Rollo Ogden[89] thinks that in the first call the old man meets to take himself out of the way there is generally more pity than anger but he is too proud to accept pity. Nobody is so impetuous as an old man in a hurry. Vain longings for the sensations of youth make life after forty often a dangerous age, as physicians know. He believes there are many intellectual hazards and thinks it a delusion of the old that the young are different from those they knew in their youth. In judging the rising generation we oldsters must, at any rate, admit that they did well in the war. The old must make a serious effort to penetrate the secret of youth; they must put no end of questions to it even though they are not able to find answers to them. There must be a reorganization of life and a reorientation; and also, what is perhaps often harder, a new subordination. The old are, on the whole, more curious about the young than afraid of them. Another suggestion arises from an autobiographic volume of a retired clergyman, which is dedicated to his grandchildren.[90] The book is unique in that it gives few details of his life but stresses certain strong impressions derived from early boyhood, school days, his first experience with death, gropings to solve the problems of life and of the choice of a vocation, etc. He confines himself, for the most part, to experiences that made the deepest and most lasting impression upon him, the mysteries that have haunted his soul, self-criticisms, the rest and other cures he has tried, friendships made, and the great causes he has espoused. On laying aside his ministerial duties he realized that we must not retire within ourselves but draw closer to kindred humanity, and felt at liberty to enjoy literature, art, nature, and travel, realizing that there were many powers that had not been vented in his vocation. He found himself taking sober and broader second thoughts of even religion, here discovering a new sense of freedom, as he believes retired lawyers do in reflecting on the differences between their own sense of absolute right and duty to their clients. He was glad, he says, that he could “now break with some of my past notions, go squarely back on some former, cocksure declarations,” and he realized that “I did not know a lot of things I once thought I knew.” There is a wonderful exhilaration in standing at the opening of views from which one has been previously barred by constitutional preoccupation and engagements. He realizes that “courtesy to the cloth leads most men to treat ministers as they would treat women--the seamy side of life is not shown them.” It is easy, as one grows old, to retain abstract knowledge and the ripe fruits of philosophy, history, and even science; and age, too, has its recreations.