Perhaps the chief suggestion of this book is that every intelligent man, as he reaches the stage of senescence, should thus pass his life in review and try to draw its lessons, not only for his own greater mental poise and unity but for the benefit of his immediate descendants, for whom such a record must be invaluable. Thus the writing of an autobiography will sometime become a fit hygienic prescription for a rounded-out old age. Brander Matthews[91] says that when a man is in sight of Pier No. 70, as Mark Twain called it, he should take down sail and examine his log-book. He must not feel that young people are wanting to brush him aside but should realize that he can help them. He gives a very full account of his own experiences as a magazine writer and deplores the fact that many of our twentieth-century editors are newspaper men, whereas formerly they were literary men. The most serious lesson he draws from his own experience is that young writers should take only subjects in which they are profoundly interested and “not take down the shutters before they have anything to put in the shop windows.” He rejoices that he has never accepted a dictated subject but has always labored in fields attractive to him and so, in short, followed an inner calling. Ralph Waldo Emerson[92] says the dim senses, memory, voice, etc., are only masks that old age wears. There are young heads on old shoulders and young hearts. The essence of age is intellect. “He that can discriminate is the father of his father” and Merlin as a baby found in a basket by the riverside talks wisely of all things. Is it because we find ourselves reflected in the eyes of young people that we feel old? “The surest poison is time.” Age is comely in coach, chairs of state, courts, and historical societies, but not on Broadway. We do not count a man’s years until he has nothing else to count. One says a man is not worth anything until he is sixty. “In all governments the councils of power were held by the old--patricians or patres; senate or senes; seigneurs or seniors; the gerousia, the state of Sparta, the presbytery of the church, and the like, are all represented by old men.” Almost all good workers live long. The blind old Dandolo, elected Doge at 84, storming Constantinople at 94, and afterward recalled again victorious, was elected at the age of 96 to the throne of the empire, which he declined, and died Doge at 97. Newton made important discoveries for every one of his 85 years. Washington, the perfect citizen; Wellington, the perfect soldier; Goethe, the all-knowing poet; Humboldt, the encyclopedia of science--all were old.