 
 and disconcerts the observer. The be 
 havior of Sir Isaac Newton, when kicked 
 in the stomach, was perfectly scanda 
 lous. 
 
 And what is there, after all, in the life 
 of a boy, that a man would find interest 
 ing? Or that he may not do, if such is 
 sufficiently his desire to "make" the 
 time for it, as he makes time for his 
 adult pleasures, and if he is not too old 
 or too fat? He can spend his vacation 
 at the old swimming-hole but he 
 never does it. He can go barefooted 
 whenever he wishes: his mother can no 
 longer prevent him. He can fish with a 
 bent pin in the porcelain bathtub, 
 28
 
 TO BE A BOY 
 
 adding a goldfish to make the pursuit 
 more exciting, every morning before 
 he takes his bath. He can chase butter 
 flies; here and there, indeed, a man 
 makes a profession of it, and institutions 
 of learning call him an entomologist, 
 and pay him much honor and a small 
 salary. Nobody forbids him to enlarge 
 his mental horizon by reading the lives 
 of criminals and detectives; and I can 
 myself direct him to many an entertain 
 ing book, which is at once far worse and 
 far better, morally and artistically, than 
 the sober narratives that Old Sleuth 
 used to write by the yard for boys to 
 read by stealth. He can roll a hoop; in 
 many cases it would do him a world of 
 good to roll it down to the office in the 
 morning and back home at night. If he 
 can persuade other ageing men, wishful 
 of renewed boyhood, to join with him, 
 he can play at marbles, tick, puss-in- 
 29
 
 THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN 
 
 the-corner, hop-scotch, ring-taw, and 
 "Hot beans ready buttered." (Uncle 
 Jones mentions these games. I do not 
 remember all of them myself, but "Hot 
 beans ready buttered " sounds especially 
 interesting.) And where better than 
 in some green, quiet corner at the 
 Country Club? And why, if you will- 
 raise the question of conventionality, 
 why more foolish than golf, or folk- 
 dancing? 
 
 But what he cannot do is to assume 
 the boy's unconsciousness of his own 
 mortality. What he cannot unload is 
 his own consciousness of responsibility 
 to and for others. Life, in short, has 
 provided the man with a worrying com 
 pany of creditors of whom the boy 
 knows nothing Creditor Cost-of- Liv 
 ing, Creditor Ambition, Creditor Con 
 science, and Creditor Death. And the 
 boy is unmarried ! It is even claimed by 
 30
 
 TO BE A BOY 
 
 one philosopher of my acquaintance 
 that this is why men wish they were 
 once more boys. I grant the plausibility 
 of this opinion; for the more a man is 
 is devoted to his wife and family, the 
 more he is beset and worried by these 
 troublesome creditors, the more, one 
 may reasonably argue, he feels the need 
 of time to meet his obligations, and is 
 likely now and then to envy the boy his 
 narrow, conventional, but immortal- 
 feeling life. 
 
 Uncle Jones misses, I think, this fun 
 damental fact. He is always trying to 
 destroy the boy's sense of immortality 
 in this world by trying to persuade him 
 to read the Bible and prepare for immor 
 tality in the next. "When a boy first be 
 gins his A B C," says Uncle Jones, "it is 
 terrible work for him for a short time; 
 yet how soon he gets over it, and begins 
 to read! And, then, what a pleasure to
 
 THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN 
 
 be able to read a good and pleasant 
 book ! Oh , it is worth while to go through 
 the trouble of learning to read fifty 
 times over, to obtain the advantage of 
 reading the Bible."
 
 Ill 
 
 ON MEETING THE BELOVED 
 
 Now it is a quainte Oddity of thys State 
 and Mysterie of Loue that youre trew 
 Louer combines the opposyte qualities of a 
 deepe Hwnilitie and a loftie Conceit of 
 Hymselfe. For with respect to this, hys 
 Mistresse, he believes himself a most infe 
 rior Person, and as it were a mere Worme; 
 yet if he doth suspect her to regard any 
 Man els as his Equal, he is consumed 
 with great Astonishment and raging In 
 dignation, for this same Loue is a great 
 Destroyer of Common Sense in its Vic- 
 times. For he thinketh Hymselfe inferior 
 to her because he is her Louer, and supe 
 rior to all Men els for the same silly Rea 
 son. ANATOMIE OF LOUE. 
 
 To any sensitive man, not yet armored 
 by the indifference that comes of being 
 33
 
 THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN 
 
 married himself, there is cause for appre 
 hension in the prospect of meeting for 
 the first time that person, male or fe 
 male, whom somebody he knows and 
 loves has recently agreed to marry. 
 The event, when it comes, is unavoid 
 able, nor is there any period in adult life 
 when it may not happen, or anybody we 
 know so old that he or she may not oc 
 casion it. Fact is more romantic, or at 
 any rate remains romantic much later in 
 life, than fiction. Only the other day I 
 read in the newspaper of a man of one 
 hundred and thirty-five years who had 
 just subjected his little circle to this 
 formality. Very likely the newspaper 
 exaggerated, but the case undermines 
 the security that one ordinarily feels in 
 his relationship with the ageing. 
 
 Now it needs no argument that to be 
 happy in the happiness of others is an 
 inexpensive pleasure and well worth 
 34
 
 ON MEETING THE BELOVED 
 
 cultivating. Other things being equal, 
 one should go dancing and singing to his 
 first meeting with another's beloved. 
 Bright-colored flowers, be she sixteen or 
 sixty, should blossom, to his imagina 
 tion, from the granite curb along his 
 way; and, though a foolish convention 
 may repress the song and dance, yet 
 should he walk as if shod with the most 
 levitating heels ever made from the live 
 liest of live rubber, and sing merrily in 
 his heart. 
 
 But, thus to enter into the happiness 
 of another, one must see and feel, as if 
 for himself, some good and sufficient 
 reason for that happiness; and the deep, 
 insoluble mystery essential to all proper 
 betrothals is that this good and suf 
 ficient reason is not necessarily visible: 
 these two are happy-mad, and how shall 
 anybody who is sane enter into their 
 lunacy? 
 
 35
 
 THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN 
 
 Mr. Harvey Todd, 2d, to take 
 the first name that comes to mind, 
 has become engaged to Miss Margaret 
 Lemon; Miss Lemon to Mr. Todd. Well 
 and good. Nature, which, for some rea 
 son that mankind has long curiously and 
 vainly sought to penetrate, wishes to 
 continue the human race, is, one may 
 believe, reasonably well satisfied. It is 
 one job among many. But the satisfac 
 tion of Mr. Todd and Miss Lemon, if it 
 could be put to such haberdashery use, 
 would girdle the Equator, and the ends, 
 tied in a true lover's knot, would flutter 
 beyond the farthest visible star. Men 
 and women have become engaged in the 
 past; men and women will become en 
 gaged in the future; but this engage 
 ment of Harvey Todd and Margaret 
 Lemon is and will ever remain unique 
 and so whoever is now called upon to ap 
 praise one party to this wonder and con- 
 36
 
 ON MEETING THE BELOVED 
 
 gratulate the other, may well be trou 
 bled. He is not so much afraid of what 
 he may do and say, for any man may 
 hope to achieve a hard, quick, almost 
 sobbing pressure of the hand and a few 
 muttered words, as of the way, in 
 spite of himself, that he will look when 
 he does and says it; there, indeed, the 
 amateur actor profits by his hobby. 
 There is, to be sure, the saving chance 
 that Miss Lemon (or Mr. Todd) may so 
 pleasurably affect him that the ordeal 
 will be less difficult than he anticipates : 
 there is even the rare chance that he 
 may instantly and completely agree with 
 Mr. Toad's estimate of Miss Lemon; but 
 this is the happy-madness itself, and 
 certainly not desirable under the cir 
 cumstances. There is the possibility, 
 even more rare and less desirable, that 
 Miss Lemon, seeing him for the first 
 time, will instantly and completely prefer 
 37 
 
 203745
 
 THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN 
 
 him to Mr. Todd. There is the possibil 
 ity that he may recoil with horror from 
 Miss Lemon (or Mr. Todd), or be re 
 coiled from, or that both may recoil si 
 multaneously, falling over, figuratively, 
 on their backs, and being picked up and 
 carried away unconscious, and in op 
 posite directions, by surprised onlookers. 
 His whole nature may, in short, instinc 
 tively run toward, or away from, the 
 beloved; and between these extremes 
 lies a gamut of intermediary emotions, 
 which at the moment he would hardly 
 wish to uncover. This stiff and geomet 
 rical smile, he asks himself at the worst, 
 can it deceive anybody? this hypocrit 
 ical mutter of congratulation, does it 
 proceed from his own or an ice chest? 
 Nor is he much relieved when Mr. Todd 
 or Miss Lemon, as the case may be, 
 proves how genuine appeared his smile, 
 how sincere his mutter, by asking him in 
 38
 
 ON MEETING THE BELOVED 
 
 affectionate detail what he thinks of the 
 other a procedure which should be 
 legally forbidden the newly engaged, 
 under penalty of being refused a mar 
 riage license for at least ten years. 
 
