YOUTH VERSUS AGE 



the initial energy on the one hand nor the physical en- 

 durance on the other that he once had. Very likely some 

 of his aforetime ambitions have gone the way of his 

 youth; and if he will hark back in memory to the ideas 

 that dominated him in the twenties, he may feel that 

 in many ways he is a changed personality. Be that as 

 it may, he is the fortunate exception to the average if his 

 ideas on all subjects that interest him are not now 

 fixed beyond probability of change at least this side 

 senescence. In the current phrasing, his "character" 

 is fully formed. 



As a rule, the person thus come to "years of dis- 

 cretion" takes a more conservative view of life than he 

 did twenty years before. I fear that he has generally 

 lost the inclination to learn ; but I certainly should not 

 admit that he has lost the capacity. He is not very likely 

 now to take up any new study requiring diligent appli- 

 cation, nor to enter on any entirely new line of business 

 activity. The foundations of his fortune or success 

 are in all probability pretty securely laid, if fortune or 

 great success he is likely ever to attain. There is a 

 business rule of thumb to the effect that a man who has 

 not begun to accumulate money by his fortieth birth- 

 day will never be rich. No doubt as applied to the 

 average man there is much truth in this off-hand maxim; 

 and what applies to pecuniary accumulation ap- 

 plies with about equal force to success in general, 

 the one being, indeed, for the average man, the tangible 

 test of the other. 



But all this, it must be observed, is very far from 

 suggesting that the man who has passed the threshold 



