X 



YOUTH VERSUS AGE 



SUPPOSE, however, that a man has striven ear- 

 nestly and well according to the best of his op- 

 portunities and abilities, yet that he has failed, 

 after years of toil. At middle life he realises at last that 

 he made a mistake in even trying to scale the heights in 

 the direction of his effort. Must he then write "Fail- 

 ure" for all time over the portals of his house of life? 

 Is it too late to make amends for his blunder; too late 

 to start over? 



The question brings us face to face with the world- 

 old and ever recurring problem of Youth versus Age. 

 It is a problem that confronts us everywhere in every- 

 day life, and which enters into the idiom of our current 

 speech. We are forever being assured that this man is 

 too young for some given enterprise or effort, and that 

 some other man is too old. Moreover our laws re- 

 flect the complexion of every-day speech; they declare 

 every individual unfit for the duties and privileges of 

 citizenship until he is twenty-one; they specify that no 

 man may be named President before he has attained the 

 age of thirty-five; and they fix the retiring age for 

 officers of the army and navy at sixty-five. 



At first blush this perpetual contrasting of youth and 

 age seems like an effort to establish barriers and con- 

 trasts where no such lines of demarcation are drawn in 

 nature; somewhat as the perennial contrasting of the 



