servant; for all its strenuous and delicate learning it brings to the
feet of love for a plaything. Not only will it carry the voice of love
across space and time, but it will even bring it back to you from
eternity. It will not only carry to your ears the voices of the living,
but it will also keep safe for you the sweeter voices of the dead. In
fact, it would almost seem as though science had made all its
discoveries for the sake of love.




XX

TWO WONDERFUL OLD LADIES


It is a pity that our language has no other word to indicate that one
has lived seventy, eighty, or ninety years, than the word "old"; for the
word "old" carries with it implications of "senility" and decrepitude,
which many merely chronologically "old" people very properly resent. The
word "young," similarly, needs the assistance of another word, for we
all know individuals of thirty and forty, sometimes even only twenty,
whom it is as absurd to call "young" as it is to call those others of
seventy, eighty, or ninety, "old."

"Youth" is too large and rich a word to serve the limited purpose of
numbering the years of undeveloped boys and girls. It should stand
rather for the vital principle in men and women, ever expanding, and
rebuilding, and refreshing the human organism, partly a physical, but
perhaps in a greater degree a spiritual energy.