 This state of mind in lovers, so impor 
 tant to those who are called upon to 
 meet the beloved for the first time, has 
 engaged the attention of essayists, con 
 versationalists, and philosophers. ' ' They 
 fall at once," wrote Stevenson, "into 
 that state in which another person be 
 comes to us the very gist and centre 
 point of God's creation, and demolishes 
 our laborious theories with a smile; in 
 which our ideas are so bound up with 
 the one master-thought, that even the 
 trivial cares of our own person become 
 so many acts of devotion, and the love 
 of life itself is translated into a wish to 
 remain in the same world with so pre 
 cious and desirable a fellow creature. 
 39
 
 THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN 
 
 And all the while their acquaintances 
 look on in stupor." 
 
 " No, sir," said Dr. Johnson, promptly 
 improving Mr. Boswell's milder asser 
 tion that love is like being enlivened 
 with champagne, "No, sir. Admiration 
 and love are like being intoxicated with 
 champagne" an opinion, one hopes, 
 that will not some day be made the 
 basis of a nation-wide campaign to pro 
 hibit falling in love. 
 
 "His friends," said Ralph Waldo 
 Emerson, "find in her a likeness to her 
 mother, or her sisters, or to persons not 
 of her blood. The lover sees no resem 
 blance except to summer evenings and 
 diamond mornings, to rainbows and the 
 song of birds." 
 
 Mr. Todd and Miss Lemon (so like a 
 rainbow) are impervious to any lack of 
 enthusiasm that you or I, dear, unself 
 ish, sensitive reader, may fear to exhibit 
 40
 
 ON MEETING THE BELOVED 
 
 when either leads us the other by the 
 hand and says, "This is IT." Ours, if 
 any, will be the suffering. It may even 
 happen that Miss Lemon or Mr. Todd 
 Mr. Todd or Miss Lemon beaming 
 consent and approval will suggest 
 that we call her (or him) Margaret (or 
 Harvey) . 
 
 Yet from another point of view, but 
 this is a selfish one, apprehension is 
 justified in proportion to the sensitive 
 man's previous intimacy with the indi 
 vidual whose beloved he is about to 
 meet. For until that meeting is over, 
 "previous" is the word for it: whatever 
 opinion the beloved may form of him 
 will determine the degree and manner of 
 its continuance. If Miss Lemon disap 
 proves of him, though Mr. Todd has 
 hitherto loved him as Damon did Py 
 thias, all is over; if Mr. Todd disap 
 proves of him, though he has known
 
 THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN 
 
 Miss Lemon from her perambulator, all 
 is over. A pale ghost, he may, in either 
 case, sometimes hang his spectral hat 
 in the Todd hallway, and even extend 
 his phantom legs under the Todd ma 
 hogany; but ALL is OVER. Divinely 
 harmonious as they seem, these two will 
 never agree to let him try, however hum 
 bly and conscientiously, to cultivate the 
 inexpensive pleasure of being happy in 
 their happiness. He becomes what no 
 self-respecting man can wish to be a 
 fly in the ointment. Most cases, fortu 
 nately, are not so serious: he will be given 
 a reasonable chance to make a place for 
 himself on this new plane to which Mr. 
 Todd and Miss Lemon have been trans 
 lated ; but it is always a question whether 
 he can enter that plane himself, or must 
 hereafter be content with hearing from 
 his former friend through a medium. 
 For he has not, as is so often gracefully 
 42
 
 ON MEETING THE BELOVED 
 
 but emptily said on these trying occa 
 sions, been enriched by the acquisition 
 of a new friend : he has simply exchanged 
 Miss Lemon or Mr. Todd (as the case 
 may be) for a composite, a Toddlemon 
 or a Lemontodd a few years will 
 show which. He must make the best he 
 can of that composite. He who was for 
 merly described as (let us say) "my 
 friend, Mr. Popp," becomes, if he be 
 comes at all, "our friend, Mr. Popp"; 
 and if ever he hears himself being in 
 troduced as "Mr. Todd's friend, Mr. 
 Popp," or as "Mrs. Todd's friend, Mr. 
 Popp," he had better go away as soon 
 as politeness permits, and never come 
 back. Never. 
 
 I speak, of course, in generalities; for 
 there are no rules immutably governing 
 all cases, and life is mellowed and beau 
 tified by shining, sensible examples, in 
 which Mr. Todd and Miss Lemon be- 
 43
 
 THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN 
 
 come one, yet realize that in many 
 respects, being human, they must still 
 remain two; then, indeed, the congrat- 
 ulator may actually be enriched by the 
 acquisition of a new friend but not 
 instantly, as one is enriched by the ac 
 quisition of a new hat. Yet it is always 
 the wiser part, in preparing to meet a 
 beloved, to prepare for the worst. 
 
 These are evidently the apprehen 
 sions of a bachelor, sensitive but not un 
 selfish; the mental attitude is different 
 with a student, philosopher, and ideal 
 ist who, thinking not of himself, con 
 templates another's marriage in the 
 calm, intelligent way, having as yet no 
 beloved in which he can contemplate 
 his own. Such a one weighs. Such a one 
 is conscious that, little as he knows the 
 beloved of Mr. Todd or Miss Lemon, 
 there is grave danger that Mr. Todd 
 knows Miss Lemon, or Miss Lemon Mr. 
 44
 
 ON MEETING THE BELOVED 
 
 Todd, hardly better. This happy-mad 
 ness may not only be a delusion, as a 
 calm outside intelligence contemplates 
 it, but it may be a snare. Mistakes do 
 happen. There are known cases in 
 which the happy lunatic has been mis 
 taken in a beloved not once but often; 
 and the persistent effort of these poor 
 madmen and madwomen to correct one 
 mistake by making another is one of the 
 most discussed and pitiable phases of 
 our civilization. The calm intelligence 
 must balance also the practical aspects 
 of the business, its risks and liabilities as 
 well as its profits ; and so serious is the 
 enterprise when thus examined that he 
 can hardly fail to be terrified for any 
 body he knows and loves who is under 
 taking it. 
 
 O Harvey! Harvey! (or Margaret! 
 Margaret !) 
 
 Tact is what he will pray for. And if 
 45
 
 THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN 
 
 his prayer is granted, when Mr. Todd 
 (or Miss Lemon) asks him, "Now, hon 
 estly, what do you think of her (or 
 him)?" he will say, "Of course I do not 
 know Miss Lemon (or Mr. Todd) very 
 well yet, but I have never met anybody 
 whom I hoped to know and like better." 
 Which will be quite true, and please the 
 twittering questioner much more than 
 if he said, "Oh, I don't know. I don't 
 know."
 
 IV 
 THIS IS A FATHER 
 
 Proud Parent, in this little life 
 
 Yourself reflected see, 
 And think how Baby will progress 
 
 A man like you to be! 
 
 So stout, so strong, so wise, and when 
 Sufficient years have flown, 
 
 Like you the happy parent of 
 A baby of his own! 
 
 And when that unborn baby grows 
 
 To be a man like you, 
 Oh, think how proud that man will be 
 
 To be a parent too. 
 
 So think, when life oppresses you 
 
 And you are feeling sad, 
 A million, million, million times 
 You 'II be a happy dad. 
 
 THE FATHER'S ANTHEM. 
 47
 
 THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN 
 
 IN the life of man fatherhood is so 
 likely to happen, that I wonder Shake 
 speare did not select father as a natural, 
 and indeed inevitable, successor to lover 
 in his well-known seven ages. He chose 
 the soldier, "full of strange oaths, and 
 bearded like the pard," presumably be 
 cause such soldiers were common in 
 Elizabethan London. But fathers must 
 have been more so : they must have gone 
 in droves past the tavern window 
 where Shakespeare (as what we now call 
 the "wets" so like to think) sat at 
 his ale-stained table, dipping now his 
 quill in an inkwell, and again his nose in 
 a tankard ; but they seem to have made 
 no impression. Indeed this unromantic, 
 necessary figure, composite as it is of all 
 sorts and conditions of men, has never 
 appealed strongly to the poets ; perhaps 
 it is their revenge because fathers so sel 
 dom read poetry. 
 
