it is often seen that those who all their lives have eaten their cake
most eagerly have quite a little of it left at the end. There are no
hard and fast rules for the eating of your cake. One can only find out
by eating it; and, as I have said, it may be your luck to disprove the
proverb and both eat your cake and have it.

For a dreary majority, however, the cake does come to an end, and for
them henceforth, as Stevenson grimly put it, the road lies long and
straight and dusty to the grave. For them that last call is apt to come
usually before sunset--and the great American question arises: What are
they going to do about it? That, of course, every one must decide for
himself, according to his inclinations and his opportunities. But a few
general considerations may be of comfort and even of greater value.

There is one thing of importance to know about this last call, that we
are apt to imagine we hear it before we actually do, from a nervous
sense that it is about time for it to sound. Our hair perhaps is growing
grey, and our years beginning to accumulate. We hypnotize ourselves with
our chronology, and say with Emerson:

It is time to grow old,
To take in sail.

Well and good, if it is and we feel like it; but may be it isn't, and we
don't. Youth is largely a habit. So is romance. And, unless we allow
ourselves to be influenced by musty conventions and superstitions, both
habits may be prolonged far beyond the moping limits of custom, and need
never be abandoned unless we become sincerely and unregretfully tired of
them. I can well conceive of an old age like that of Sophocles, as
reported by Plato, who likened the fading of the passions with the