A few days before John Greenleaf Whittier celebrated his eighty-fifth birthday, in December, 1891, the New York Tribune said:

"One day this week a young gentleman in Amesbury, Mass., known and loved by a great many thousands who never grasped his hand or looked into his eyes, will pass his eighty-fifth birthday. Young, because whatever may have happened to his physical powers in all these crowded and eventful years, he has carried with him through all of them that abounding love for humanity, and for all his fellow-men, that keeps the spirit always young, always in touch with to-day. Gentleman, because in more than sixty years of service to the thinking, reading world, he has said no word that was not helpful, hopeful, full of that gentleness and tenderness which, outside of all creeds and beliefs and theologies, attracts today the loving reverence of mankind for the 'First True Gentleman.'

"To grow old gracefully, to keep with us, spite of disappointments and bereavements and losses and increasing physical ills, the youthful spirit, the charm and sweetness of a gentle temper and unselfish soul, that indeed is a beatitude; one of the greatest; to be crowned by the last of all: 'Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord,' 'for their works do follow them.' It is such a graceful drawing to a close of a long and useful life that the attention of the English speaking world will be drawn to this week by the occurrence of the eighty-fifth birthday of the Quaker poet."

The friends of the beloved Quaker poet hoped that the wish expressed in Oliver Wendell Holmes' lines might be realized:

"What story is this of the year of his birth?

Let him live to a hundred, we want him on earth."

But this was not to be, and Whittier was translated nine months after his eighty-fifth birthday.

Emerson had no sympathy with the creed of the street, which says: "While old age is not disgraceful, it is immensely disadvantageous." He knew the value of experience which comes of a life of many years. "Life and art are cumulative, and he who has accomplished something in any department alone deserves to be heard on that subject."

The Rev. Edward Everett Hale took up the duties of Chaplain of the United States Senate in 1903, when he was eighty-two years old. But the pleasantness of mirth and the gentle light of humor still form a large portion of his daily life. A few months after his removal to Washington he was in Senator Hoar's committee room and, looking upon the portraits of the Senators, he said to the clerk:

"I thought that the Senators were all old men."

"Well," said the clerk, "some of them are pretty old, are they not?"

"Old?" said Dr. Hale; "I should think not. There's Senator Pettus of Alabama, who is eighty-three and who has reached the age of discretion, but the rest are young fellows, so far as I can see."

Most of these "young fellows" to whom Dr. Hale referred, were seventy or over. Their lives were indeed a beatitude. In conversation, in general bearing, in youthfulness of spirit, in activity in attending to the affairs of state, they showed no signs of increasing age.

To persons of clean lives and active minds old age is one of the beatitudes.

What made Mrs. George Henry Gilbert's old age a beatitude? Here is the answer to the question. One month before her sudden death, in December, 1904, at the age of eighty-three, a writer in The Outlook had a conversation with her, in which she said:

"I am very happy, and I have only gratitude for my life, for the kindness of everyone. I think I am the most fortunate woman in the world. It is strange, but my husband and children seem so near to me. They appear to be so very close. Do I think, that when I am put down there (pointing to the ground), that is the end of me? No, indeed; I know better. What is the yearning we have here (putting her hand on her heart) that makes us sure there is something to come, that makes us say our prayers, that helps us try to be good?"

The Rev. Dr. Edward D. Morris of Columbus, Ohio, is a stalwart gentleman of eighty-one. For thirty years he was professor of theology in Lane Seminary, Cincinnati. His hopefulness and happiness have not been buried in old age. When the doctor was seventy years old he wrote a poem, entitled "Three-score and Ten," which reflects his glad hope and serene mind at that time. I can give only five stanzas:

The beat of living is the last,

And life seems sweetest at its close;

And something richer than the past

These days disclose.

I mourn not now the silver hair,

The trembling hand, the failing power,

As here I wait and calmly dare

The coming hour.

And even when I sorrow most,

Yet happy are the tears I shed,

And bright the memories of the lost:

The precious dead.

Alone, but not alone, I stand;

Around, above, a Power divine

Is shining, and a heavenly

Hand Is touching mine.