 48
 
 THIS IS A FATHER 
 
 Whatever else a man does, whether he 
 lives by banking or burglary, ascends to 
 the presidency or descends to the gutter, 
 he is likely to be a father: they are as 
 countless as the pebbles on a beach or 
 the leaves in Vallombrosa, and the few 
 who evade paternity evade also the pur 
 pose for which nature evidently created 
 them, and go through life thumbing their 
 noses, so to speak, at Divine Providence. 
 So taken for granted is this vocation 
 of fatherhood, and so little considered 
 in comparison with other masculine 
 employments, that no correspondence 
 school offers a course, and many a young 
 man undertakes to raise children with 
 less hesitation than he would start in 
 to raise chickens. Some accept father 
 hood with joy, others with resignation, 
 like a recently wedded young Italian 
 who cobbles my shoes, and spoke the 
 other day of his own new little one. 
 49
 
 THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN 
 
 "Zee f adder and zee modder," he said, 
 "zey work and zey slave for zee leetle 
 one. But what-a good? When he is 
 grow up, he say, ' To hell wiz zee fadder 
 and zee modder!'" And so, as Shake 
 speare may have decided, there is no uni 
 versal type of fatherhood, nor has the 
 imagination of mankind created one, as 
 in the case of mothers, for convenient 
 literary and conversational use. The 
 lines of the balladist, 
 
 With his baby on his knee 
 He 's as happy as can be, 
 
 were, to be sure, something in this di 
 rection ; but they have become so wholly 
 associated with humor, that even the 
 late Mr. Rogers, had he known the bal 
 lad, could hardly have found inspiration 
 therein for a group; nor Shakespeare 
 adapted the lines to describe seriously 
 one of his seven ages. He might have 
 scribbled experimentally, 
 50
 
 THIS IS A FATHER 
 
 Then the father, 
 Infant on knee, and happy like the clam, 
 
 but that would have been the end of it. 
 He would have crossed out the experi 
 ment, and taken another drink. 
 
 Father, in fact, follows Mother, in the 
 mind of the general, so far behind that 
 he is almost invisible, a tiny object on 
 red wheels at the end of a string. But 
 the little fellow carries a pocketbook: 
 when Mother needs money she pulls in 
 the string, and he comes up in a hurry. 
 And, as is usually the case with popular 
 conceptions, this odd, erroneous notion, 
 which most fathers seem cheerfully 
 enough to accept, has no doubt its his 
 toric foundation, and derives from the 
 unquestionable supremacy of Mother in 
 the beginning. At that period, indeed, 
 it is hardly to be expected that any 
 father should feel immediately en rap 
 port with his new-born child, or become
 
 THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN 
 
 intimately associated with its helpless, 
 flower-like life. Ever since the idea, 
 which has now so long lost its original 
 element of bewildering surprise, yet 
 remains always somewhat surprising, 
 first dawned upon a human father and 
 mother that this baby belonged to them, 
 conditions have inexorably consigned 
 the infant to the care of its mother, while 
 its father pursued elsewhere the equally 
 necessary business of providing suste 
 nance for the family. A division of labor 
 was imperative : somebody must stay at 
 home in the cave and tend the baby, 
 somebody must go out in the woods 
 and hustle for provisions. Maternity 
 was, as it must have been, already a 
 feminine habit, but paternity was some 
 thing new and unexpected ; and although 
 I suspect, in many cases, this astonish 
 ing discovery was followed by speedy 
 flight. Trueheart the First took up 
 52
 
 THIS IS A FATHER 
 
 his responsibilities and his stone axe 
 together. 
 
 The horror is recorded with which 
 Dr. Johnson regarded the idea of being 
 left alone in a castle with a new-born 
 child; and this feeling in so civilized a 
 man was no doubt an echo of the emo 
 tion with which poor, bewildered, primi 
 tive, but faithful Trueheart would have 
 envisaged being left alone in the cave 
 with his new-born baby : the sense of re 
 lief, of gayety, of something definite and 
 within his capabilities to do, with which 
 the young father nowadays takes his hat 
 and starts for the office, must be much 
 the same as that with which Trueheart 
 took his stone axe and started for the 
 woods. 
 
 Thus, in the very inception of the hu 
 man family, fatherhood became subordi 
 nate to motherhood ; and so, because con 
 ditions after all have not fundamentally 
 53
 
 THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN 
 
 changed, it has ever since continued. 
 "Mothers' Day," for example, is cele 
 brated with enthusiasm; "Fathers' 
 Day" remains a mere humorous sug 
 gestion, a kind of clown in the editorial 
 circus. Then as now, moreover, in the 
 earlier life of the child, Father, although 
 not quite as useless as a vermiform 
 appendix, was and is of very little 
 importance. 
 
 I am not forgetting for I do them 
 an honor I can hardly express those 
 fathers who walk, all through the night, 
 back and forth, back and forth, back 
 and forth, across an otherwise silent 
 room, that the motion incidental to their 
 perambulation may soothe a mysteri 
 ously afflicted babe to sleep; nor am I 
 unaware that Father sometimes pushes 
 baby's wicker chariot, pausing ever and 
 anon to pick up and restore some article 
 of infant use or pleasure that the little 
 54
 
 THIS IS A FATHER 
 
 rascal has mischievously thrown over 
 board, and in many other touching ways 
 patiently tries to make himself useful. 
 These offices are almost impersonal. 
 Any father could perform them for any 
 baby: a mechanical father, ingeniously 
 contrived to walk back and forth, push, 
 or pick up and restore, according as the 
 operator wound him up and pressed the 
 proper button, would do as well. Only 
 in proportion as the child begins to sit 
 up and take intelligent notice does 
 Father's position become responsible, 
 important, and precarious. From that 
 time on, his behavior has consequences. 
 Fatherhood, in fact, is a mighty seri 
 ous business yet even to-day many a 
 father seems to have made no more con 
 scious preparation for it than had our 
 astonished ancestor, Trueheart. My 
 friend Mr. Todd, for example, meets 
 Miss Margaret Lemon at an afternoon 
 55
 
 THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN 
 
 tea. A blind attachment (I am putting 
 the case with unimpassioned simplicity, 
 for this is no novel) springs up (God 
 knows why) between them. If Harvey 
 Todd had been Faust, Mephistopheles 
 would have wasted time trying to tempt 
 him with any Margaret but a Lemon; 
 and if Miss Lemon had been that other 
 Margaret, Mephistopheles would have 
 had to produce Harvey Todd, who, I am 
 glad to believe, would have promptly 
 told him to go to the Devil. 
 
 And so Mr. Todd becomes engaged; 
 and after a decent interval, he becomes 
 a husband ; and after another decent in 
 terval he becomes a father and who 
 more surprised than he! Even as we 
 congratulate him, clinking together the 
 long-handled spoons that come in the 
 ice-cream sodas with which all good fel 
 lows now celebrate such an occasion, it 
 is perfectly evident that Harvey Todd 
 56
 
 THIS IS A FATHER 
 
 has given hardly more thought to the 
 tremendously important and interesting 
 relation of father and son than might 
 reasonably have been expected of little 
 Harvey, Jr. Mind you, I do not attempt 
 to say how he shall conduct himself: 
 that is his business ; but as he begins, so 
 is he likely to go on to the end of the 
 chapter, when little Harvey is no longer 
 a roly-poly human plaything but a great 
 big man like himself. And according as 
 he has conducted himself, that great big 
 man will bless him or curse him or re 
 gard him with varying degrees of affec 
 tion or contumely. If he has never 
 thought of it before, it is something for 
 him to think about now, seriously, in 
 the brief respite while his duties are per- 
 ambulatory, and a mechanical father, 
 cleaned, oiled, and wound up once a day, 
 would do just as well. Fill the glasses 
 again, O white-coated Dispenser, and 
 57
 
 THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN 
 
 make mine chocolate. For this man is a 
 father! He has created new life, or 
 clothed in mortality an immortal spirit 
 (though he doesn't know which), and 
 here he stands, I said chocolate, 
 and Solomon, with all his wisdom and 
 all his experience, could not tell him 
 what to do about it. 
 
 So we clink our long-handled spoons. 
 
 For in sober truth, as one reads the 
 reputed wisdom of Solomon on this 
 topic, fatherhood seems to be in a state 
 of evolution and to have advanced ma 
 terially since he was a father. "He that 
 spareth his rod," said Solomon in the 
 complacent, dogmatic way that seems 
 to have charmed the Queen of Sheba 
 more than it would charm me, "hateth 
 his son: But he that loveth him, chas- 
 teneth him betimes." And again, "The 
 rod and the reproof giveth wisdom." 
 We know better nowadays : the rod has 
 58
 
 THIS IS A FATHER 
 
 become a figure of speech, the occasions 
 that even appear to excuse its use are 
 fewer and fewer, and when they happen, 
 the modern practice may be described 
 quite simply as a laying-on of the hand. 
 Here, however, is something objective 
 for a father to do an occasion when 
 Mother pulls in the string, and Father, 
 mercifully hanging back on his red 
 wheels, comes up in a hurry, and what 
 has to be done is done. But the proce 
 dure, over the centuries, has compelled 
 thought ; the idea has ripened slowly in 
 the paternal mind that it is an unwise 
 waste of strength and emotion to at 
 tempt at one end what may be better 
 accomplished at the other; and in this 
 revolutionary discovery there must have 
 been pioneers whose success as fathers 
 was measured by the affection and re 
 spect of worthy sons. Hamlet's father, 
 I believe, rarely, if ever, spanked young 
 59
 
 THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN 
 
 Hamlet, and never in such mood and 
 manner as to make the little Prince of 
 Denmark smart at the injustice of the 
 high-handed proceeding. Mr. Todd can 
 do no better than follow the elder Ham 
 let's example; and in so doing he will 
 show himself wiser than Solomon, with 
 his old-fashioned insistence on proverbs 
 and a stout stick. "He that, being often 
 reproved, hardeneth his neck," said Sol 
 omon (and here perhaps is the origin of 
 the phrase to "get it in the neck"), 
 "shall suddenly be broken, and that be 
 yond remedy"; which is an attitude of 
 mind that the best thought certainly no 
 longer considers conducive to the best 
 fatherly results. The book for Mr. Todd 
 to read is not Solomon's Book of Prov 
 erbs but Theodore Roosevelt's Letters 
 to his Children. 
 
