Democratic Sentinel, Volume 12, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 February 1888 — The Wane of Intellect. [ARTICLE]

The Wane of Intellect.

The mind, on which man so prides himself, develops and expands until the age of about forty, and then declines. Decay is the inexorable law of Nature. Sad is the fading away of a brilliant mind at the approach of dissolution, but sadder than death is it when the brain perishes before the body. “How often, alas, we see,” says Holmes, “the mighty satirist tamed into oblivious imbecility, the great scholar wandering without sense of time or place among his alcoves, taking his books one by one from the shelves and patting them: a child once more among his toys, but a child whose to-mor-rows come hungry, and not fullhanded—come as birds ol prey in the place of the sweet singers of morning. We must all become as little children if we live long enough; but how blank an existence the wrinkled infant must cany into the kingdom of heaven if the Power that gave him memory does not complete the miracle by restoring it!” — Arkansaw Traveler.