Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 306, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 December 1912 — NEVER WHOLLY GROWN UP [ARTICLE]

NEVER WHOLLY GROWN UP

True Man or Woman Always Retains Something of Divine Childhood In the Heart. A recent magazine article, in discussing the bringing up of children, said: “Finally each of us is in some sense a child, and he who best understands the child within him will most truly appreciate the boy and the girl in the home. It Is a truism that the household is incomplete without children, yet how often we regard children as. if we were no longer children ourselves! He is not genuinely human who deems himself wholly grown up. It is pride, a false estimate put upon knowledge, dignity, position, or something of the sort, not actual maturity or character, that puts a barrier in the. way. When I am most a man then an I also a boy.” The most agreeable, the nicest old people, are not those who are childish, but those who are childlike. There are any number of men who are childish when they are 45, and seem very old. There are a few men who are childlike at 45 and seem delightfully young. The grip of age is only fatal to a man of the fifties when he has entirely lost the buoyancy of his own life, and a delight in it. as seen in all the young life about him. Whfcn the play spirit of the world, its immortal youth, is no part or lot of his, then is he old, centuries old. If he has a certified place or position he is all right, but there are no further successes for him. Youth is abundant. It has an excess of energy which will out. While a man retains some of his youth he may conquer more worlds, and he can associate, on equal terms, with those who have abounding life, those who know exuberant happiness, and are ever hopeful and joyful.