 If Solomon had been right, fatherhood 
 would be easy; but the simple fact that 
 60
 
 THIS IS A FATHER 
 
 even you or I, gentle Reader, being 
 often reproved, will harden our necks, 
 reveals the widespread tendency to ossi 
 fication that has gradually discredited 
 the didactic and strong-arm system. If 
 I may compose a proverb myself 
 
 The wise man maketh no enemy of his neighbor; 
 And the wise father maketh a friend of his son. 
 
 But it is easier to compose a proverb 
 than to apply it, and friendship, which 
 can be built only on a good foundation 
 of common understanding and truthful 
 speech, is here especially difficult. "To 
 speak truth," says Stevenson, "there 
 must be a moral equality or else no 
 respect; and hence between parent 
 and child intercourse is apt to degen 
 erate into a verbal fencing bout, and 
 misapprehensions to become ingrained. 
 And there is another side to this ; for the 
 parent begins with an imperfect notion 
 of the child's character, formed in early 
 61
 
 THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN 
 
 years or during the equinoctial gales of 
 youth; to this he adheres, noting only 
 the facts that suit with his preconcep 
 tions; and wherever a person fancies 
 himself unjustly judged, he at once and 
 finally gives up the effort to speak 
 truth." 
 
 Somehow or other our Mr. Todd, if he 
 wishes to make the best of his paternity, 
 must overcome the handicap imposed 
 by his wider mental experience and 
 his acquired moral distinctions between 
 Tightness and wrongness; somehow or 
 other he must create in Harvey, Jr., an 
 affectionate regard for his jolly old fa 
 ther that shall make it a line of least re 
 sistance for the little fellow to follow and 
 imitate his jolly old father's opinions 
 and wishes. Often, indeed, if he is wise, 
 Mr. Todd will dare to seem foolish. 
 "Foolishness," said Solomon, "is bound 
 up in the heart of the child" and 
 62
 
 THIS IS A FATHER 
 
 there he stopped, after adding his usual 
 suggestion about the rod as a remedy. 
 But it is bound up also, O Solomon, in 
 every heart that beats, and is one thing 
 at least that Mr. Todd and little Harvey 
 have in common to start with. 
 
 And so the father plays his unap- 
 plauded part "tragedy, comedy, his 
 tory, pastoral, pastoral-comical, histori 
 cal-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragi 
 cal-comical-historical-pastoral , scene 
 individable, or poem unlimited," as Po- 
 lonius might enumerate. He wants no 
 applause. He wants no "Father's Day." 
 He wants no statue. He wants no ad 
 vice. Yet it seems to me that a figure 
 and character has lately been perpetu 
 ated in statuary of various kinds that 
 answers all practical purposes, though 
 most of us think of the original as a 
 Great American rather than as a Great 
 Father.
 
 ON BEING A LANDLORD 
 
 In an informal, but practical way, a 
 landlord is, and must be, a Justice oj the 
 Domestic Peace. If one tenant murders 
 another tenant, the case passes beyond his 
 jurisdiction: he has no power of the black 
 cap. But if one tenant annoys another 
 (which may eventually lead to homicide 
 more or less justifiable] , the case comes to 
 his court: he is both jury and judge, and 
 can in extremity pronounce sentence of 
 eviction. But so many and subtile are the 
 ways in which tenants annoy each other 
 that to be a perfectly just landlord would 
 demand a wisdom greater than Solomon's. 
 APARTMENTS TO LET. 
 
 ON my consciousness are impressed 
 the names of fourteen married women 
 64
 
 ON BEING A LANDLORD 
 
 and one (so far as I know) unmarried 
 man: Mrs. Murphy, Mrs. Smith, Mrs. 
 Brown, Mrs. Cawkins, Mrs. Trolley, 
 Mrs. Karsen, Mrs. Le Maire, Mrs. Bar 
 ber, Mrs. Sibley, Mrs. Carrot, Mrs. Ma- 
 honey, Mrs. Hopp, Mrs. Ranee, Mrs. 
 Button, and Charlie Wah Loo. Their 
 husbands I hardly know at all ; indeed, if 
 Mrs. Carrot should introduce Mr. Hopp 
 to me by that dear title, as, for ex 
 ample, 'my husband, Mr. Hopp,' I 
 should hastily readjust my ideas and 
 decide that Mrs. Carrot was really Mrs. 
 Hopp, and Mrs. Hopp really Mrs. Car 
 rot. Charlie Wah Loo may be married ; 
 he devotes his days to the washtub and 
 ironing-board, and his nights (I like 
 to think) to what Mr. Sax Rohmer, 
 author of "The Yellow Claw," mysteri 
 ously mentions as "ancient, unnamable 
 evils." In feudal times, however, I 
 should have known them all better. 
 65
 
 THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN 
 
 Tramp! Tramp! Tramp! that brave 
 little company 
 
 BUTTON RANEE 
 
 HOPP MAHONEY 
 
 CARROT SIBLEY 
 
 BARBER LE MAIRE 
 
 KARSEN TROLLEY 
 
 CAWKINS BROWN 
 
 SMITH MURPHY 
 
 would have marched sturdily under 
 my banner, each in his stout leathern 
 jerkin, manfully carrying his trusty pike, 
 halberd, long bow, short bow, or arba 
 lest; and with them Charlie Wah Loo 
 would have trotted along by himself as 
 an interesting human curiosity or, 
 perhaps, in a cage. Each in his time 
 would have done me fealty, saying, 
 "Know ye this, my lord, that I will be 
 faithful and true unto you, and faith to 
 you will bear for the tenements which 
 I claim to hold of you ; and that I will 
 lawfully do to you the customs and 
 services which I ought to do at the 
 66
 
 ON BEING A LANDLORD 
 
 terms assigned. So help me God and 
 his saints." 
 
 Those, in retrospect, were pleasant 
 days for the landlord, when rent was 
 paid in loyal service and a few dozen 
 eggs, or what not. But all that now 
 remains of the ancient custom is that 
 they continue, vicariously, through the 
 agency of their beloved helpmates, to 
 pay me rent. In this sense, Charlie Wah 
 Loo, with his washtub and irons, is his 
 own beloved helpmate. 
 
 Briefly, I am a landlord. But do not 
 hate me, gentle reader, for I am of that 
 mild, reticent, and reluctant kind to 
 whom even collecting the rent, to say 
 nothing of raising it, is more a pain than 
 a pleasure. There are such landlords, 
 products of evolution, inheritance, and 
 a civilization necessarily based on bar 
 ter. Our anxious desire is to exact no 
 more than a "fair rent" ; at our weakest, 
 67
 
 THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN 
 
 when a tenant gets in arrears and, evi 
 dently enough, cannot catch up, our line 
 of least resistance would be to go quietly 
 away and leave that tenement to the 
 tenant, his heirs and assigns forever. It 
 is unpleasant, and becomes more so 
 every time, to remind him that he owes 
 us money. Only the inexorable harsh 
 ness of our own overlords compels us, 
 hating ourselves the while, to be strict. 
 I have seen it stated as a scientific de 
 duction that "in the beginning man 
 probably dwelt in trees after the fashion 
 of his ape-like ancestors. He lived on 
 nuts, fruits, roots, wild honey, and per 
 haps even bird's eggs, grubs from rotten 
 wood, and insects." And my own expe 
 rience leads me to feel that there was 
 much to be said for this way of life, 
 though I draw the line at birds' eggs, 
 grubs from rotten wood, and insects, at 
 which items of an earlier menu even the 
 68
 
 ON BEING A LANDLORD 
 
 scientific mind seems to baulk. But it 
 may well have happened that some 
 strong fellow presently got possession of 
 an especially desirable tree, and allowed 
 others to share its branches only if they 
 kept him supplied with provisions. Thus 
 may landlordry have been established. 
 
