Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 October 1883 — The Wisdom That Conies Only With Years. [ARTICLE]

The Wisdom That Conies Only With Years.

It is a singular analogy which is offered with the life of human flowers by the. growth of those of a frailer and more perishable sort. Fair and sweet and delicate are youth and maidenhood as the strawbell and anemone and twin linnaeas; rich and beautiful are the early years of life as roses and carnations are; jbut in the riper, maturer life is strength for vital work that needs must exhaust the earth, so soon is it to be followed by mild decay. Our statesmen do their great work in this season: our poets try their wings in May and June, but their larger - flight is now; our novelists write from intuition only till the ripeness of experience comes; our young lawyers may have talent and acumen, but they have not the power that is theirs later with rounded intellect and completer knowledge of life ; our young physicians may be fresh from walking famous hospitals abroad, but they have not the habits and memories of twenty years by night and day at the side of sick beds to make their wisdom seem like genius; our young preachers may tickle the fancy with their airy eloquence and gift of words, but they will not touch the heart as they do when they have tasted at all the springs of sorrow and sympathy the draught that added years, and they alone, shall proffer them. It has needed what is equivalent to the fervent and accumulated heats which belong to that middle of life as of the year, to call out the full force of what is in them, and the flame burns then with all its might, for presently it must fall in ashes, presently the beats will all be gone; no more will the vital efflux of the receding sun send its impulse through the roots of life, no more will soul or flower expand to the rich light of day, but the autumn damps and the chill of the grave will rise round them.— Harper's Bazar.