got to associating with insurance presidents, and lost flesh and
character, and was a sorrow to look at and no longer competent for
business. She was a great loss to me. Yet not all loss. I sold her–
ah, pathetic skeleton, as she was–I sold her to Leopold, the pirate King
of Belgium; he sold her to our Metropolitan Museum, and it was very glad
to get her, for without a rag on, she stands 57 feet long and 16 feet
high, and they think she’s a brontosaur. Well, she looks it. They
believe it will take nineteen geological periods to breed her match.
Morals are of inestimable value, for every man is born crammed with sin
microbes, and the only thing that can extirpate these sin microbes is
morals. Now you take a sterilized Christian–I mean, you take the
sterilized Christian, for there’s only one. Dear sir, I wish you
wouldn’t look at me like that.
Threescore years and ten!
It is the Scriptural statute of limitations. After that, you owe no
active duties; for you the strenuous life is over. You are a time-
expired man, to use Kipling’s military phrase: You have served your term,
well or less well, and you are mustered out. You are become an honorary
member of the republic, you are emancipated, compulsions are not for you,
nor any bugle-tail but “lights out.” You pay the time-worn duty bills if
you choose, or decline if you prefer–and without prejudice–for they are
not legally collectable.
The previous-engagement plea, which in forty years has cost you so many
tinges, you cam lay aside forever; on this side of the grave you will
never need it again. If you shrink at thought of night, and winter, and
the late home-coming from the banquet and the lights and the laughter
through the deserted streets–a desolation which would not remind you
now, as for a generation it did, that your friends are sleeping, and you
must creep in a-tiptoe and not disturb them, but would only remind you
that you need not tiptoe, you can never disturb them more–if you shrink
at thought of these things, you need only reply, “Your invitation honors
me, and pleases me because you still keep me hi your remembrance, but I
am seventy; seventy, and would nestle in the chimney-corner, and smoke my
pipe, and read my book, and take my rest, wishing you well in all
affection; and that when you in your return shall arrive at pier No. 70
you may step aboard your waiting ship with a reconciled spirit, and lay
your course toward the sinking sun with a contented heart.