 Millions of years have passed since 
 then, a mere flicker in the great movie 
 of eternity, and we are still, many of 
 us, living in trees; but the trees have 
 been cut down and made into houses, of 
 which at present there are not enough 
 to go round. We have outgrown our 
 simple arboreal diet, developed and per 
 fected the hen (no small achievement in 
 itself), invented underwear, and in 
 countless other cunning ways have cre 
 ated a complex civilization. Century by 
 century, generation by generation, we 
 have acquired tastes and conventions 
 that prevent us from returning to the 
 69
 
 THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN 
 
 simple, happy, uncomplicated life of our 
 ape-like ancestors. And in this civiliza 
 tion that we have made, the figure of 
 the landlord bulks large and overshad 
 owing, and might, indeed, be likened 
 to Rodin's Thinker, thinking, in this in 
 stance, about how much more he shall 
 raise the rent. One must assume, of 
 course, that he is thinking about it just 
 before taking his morning bath. 
 
 It is not my purpose to dwell upon 
 those disgraceful landlords who prof 
 iteer. I am concerned rather with the 
 character of the Perfect Landlord, a just 
 man, respected, if not loved (within rea 
 son), by fourteen married women and 
 a. Charlie Wah Loo. But this admirable 
 ideal seems impracticable. I know a 
 landlord who speaks with pleasure of 
 the social aspect of collecting his rents; 
 but his is a selected tenantry, for he lets 
 apartments only to what he calls "nice 
 70
 
 ON BEING A LANDLORD 
 
 people," whose society he feels reason 
 ably certain he will enjoy on rent-day, 
 and whose financial status, he also feels 
 reasonably certain, is and will remain 
 such that no painful embarrassment on 
 this sordid but necessary side of their re 
 lations will ever cast a gloom over his 
 visit. Yet even so, I gather that there are 
 sometimes breaks in the golden chain, 
 when the nice tenant chats with a too 
 feverish interest about life and things in 
 general, and the sordid aspect cannot be 
 glossed over by a casual "Ah, yes, the 
 rent." Such breaks in the golden chain 
 are the test of landlordry. 
 
 I am reminded of a little one-act play 
 which I have just written entitled 
 
 THE RENT 
 
 CHARACTERS: MRS. BUTTON, a tenant. 
 
 I, a landlord. 
 SCENE: A tenement, owned by I, but
 
 THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN 
 
 referred to as MRS. BUTTON'S, which 
 is perhaps more correct. 
 MRS. BUTTON is washing dishes. The 
 room steams. Slow creaks outside as of 
 a reluctant man coming upstairs. 
 MRS. BUTTON smiles enigmatically. A 
 knocking at the door, as in "Macbeth' 1 
 
 MRS. BUTTON. Come in. (I enters.} 
 
 I (laughing with affected lightness}. 
 Ah, good-morning, Mrs. Button. I've 
 come for the rent. 
 
 MRS. BUTTON (weeping). It's not me, 
 as ye know, sir, that likes to be behind 
 with th' rint. I 'm proud. 
 
 I (touched in spite of himself by the 
 sight of a strong woman in tears}. I know 
 that. But you've been here seven 
 months, Mrs. Button, without 
 
 MRS. BUTTON (wiping her eyes}. Yis, 
 I'm an old tenant, and 't would break 
 me heart to go. An' me goin' to begin 
 72
 
 ON BEING A LANDLORD 
 
 payin' reg'lar only nixt week, sir. It's 
 th' only home I've got, an' it's cruel 
 harrd to leave it. 
 
 I (sternly). Very well. Very well. I 
 shall expect the money next week. Good- 
 day, Mrs. Button. 
 
 MRS. BUTTON. Good-day, sir. 
 I exits. MRS. BUTTON resumes wash 
 ing dishes, smiling enigmatically. The 
 room steams, and steps are heard going 
 hastily downstairs, fainter and fainter. 
 
 (CURTAIN) 
 
 It is a grave responsibility this 
 power to dispossess other human beings 
 of their little home to say nothing of 
 the recurrent task of making them be 
 have themselves in it. Perhaps, on some 
 other and happier plane of being, all 
 landlords will be just and all tenants 
 reasonable of disposition and stable of 
 income. Then, indeed, the landlord 
 73
 
 THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN 
 
 need have nothing in common with a 
 well-known walrus, of whom it is told 
 that, in dealing with certain oysters, 
 "with sobs and tears he sorted out those 
 of the largest size." But something 
 might even now be done by compulsory 
 psychopathic I had nearly said psy- 
 chopathetic treatment ; for thus the 
 effort to solve the rent problem would 
 go to the soil in which it is rooted, and 
 no complicated laws would be needed. 
 Landlords and tenants, in fact every 
 body, would have to take the treatment, 
 including, of course, the psychopathic 
 practitioners, who would treat each 
 other, but it would be a fine thing for 
 the world if it worked. 
 
 One sees in imagination the profiteer 
 ing landlord, after looking long and in 
 tently at a bright object, say a five- 
 dollar gold-piece, dropping peacefully 
 asleep ; one hears the voice of the scien- 
 74
 
 ON BEING A LANDLORD 
 
 tist repeating, firmly and monotonously, 
 "When you wake up you will never 
 want anything more than a just rent 
 a just rent a just rent a just rent." 
 
 One sees this profiteering landlord, 
 once more wide awake, busy at his desk 
 with pencil and paper, scowling con 
 scientiously as he endeavors to figure 
 out exactly what a just rent will be. In 
 vestment, so much; taxes; insurance; 
 repairs; laths and plaster here, wall-pa 
 per there ; water, light, putty, paint, jan 
 itor, Policeman's Annual Ball, postman 
 at Christmas, wear and tear on land 
 lord's shoes, etc., etc., etc., etc. now, 
 if ever, there is a tired business man. 
 
 Or, to take another aspect of this 
 great reform, there is the sad case of 
 Mrs. Murphy, who can no longer endure 
 the children of Mrs. Trolley, who lives in 
 the flat above her. They run and play, 
 run and play; they produce in Mrs. 
 75
 
 THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN 
 
 Murphy a conviction that presently 
 the floor will give way, and the children, 
 still running and playing, will come 
 right through on her poor head. Yet it 
 is the nature of children to run and play, 
 run and play : the landlord cannot, try as 
 he may, persuade Mrs. Trolley to chain 
 her offspring. So away, away to the Pub 
 lic Psychopathic Ward with poor Mrs. 
 Murphy. "Madam, when you awake, 
 the sound of running feet over your poor 
 head will suggest the joys of innocent 
 childhood, and you will be very happy 
 when they run and play, run and play 
 happy all day run and play run and 
 play happy all day run and play." 
 But alas, so far even psychopathic 
 treatment cannot promise to stabilize 
 incomes. There must still be times when 
 the just landlord must say to his tenant, 
 "All is over between us; we must part 
 forever and at once." To which, 
 76
 
 ON BEING A LANDLORD 
 
 judging by the tenor of some of the laws 
 that have lately been suggested, the ten 
 ant may presently answer, "All right, 
 you Old Devil. This is the tenth of 
 the month, and I'll shake the dust of 
 your disgraceful premises off my feet two 
 years and six months from to-morrow." 
 It's a puzzling time for us landlords. 
 Not long ago I felt compelled to raise the 
 rent of fourteen married women and one 
 (so far as I know) unmarried Chinaman. 
 And then, overcome by conscience, I 
 sat down and figured out a just rent. 
 And when I had finished I came upon a 
 distressing discovery. I had raised the 
 rent of neither Mrs. Murphy, Mrs. 
 Smith, Mrs. Brown, Mrs. Cawkins, 
 Mrs. Trolley, Mrs. Karsen, Mrs. Le 
 Maire, Mrs. Barber, Mrs. Sibley, Mrs. 
 Carrot, Mrs. Mahoney, Mrs. Hopp, 
 Mrs. Ranee, Mrs. Button, nor Charlie 
 Wah Loo, anything like enough.
 
 VI 
 
 OLD FLIES AND OLD MEN 
 
 To-day, my dear, I greatly astonished 
 my grandson by standing on my head, and 
 by entering the kitchen by turning a back- 
 somersault through the door exercises 
 which I frequently practise for the benefit 
 of my digestion, but not often in public. 
 His bewilderment at seeing a man of my 
 years perform such acrobatics was most 
 comical. But there, there, one must amuse 
 one's self with the young sometimes. I 
 have thought more or less seriously of ad 
 vising these exercises for general use; but 
 few men have had the advantage of being 
 brought up in a circus, and what seems 
 easy to me would no doubt present insu 
 perable obstacles to most. The main 
 thing, after all, is not to grow old before 
 your time, because the silly younger gen- 
 78
 
 OLD FLIES AND OLD MEN 
 
 eration likes to flatter itself by thinking 
 you antediluvian. LETTERS OF FATHER 
 WILLIAM. 
 
