It is a great privilege to live to an old age that is beautiful. The art by which one can attain to it may be difficult in many respects, but it is worth striving for. Thinking out a life of continued hope and service, and then pressing toward the mark of such high calling, is not impossible to the average man or woman who is ambitious of exercising a fidelity to every trust. In this matter, as in most of the affairs of life, the saying of George Crabbe is true: "Be there a will, and wisdom finds a way."

When the late Richard Salter Storrs, D.D., in the earlier years of his ministry, spoke from his pulpit on the beauty of old age, he was not dealing in sentimentality. He was sincerely endeavoring to impress upon the hearts of his hearers one of the great facts of life. When the doctor was approaching four-score years, he not only experienced all the beautiful emotions which ought to belong to old age, but his mental powers remained unimpaired; and his oratory, to the last year of his life, was so graceful and strong that his splendid sentences, falling from his lips in rapid succession, would fit in his discourses with the precision of the keystone of an arch.

While the art of living is not one of the lost arts, far too many persons of all classes do not understand it as they ought But conditions are gradually changing for the better. I have observed elsewhere in this volume that some of the best known bankers and merchants in Europe and the United States are well advanced beyond three-score years and ten, and are still in the very prime of their powers. They are lusty patriarchs, hale and hearty, although many of them are carrying the burden of eighty years. These vigorous governors of great corporations and directors of huge enterprises seem to have mastered the art of living.

United States Senator John Fairfield Dryden of New Jersey, President of the Prudential Life Insurance Company, says the facts are abundant tending to prove that useful longevity is being attained by men and women with an increasing degree of frequency in our country, and he quotes an authority who affirms: "It is certain that our American men at sixty are not broken up as badly as our fathers were at forty."

If old age should be beautiful in its usefulness, and if the human frame is a greater piece of mechanism - "a higher expression of creative skill than the solar systems" - the business of reaching after the best possible standard of physical, moral, and spiritual living ought to be the chief purpose of life.

Miss Susan Brownell Anthony is a shining light among octogenarian women of America. She has thoroughly studied the art of right living. This has been as much the business of her life as that of attending every National Convention of the Woman's Suffrage Association for the past thirty-seven years.

While carefulness in eating and taking helpful exercise in open air and dressing in an easy, comfortable fashion have contributed immensely to Miss Anthony's longevity, there is another auxiliary that needs to be mentioned: "She has had something for which to live. Work has been her physical salvation. The cause in which she has been so indefatigably engaged has been an inspiration. It has lent elasticity to her step and has sent the blood throbbing through her veins with the delicious tingle of achievement." Next to taking care of her health, Miss Anthony's high ideal was usefulness, and her life's work has been so widely approved that when she celebrated her eighty-fifth birthday in February, 1905, the love and appreciation of her co-workers were tendered her in the form of greetings from the equality clubs of Finland, Switzerland, Holland, Austria, Germany, Australia, and from all quarters of North and South America.

I cannot close this chapter without saying a few words concerning Dr. Nathan Smith Davis of Chicago, who died in 1904, at the age of eighty-eight. He was one of the greatest physicians this country has produced. His professional practice extended over a period of sixty-eight years.

From the time Dr. Davis was twenty years old, he began the serious study of the art of living. He never lost the spirit of youth. His simplicity of manner, his benignant qualities and kindness of heart, and his Christian zeal were always a part of the man. "To know how to grow old is the master-work of wisdom, and one of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living." But he mastered the art, and by precept and example he never ceased his efforts to teach it to others. During the last years of his life he walked every day to his office, a full mile, only the stormiest days making an exception to this rule. He maintained that his vigorous constitution was attributable to proper exercise, to moderate diet, and to abstention from liquor and tobacco. The plain, common sense laws of life and health were his constant guide.

Dr. Davis was a prophet in his profession. He was a missionary with a message, and this message he proclaimed throughout his life. To those well on in years, and who are wise enough to believe that nothing comes too late, the message will be helpful. It marks out the only pathway to soundness of body, mind, and soul.