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PREPARING FOR OLD AGE.
Socrates was once asked by a pupil, this question: "What
kind of people shall we be when we reach Elysium?"
And the answer was this: "We shall be the same kind
of people that we were here."
If there is a life after this, we are preparing for it now,
just as I am today preparing for my life tomorrow.
What kind of a man shall I be tomorrow? Oh, about the same
kind of a man that I am now. The kind of a man that I shall
be next month depends upon the kind of a man that I have
been this month.
If I am miserable today, it is not within the round of probabilities
that I shall be supremely happy tomorrow. Heaven is a habit.
And if we are going to Heaven we would better be getting
used to it.
Life is a preparation for the future; and the best preparation
for the future is to live as if there were none.
We are preparing all the time for old age. The two things
that make old age beautiful are resignation and a just consideration
for the rights of others.
In the play of Ivan the Terrible, the interest centers around
one man, the Czar Ivan. If anybody but Richard Mansfield
played the part, there would be nothing in it. We simply
get a glimpse into the life of a tyrant who has run the full
gamut of goosedom, grumpiness, selfishness and grouch. Incidentally
this man had the power to put other men to death, and this
he does and has done as his whim and temper might dictate.
He has been vindictive, cruel, quarrelsome, tyrannical and
terrible. Now that he feels the approach of death, he would
make his peace with God. But he has delayed that matter too
long. He didn't realize in youth and middle life that he
was then preparing for old age.
Man is the result of cause and effect, and the causes are
to a degree in our hands. Life is a fluid, and well has it
been called the stream of life we are going, flowing somewhere.
Strip Ivan of his robes and crown, and he might be an old
farmer and live in Ebenezer. Every town and village has its
Ivan. To be an Ivan, just turn your temper loose and practise
cruelty on any person or thing within your reach, and the
result will be a sure preparation for a querulous, quarrelsome,
pickety, snipity, fussy and foolish old age, accented with
many outbursts of wrath that are terrible in their futility
and ineffectiveness.
Babyhood has no monopoly on the tantrum. The characters
of King Lear and Ivan the Terrible have much in common. One
might almost believe that the writer of Ivan had felt the
incompleteness of Lear, and had seen the absurdity of making
a melodramatic bid for sympathy in behalf of this old man
thrust out by his daughters.
Lear, the troublesome, Lear to whose limber tongue there
was constantly leaping words unprintable and names of tar,
deserves no soft pity at our hands. All his life he had been
training his three daughters for exactly the treatment he
was to receive. All his life Lear had been lubricating the
chute that was to give him a quick ride out into that black
midnight storm.
"Oh, how sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have
a thankless child," he cries.
There is something quite as bad as a thankless child, and
that is a thankless parent an irate, irascible parent who
possesses an underground vocabulary and a disposition to
use it.
The false note in Lear lies in giving to him a daughter
like Cordelia. Tolstoy and Mansfield ring true, and Ivan
the Terrible is what he is without apology, excuse or explanation.
Take it or leave it if you do not like plays of this kind,
go to see Vaudeville.
Mansfield's Ivan is terrible. The Czar is not old in years
not over seventy but you can see that Death is sniffing close
upon his track. Ivan has lost the power of repose. He cannot
listen, weigh and decide he has no thought or consideration
for any man or thing this is his habit of life. His bony
hands are never still the fingers open and shut, and pick
at things eternally. He fumbles the cross on his breast,
adjusts his jewels, scratches his cosmos, plays the devil's
tattoo, gets up nervously and looks behind the throne, holds
his breath to listen. When people address him, he damns them
savagely if they kneel, and if they stand upright he accuses
them of lack of respect. He asks that he be relieved from
the cares of state, and then trembles for fear his people
will take him at his word. When asked to remain ruler of
Russia he proceeds to curse his councilors and accuses them
of loading him with burdens that they themselves would not
endeavor to bear.
He is a victim of amor senilis, and right here if Mansfield
took one step more his realism would be appalling, but he
stops in time and suggests what he dares not express. This
tottering, doddering, slobbering, sniffling old man is in
love he is about to wed a young, beautiful girl. He selects
jewels for her he makes remarks about what would become her
beauty, jeers and laughs in cracked falsetto. In the animality
of youth there is something pleasing it is natural but the
vices of an old man, when they have become only mental, are
most revolting.
The people about Ivan are in mortal terror of him, for he
is still the absolute monarch he has the power to promote
or disgrace, to take their lives or let them go free. They
laugh when he laughs, cry when he does, and watch his fleeting
moods with thumping hearts.
He is intensely religious and affects the robe and cowl
of a priest. Around his neck hangs the crucifix. His fear
is that he will die with no opportunity of confession and
absolution. He prays to High Heaven every moment, kisses
the cross, and his toothless old mouth interjects prayers
to God and curses on man in the same breath.
If any one is talking to him he looks the other way, slips
down until his shoulders occupy the throne, scratches his
leg, and keeps up a running comment of insult "Aye," "Oh," "Of
course," "Certainly," "Ugh," "Listen
to him now!" There is a comedy side to all this which
relieves the tragedy and keeps the play from becoming disgusting.
Glimpses of Ivan's past are given in his jerky confessions
he is the most miserable and unhappy of men, and you behold
that he is reaping as he has sown.
All his life he has been preparing for this. Each day has
been a preparation for the next. Ivan dies in a fit of wrath,
hurling curses on his family and court dies in a fit of wrath
into which he has been purposely taunted by a man who knows
that the outburst is certain to kill the weakened monarch.
Where does Ivan the Terrible go when Death closes his eyes?
I know not. But this I believe: No confessional can absolve
him no priest benefit him no God forgive him. He has damned
himself, and he began the work in youth. He was getting ready
all his life for this old age, and this old age was getting
ready for the fifth act.
The playwright does not say so, Mansfield does not say so,
but this is the lesson: Hate is a poison wrath is a toxin
sensuality leads to death clutching selfishness is a lighting
of the fires of hell. It is all a preparation cause and effect.
If you are ever absolved, you must absolve yourself, for
no one else can. And the sooner you begin, the better.
We often hear of the beauties of old age, but the only old
age that is beautiful is the one the man has long been preparing
for by living a beautiful life. Every one of us are right
now preparing for old age.
There may be a substitute somewhere in the world for Good
Nature, but I do not know where it can be found.
The secret of salvation is this: Keep Sweet.
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