 FEW men read Shakespeare, and so, 
 fortunately enough, few think of them 
 selves as being some day a pantaloon 
 lean and slippered (as Shakespeare de 
 scribed this sixth age of man), with 
 spectacles on nose, his youthful hose, 
 well-saved, a world too wide for his 
 shrunk shank, and his big, manly voice, 
 turning again to childish treble, operat 
 ing like a penny whistle when he tries to 
 converse. But the Bard made a bogey: 
 at any rate, there are fewer pantaloons 
 visible than there probably were in Eliz 
 abethan England; and the sixth age of 
 man appears more logically to offer 
 a kind of Indian summer that is well 
 worth living for. Shakespeare, it seems 
 to me, slipped a cog in his sequence ; and 
 I prefer to think of Cornaro, the Italian 
 79
 
 THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN 
 
 centenarian, who began at forty to re 
 strict his diet (though this I care less 
 for), and wrote of himself at eighty- 
 three: "I enjoy a happy state of body 
 and mind. I can mount my horse with 
 out assistance; I climb steep hills; and I 
 have lately written a play abounding in 
 innocent wit and humor. And I am a 
 stranger to those peevish and morose 
 humors which fall so often to the lot of 
 old age." 
 
 Granting some other choice of mental 
 employment, for writing that kind 
 of a play seems nowadays too useless 
 an occupation even for an old man's 
 leisure, this is the kind of an old man 
 I should like to be. 
 
 In the light of recent scientific re 
 search with flies, Cornaro probably in 
 herited his longevity from long-lived an 
 cestors, and would have done about as 
 well on a less restricted diet: he might 
 80
 
 OLD FLIES AND OLD MEN 
 
 reasonably have lasted as long if not as 
 comfortably. Ideas have changed since 
 Pope asked himself, 
 
 Why has not man a microscopic eye? 
 
 and promptly answered, 
 
 For this plain reason, Man is not a Fly. 
 
 Say what the use, were finer optics giv'n, 
 
 T' inspect a mite, not comprehend the heav'n? 
 
 Man since then has provided himself 
 with a remarkably good microscopic eye. 
 He has inspected the mite, and discov 
 ered resemblances between this inno 
 cently disgusting little insect and him 
 self, which make it desirable, in some 
 cases, to suspend the swatter, and study 
 instead of assassinate. Granting that 
 the proper study of mankind is Man, 
 the proper study of mankind is Flies; 
 for the days of a fly present an enter 
 taining and instructive parallel to the 
 years of a man : a seventy-year-old man 
 a.nd a seventy-day-old fly are contem- 
 81
 
 THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN 
 
 poraries; other things being equal, they 
 might almost be called twins. Confined 
 in glass bottles and observed impartially 
 from birth to burial, each baby fly, it ap 
 pears, inherits a maximum number of 
 days on this perplexing planet, and lives 
 fewer according to the activity with 
 which he expends his inheritance. If 
 flies had copybooks one might compose 
 a maxim for little flies to copy, 
 
 Do not fly too much or fast, 
 And you will much longer last. 
 
 Thus one scientific gentleman has 
 watched, godlike, the lives of 5836 flies 
 3216 fair flies (if I may so call them), 
 and 2620 of their natural, and only, 
 admirers from their separate birth- 
 minutes till each in turn paid his or her 
 little debt to nature, and passed away. 
 It is an odd thing to contemplate this 
 self-election of a man to the positions of 
 guardian, health officer, divine provi- 
 82
 
 OLD FLIES AND OLD MEN 
 
 dence, nursemaid, matchmaker, clergy 
 man, physician, undertaker, and sexton 
 to 5836 flies. Yet it redounds to his 
 credit, and is another proof of the poet's 
 contention that we men are superior: 
 for what fly would ever think of studying 
 MS to find out anything about himself? 
 And, by deduction, I, like the little fly, 
 inherit my span of life, although either 
 accident or a germ may get me if I don't 
 watch out. 
 
 But even if man, like the fly, inherits 
 his individual length of life, he will, 
 again like the fly, go on living it with 
 little concern as to whatever invisible 
 string may be fastened to his inherit 
 ance. He will think hopefully that any 
 ancestor he has had who died by violence 
 or a germ might othenvise have lived to 
 be as hale and hearty as Father William, 
 that lively sage whose habit was to 
 stand on his head at intervals, and to 
 83
 
 THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN 
 
 enter a door by turning a back-somer 
 sault. Heredity is still a mystery; the 
 ancestry of free men is much more com 
 plicated than that of flies in bottles; 
 and any of us, if he anxiously carried his 
 genealogical research far enough back, 
 would find a goodly number of forbears, 
 prematurely carried off, from whom he 
 might reasonably have inherited quite a 
 lot of what the scientific mind calls the 
 "hypothetical substance or substances 
 which normally prevent old age and nat 
 ural death." Flies growing gracefully 
 old in glass bottles therefore need not 
 worry us, and every ancestor who has 
 been hanged is a reason for optimism. 
 
 And there is another reason even more 
 valuable than a pendent ancestor. You 
 and I, gentle Reader, have souls (though 
 there may be times of discouragement 
 when we wish we had n't), and old age 
 is a mere trivial incident in our jolly 
 84
 
 OLD FLIES AND OLD MEN 
 
 eternal lives. Willy-nilly, we begin 
 growing older, by the conventional 
 measurement of time, with our first 
 breath; but who can prove that we are 
 not in reality very much older than we 
 look in the beginning, and very much 
 younger than we look in the end ? I get 
 these sober thoughts from the labora 
 tory rather than the pulpit, from evolu 
 tion rather than dogma. O aged fly, to 
 whom your seventy days are a long life 
 and your glass bottle a perfectly natural 
 and normal world in which to have lived 
 it! O aged man, to whom your seventy 
 years are a long life, and who may also 
 have lived it, for all you know, in a kind 
 of glass bottle, big enough to contain 
 comfortably this little planet and all the 
 visible stars! Whoever respects age for 
 its own sake must impartially salute you 
 both. 
 
 "It is a man's own fault," said Dr. 
 85
 
 THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN 
 
 Johnson, then seventy years old, but no 
 pantaloon, " it is from want of use, if the 
 mind grows torpid in old age." And so 
 plausible is this observation, that any 
 reasonably intelligent man might make 
 it to his wife at breakfast without at all 
 astonishing her. Here, to be sure, one 
 gets no help from flies in glass bottles 
 who depart this world according as they 
 fly more or fly less, for theirs apparently 
 is a democracy in which no outside 
 observer can yet say that any one fly 
 thinks more or thinks less than another. 
 A scientific study of 5836 old men (in 
 biographies instead of bottles) would 
 very likely do no more than verify the 
 generalization that any thinker may 
 make at breakfast. And this being the 
 case, civilization tends naturally enough 
 to reduce the number of pantaloons. 
 Universal education, books, newspapers, 
 magazines, politics, movies, anything 
 86
 
 OLD FLIES AND OLD MEN 
 
 and everything that to any degree em 
 ploys and exercises the mind, postpones 
 its torpidity; and statistics indicate that 
 an increasing proportion of babies live to 
 be middle-aged people but a decreas 
 ing proportion of middle-aged people 
 live to be old enough to become panta 
 loons. For many a not- so- very-promis 
 ing baby survives nowadays who would 
 have perished under earlier conditions; 
 and many a man gets to middle life who 
 would otherwise be dead already, and 
 lacks the "pep," as a popular magazine 
 editor might say, to get very much 
 further. What a survival of the fittest, 
 for example, was that of the beautiful 
 Galeria Copiola, who, I have read, made 
 her first dazzling appearance in the 
 theatre of ancient Rome at the age of 
 ninety! She acted and danced; and 
 Roman playgoers of seventy, sitting in 
 the front rows, had opportunity to be- 
 87
 
 THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN 
 
 come madly infatuated with a charmer 
 twenty years their senior, such as now 
 falls only to the lot of the college under 
 graduate or the tired business man. 
 And if anybody doubts this surprising 
 youthfulness of Galeria, I offer the cor 
 roborative evidence of the seventeenth- 
 century pamphlet, "The Olde, Olde, 
 very Olde Man; or the Age and Long 
 Life of Thomas Parr," in which John 
 Taylor, the Water Poet, describes the 
 pre-Adamite who was brought up to 
 London at the age of 152, met the King, 
 and had such a great good time in gen 
 eral, that his death nine months later 
 was attributed to over-excitement. 
 
 He was of old Pythagoras' opinion 
 That green cheese was most wholesome with an onion ; 
 Coarse meslin bread, and for his daily swig, 
 Milk, butter-milk, and water, whey and whig: 
 Sometimes metheglin, and by fortune happy, 
 He sometimes sipped a cup of ale most nappy. 
 