And so, reclining on the slope

Of life, apart from busy men,

I firmly grasp this larger hope -

Three score and ten!

Another beautiful illustration of longevity as a beatitude, is the life of that distinguished philanthropist, the Baroness Burdett-Coutts of London. It is not extravagant to say that she is one of the most extraordinary women of the age. It was not her wealth nor her political influence that raised her to the British peerage, an honor never before bestowed upon a woman. It was her lofty character, her bountiful benefactions among the poor that bestowed upon her the title of Bight Honorable, and also gave her the freedom of the cities of London and Edinburgh.

The Baroness is directress in some twenty large organizations and associations, and her personal influence is felt in every direction to a degree almost as great as half a century ago. Although she is in her ninety-first year, her mental vitality and physical vigor and activity in Church and philanthropic work are retained in a remarkable manner. She was never more lovely in mind and heart than since she became a nonagenarian.

Of course her wealth and fame and social standing brought her many wooers in her younger womanhood, but when she married she married for love, and in 1881, when sixty-seven years old, she became the wife of an American, Mr. William Ashmead-Bartlett of Philadelphia, who is thirty-two years her junior. A royal license was obtained in England that he might assume her name.

There are many refreshing instances of blessedness filling the lives of those who have left more than eighty years behind them. We see ideal old age in Julia Ward Howe (now eighty-six), the philanthropist and poet, who gave us the immortal song, "The Battle Hymn of the Republic"; and in the versatile Adelene D. T. Whitney, whose books have carried delight and profit to many thousands of homes.

Beautiful is the life of Mrs. Isabella Beecher Hooker, the last survivor of the original Beecher family. She is eighty-three and still retains her charming philanthropic spirit and has lost none of her old-time interest in the movement "to emancipate woman from unjust laws." Mrs. Frances Jane C. Van Alstyne (Fanny Crosby), whose gospel songs have been sung the world over, is eighty-five years of age. Although she does not remember ever to have seen the light of day, her mind is in perfect peace, and she is still reaping in joy the fruits of a song-inspired life.

Time has not squeezed all the enjoyment and blessedness out of the life of Judge Charles Field of Athol, Massachusetts. He has lived to pass his ninetieth birthday, and he still presides in the court almost every day. Many a man has died old at sixty or seventy, but at ninety Judge Field is still harnessed for life's work, is full of vigor and mental strength, and is the oldest judge in the United States who exercises full judicial functions. His explanation why he is able to accomplish so much work in extreme age is common to almost every octogenarian and nonagenarian: "He has lived frugally, which means rationally, and worked constantly when he was not at play."

There are thousands of men and women whose names are rarely ever seen in the public prints whose lives have been clean and fruitful, and who, in their own modest way, have wisely worked out the problem of making old age a beatitude. To them belongs even higher honor of dignifying and beautifying longevity, than to those whose calling and environments have kept them constantly before the public eye.

A case in point is that of Mr. and Mrs. John Lowe of Laurel, Jones County, Mississippi. The husband is ninety-five and the wife ninety-six. The measure of their married life is seventy-seven years, and during all that time they have lived on one farm. It is said that thirteen of their children are living, and also sixty-two grandchildren, one hundred and twenty-three great-grandchildren, and nine great great grandchildren.

Neither Mr. Lowe nor his wife are old enough to be called old fogies. He still takes delight in hunting, and is counted one of the best marksmen in the county. Both are in excellent health at the time I write, and because of their plain, sensible way of living they are "as happy as the day is long."

A perfectly contented mind and a beautiful faith was exemplified in the life of the late Samuel Wescott of Toledo, Iowa. The length of his days was one hundred and two years. A distinguished physician once told Richard Anthony Proctor that in all his practice he never knew of but one person who died a natural death. But the end came to Mr. Wescott in a natural manner. He was taken to the polls on the eighth of November, 1904, and the following day the end came as peacefully as if he were passing into pleasant sleep.

Happy is that man or woman who can say, with George Macdonald, that the sweetness of life does not belong to the young alone, and that old age is not all decay.