 (I have looked up "metheglin," and I 
 
 find it to have been a "strong liquor 
 
 88
 
 OLD FLIES AND OLD MEN 
 
 made by mixing honey with water and 
 flavoring it, yeast or some similar fer 
 ment being added, and the whole al 
 lowed to ferment." "Ale" was also a 
 liquor, but made from malt. " Nappy" 
 means heady and strong: " Nappie ale," 
 says an old writer, was "so called be 
 cause, if you taste it thoroughly, it will 
 either catch you by the nape of the neck 
 or cause you to take a nappe of sleepe." 
 The use of these drinks, it may still be 
 argued, shortened Parr's life; but the 
 fly-research that I have mentioned 
 seems to indicate that their tendency 
 to decrease physical activity by indu 
 cing "nappes" may have materially 
 helped him to conserve his inheritance 
 of longevity.) 
 
 But these cases are exceptional, and 
 for my part I have no desire to be the 
 Thomas Parr of the twentieth or twenty- 
 first century. It is more important to 
 89
 
 THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN 
 
 live right (and there, indeed, is a job for 
 anybody!) than to live long; and old 
 age, like young love, is often oversenti- 
 mentalized. Mr. Boswell, I think, over- 
 sentimentalized it when he asked his 
 long-suffering friend, "But, sir, would 
 you not know old age? . . . I mean, sir, 
 the Sphinx's description of it morn 
 ing, noon, and night. I would know 
 night as well as morning and noon." 
 And the doctor restored the subject to 
 its proper place when he answered: 
 "Nay, sir, what talk is this? Would you 
 know the gout ? Would you have decrep 
 itude?" He might, indeed, have gone 
 further. "Do you suppose, sir" (he 
 might have added), "you will know 
 night when you see it? Why, sir, what 
 does a baby know about morning?" 
 
 So with Pantaloon: we comparative 
 youngsters have only an external and 
 objective idea of him his slippers, his 
 90
 
 OLD FLIES AND OLD MEN 
 
 stockings, his peevish and morose hu 
 mors, his feeble mirth and empty gar 
 rulity. What living is really like to him 
 we cannot know until we are pantaloons 
 ourselves, and then, mayhap, we shall 
 have forgotten what living is like to us 
 now; let it suffice that we shall prob 
 ably be far less bothered by our shrunk 
 shanks and piping voices than we now 
 believe possible. At the same time, it 
 will do no harm for some of us to ' ' watch 
 our step." Already I and there must 
 be many another like me am some 
 times a little peevish and a little morose ; 
 a mere soupQon reasonably explainable 
 by natural causes but there it is ! I 
 am hardly aware of it myself. Yet when 
 it is called to my attention by those near 
 est and dearest to me, I experience an 
 odd, perverse inclination to be more 
 peevish and more morose than before. 
 I enjoy, I take a queer, twisted, unnat-
 
 THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN 
 
 ural, hateful, demoniac pleasure, like 
 Mr. Hyde when Dr. Jekyll turned into 
 him, in the idea of being more peevish 
 and more morose. Here indeed is some 
 thing to look out for: resist that inclina 
 tion, and we are laying the foundation 
 of a serene and respected old age ; obey 
 that impulse, and we comfort the Devil, 
 and run the risk of some day becoming, 
 not only old men, but old nuisances. I 
 do not know, though I very much doubt, 
 that one old fly is ever more peevish and 
 morose than another old fly; but with 
 mankind, whose superior intelligence so 
 often makes trouble for his associates, 
 the variations are visible. Savages, un 
 hampered by the conventions of an 
 artificial civilization, have efficiently 
 knocked their elders on the head in 
 consequence. 
 
 Let us, then, do our best to beat the 
 Devil, and prepare for that Indian sum- 
 92
 
 OLD FLIES AND OLD MEN 
 
 mer, which, with all respect to Shake 
 speare, is the true sixth age of man. And 
 they reach it best (to judge by some who 
 have got there) who do their daily work 
 with a good conscience, share their in 
 cidental joys with others, and meet 
 their troubles in the spirit of that stout 
 old seaman, Sir Andrew Barton, as I the 
 other day saw his ballad quoted with 
 reference to R. L. Stevenson : 
 
 A little I me hurt, but yett not slaine; 
 He but lye downe and bleede a while, 
 And then He rise and fight againe.
 
 VII 
 THE OLDE, OLDE, VERY OLDE MAN 
 
 Now concernynge the Soule, it is a 
 Queer Thynge consydering that it lives in 
 the Bodie yett dieth nott; and so I conclude 
 that the Soule was made separate, and 
 thys Bodie for its brief use and tenement; 
 and how it gets in and gets oute I cannot 
 tell you. And belyke there bee all sortes 
 and condiciones of Soules, some goode, 
 some bad, some so-so; but because Goode 
 is better than Evil, and because they lyve in 
 Eternity, the bad Soules willfinde itt oute 
 in time, and become goode; and the so-so 
 Soules will learn wisdome, and cease of 
 their foolishnesse. But why they were nott 
 alle made alyke to start, that I cannot tell 
 you; nor juste how they was made. 
 THE SAGE'S OWNE BOKE. 
 94
 
 THE OLDE, OLDE, VERY OLDE MAN 
 
 IT was a poetess, I am glad to say, 
 and not a poet, who wrote the once pop 
 ular lines: 
 
 Backward, flow backward, O tide of the years! 
 I am so weary of toil and of tears, 
 Toil without recompense, tears all in vain, 
 Take them, and give me my childhood again. 
 
 Many a voice no doubt sagged under 
 this load of pathos as it read " Rock Me 
 to Sleep, Mother" to a little group of 
 sympathetic listeners; but if such mel 
 ancholies are to be set on paper, and 
 circulated in print, I am unchivalrous 
 enough to wish that joyless occupation 
 on the gentler sex. Most of us perform 
 prodigies of toil, which seem to receive 
 scant recompense, and shed figuratively 
 many a bucket of seemingly useless 
 tears. But I do not imagine that this 
 sad poetess was half as badly off as she 
 seemed to think; and, more than that, 
 she had only to wait long enough, and 
 keep alive long enough, to get her child- 
 95
 
 THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN 
 
 hood back without asking for it. Time, 
 the Grocery man, in due season would 
 hand her a second childhood in many re 
 spects ' 'just as good " as the first ; for we 
 who are betwixt and between can ob 
 serve an unintelligent ignorance of later 
 troubles in one condition, neatly bal 
 anced by an unintelligent forgetfulness 
 of them in the other. Our lugubrious 
 poetess, one might say, was neither 
 more nor less than asking the tide of 
 the years obligingly to assist her to com 
 mit suicide. Had her request been grant 
 ed, there would have been one more 
 child in the world and one less poetess. 
 An impressive parallel may, indeed, 
 be drawn between these two childhoods 
 the first a period of dependence upon 
 its elders, and the second of dependence 
 on its youngers, and each, to the reflec 
 tive observer, a pretty evenly balanced 
 reversal of the other. It is as if, in the 
 96
 
 THE OLDE, OLDE, VERY OLDE MAN 
 
 beginning, the whole family of recogniz 
 able human characteristics, Curiosity, 
 Memory, Affection, Dislike, Ambition, 
 Love, Hate, Good Nature, Bad Temper, 
 and all the rest of them, were moving, 
 one after another, into a new house ; and 
 as if, in the end, the whole family, one 
 after another, were leaving an old one. 
 The very youngest and the very oldest 
 men in the world seem equally equipped 
 for living in it "sans teeth, sans eyes, 
 sans taste, sans everything" ; and Baby, 
 a little older, when he goes out in his 
 perambulator is much like ancient 
 Thomas Parr being conveyed to London 
 as a human curiosity in a "litter and 
 two horses (for the more easy carriage 
 of a man so enfeebled and worn with 
 age). . . . And to cheere up the olde 
 man and make him merry, there was an 
 antique-faced fellow, called Jacke, or 
 John the Foole." 
 
 97
 
 THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN 
 
 Why, I myself, meeting a baby in a 
 perambulator, have made such antic 
 faces that I might fairly have been called 
 Jacke, or John the Foole, by anybody 
 who saw me, and all to cheere up the 
 younge man and make him merry. A 
 little older yet, the child will run and 
 play, rolling his hoop, spinning his top, 
 enjoying the excitement of tag and hide- 
 and-go-seek; and I dare say that the old 
 man, a little younger than before, would 
 be just as happy with hoop and top (if 
 he were again introduced to them) , and 
 would have a grand, good time at tag 
 and hidey-go if he had other old men 
 and old women to play with, and his 
 youngers would let him. I do not mean 
 that he would do any of these things as 
 well as the child ; but it would please him 
 as much to do them to the top of his 
 aged bent, though now and then a flicker 
 of remembered convention, which the 
 98
 
 THE OLDE, OLDE, VERY OLDE MAN 
 
 child has never known and considered, 
 would make him self-consciously aban 
 don these simple pleasures. Even as an 
 old cat, caught trying to catch its tail, 
 will sit up with dignity and pretend that 
 it was n't. 
 
 There was once a custom of including 
 a skeleton, or perhaps a mummy, in the 
 festivity of a banquet, to remind the 
 diners of their mortality, and, for all I 
 know, the after-dinner speakers of the 
 shortness of time; though very likely 
 they soon got used to their silent com 
 panion, and took their mortality as 
 lightly as most people do at dinner. An 
 "Olde, Olde, very Olde Man," as a con 
 temporary writer called the unpictur- 
 esque human ruin I have just referred 
 to, would, it seems to me, have answered 
 the same purpose, and answered it bet 
 ter. Human nature takes neither the 
 skeleton nor the mummy with continu- 
 99
 
 THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN 
 
 ous seriousness, and proves by its atti 
 tude that, if we instinctively fear death 
 at one moment, we instinctively ridicule 
 our fear at another. I have read it ar 
 gued that man with his clothes on is 
 nevertheless naked, such arguments 
 seem to amuse the philosophers, and 
 by the same entertaining process of rea 
 soning we are all skeletons together, 
 though some may worry lest others con 
 sider them too fat for romantic admira 
 tion. Or, again, to the man who believes 
 that death snuffs him out like a candle, 
 this skeleton at the feast might easily 
 become an urgent reminder that he is 
 still living, and he would most unwisely 
 stuff himself out like a toy balloon while 
 he still had a chance. But your olde, 
 olde, very olde man is a reality: he is 
 both dead and alive ; his presence, to say 
 nothing of his table manners, should 
 tend to make each guest regard death as 
 100
 
 THE OLDE, OLDE, VERY OLDE MAN 
 
 a friend rather than an enemy, and his 
 state of mind and body prove such a 
 warning against pride in either, that 
 even the after-dinner speakers would 
 take notice and modestly shorten their 
 speeches. 
 
 Let it not be imagined that I lack re 
 spect for age. I tell you frankly, ageing 
 and respected Reader, that so long as 
 you can intelligently read even this es 
 say, you are not seriously old ; and when 
 you cannot, you won't know the differ 
 ence, and no respect of mine will be of 
 any value to you. Your time has not 
 come to sit propped up at table as the 
 latest modern improvement on the skel 
 eton at the feast ; and if ever it does, you, 
 my friend, will not be there. Where you 
 will be, I cannot faintly imagine, and 
 neither churchmen nor philosophers 
 help me, for the churchmen are too ob 
 jective and the philosophers too ab- 
 101
 
 THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN 
 
 stract; the best I can do is to take John 
 Fiske's word for it, who knew far more 
 about both science and metaphysics 
 than I can hope to, when he says the ma 
 terialistic theory that the life of the soul 
 ends with the life of the body is "per 
 haps the most colossal instance of base 
 less assumption that is known to the 
 history of philosophy." But when its 
 house has become a ruin, my soul will 
 certainly have sense enough to look for 
 something more habitable, and may 
 conceivably depart while there are still 
 a few embers burning in the furnace, 
 leaving the fire to die out when it will. 
 Man is a conventional being, and per 
 haps his most astonishing convention is 
 a funeral. 
 
 But the custom has long gone out of 
 
 thus poignantly reminding diners that 
 
 a time is coming when they will have no 
 
 stomachs ; and olde, olde, very olde men 
 
 1 02
 
 THE OLDE, OLDE, VERY OLDE MAN 
 
 will get no invitations out to dine for 
 any suggestion of mine. Fortunately 
 there are other uses for them. They are, 
 for example, a source of innocent pride 
 to their families. " Grandpa was eighty- 
 nine his last birthday, and he still has a 
 tooth." They interest the million read 
 ers of the morning newspaper. " Friends 
 from far and near gathered yesterday to 
 celebrate the loist birthday of Mr. John 
 Doe, 17 Jones Avenue. The venerable 
 patriarch, who can still walk unaided 
 from his place of honor by the steam 
 radiator to his cushioned chair in the 
 dining-room, when asked to what he at 
 tributes his ripe old age, replied with as 
 tonishing intelligence that the winters 
 are longer than they used to be. Mr. 
 Doe was surrounded by 247 living child 
 ren, grandchildren, and great-grand 
 children." These are visible uses; but 
 this olde, olde, very olde man may have, 
 103
 
 THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN 
 
 invisibly, a more important function; 
 and the helplessness of age, like that of 
 infancy, may well have been a necessary 
 factor in the slow conversion of our ape 
 like ancestor into you and me. 
 
 I have commented elsewhere on the 
 natural astonishment of the first par 
 ents who realized, with their inefficient 
 prehistoric minds, that this baby be 
 longed to them, and how, in the consid 
 ered opinion of able scientists, the little 
 hitherto missing link joined father and 
 mother into the first human family. 
 Tending and providing for Baby made 
 the cave a home ; but I suspect it was a 
 long time before tending and providing 
 for Grandpa added another motive for 
 the cultivation of those higher qualities 
 that distinguish man from all other ani 
 mals. Why, there were savages who ate 
 him! Yet in due time the olde, olde, 
 very olde man became such a motive, 
 104
 
 THE OLDE, OLDE, VERY OLDE MAN 
 
 and to-day man is the only animal that 
 takes care of its grandfather. When you 
 think of the differences between men to 
 day and men then, between men then 
 and the ape-men before them, and be 
 tween men now as they go about their 
 various occupations, it seems quite pos 
 sible that ape-men had no souls at all, 
 and that some men to-day have rudi 
 mentary ones, millions of years behind 
 others in evolution. It explains much. 
 And so, wherever there is an olde, olde, 
 very olde man, I dare say the care his 
 youngers take of him is doing them 
 good; they might even reverse the pa 
 rental platitude of punishment, and say, 
 " Grandpa, this does me more good than 
 it does you." 
 
 But this proud possession of an olde, 
 
 olde, very olde man does not always 
 
 work visibly toward such beneficent 
 
 ends. His obstreperous infancy, mas- 
 
 105
 
 THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN 
 
 querading in mature garments, some 
 times exhausts the patience of hisyoung- 
 ers ; and his permanent conviction (often 
 the only sign of intelligence left) that he 
 knows more than they do, and perhaps 
 more than anybody else, makes their 
 task difficult : it is one thing, so to speak, 
 to take care of a baby when it is growing 
 up, and another thing to take care of a 
 baby when it is growing down. Then, 
 indeed, one needs the assurance of im 
 mortality, the conviction that Grandpa 
 is, little as one might think it, still grow 
 ing up, and that this simulacrum of 
 Grandpa that still remains to be looked 
 after, must not be taken too seriously. 
 These olde, olde, very olde men are not 
 all just alike: there are grandpas w r hom 
 anybody might be proud to take care of, 
 and grandpas whom anybody might be 
 excused for wishing (as the brisk, mod 
 ern phrase has it) to sidestep. And the 
 1 06
 
 THE OLDE, OLDE, VERY OLDE MAN 
 
 explanation of this diversity, as of much 
 else that puzzles us in a puzzling world, 
 may be that they were not all just alike 
 when they were babies. Inside their 
 thin and tiny skulls some had better 
 brains than others, brains with more of 
 those wonderful little pyramidal neu 
 rones, which, able scientists (unless I get 
 their message twisted) tell me, correlate, 
 connect, assemble, and unite our indi 
 vidual ideas, memories, sensations, and 
 intellectual and emotional what-nots. 
 Men, in short, may be born free, but 
 they are not born equal. 
 
 But why worry? If the individual 
 soul is still young, it will keep on grow 
 ing in wisdom and experience ; nor will it 
 lose touch with other souls that are akin 
 to it, and, in the measurement of eter 
 nity, its contemporaries ; and it will have 
 a better and better house to live in, with 
 ever more modern improvements in the 
 107
 
 THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN 
 
 way of pyramidal neurones. As the 
 March Hare conclusively replied to 
 Alice, when she asked why the three lit 
 tle sisters who lived in the treacle well 
 learned to draw by drawing everything 
 that began with an M, "Why not?" 
 
 So if ever I become like the valetu 
 dinarian described by Macaulay, who 
 "took great pleasure in being wheeled 
 along his terrace, who relished his boiled 
 chicken and his weak wine and water, 
 and who enjoyed a hearty laugh over 
 the Queen of Navarre's tales," I hope 
 that somebody will considerately push 
 my chariot, boil me an occasional 
 chicken, and keep handy my specta 
 cles and the Queen of Navarre's mirth- 
 provokers. The weak wine and water I 
 shall have to do without. But my soul, 
 I like to think, which is the Me for 
 work and play, love, friendship, and all 
 the finer things of life, already will have 
 108
 
 THE OLDE, OLDE, VERY OLDE MAN 
 
 closed the door of its house and gone 
 away. And as it goes, I like to think, 
 also, that it whistles cheerfully a little 
 tune of its own, the burden of which is 
 "Life is long."
 
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