In all the studies of genius[4] it would seem that musicians do their best work earliest and prodigies are most common in this field. In those callings that require a long preparation, science promises earliest recognition because this line of work is entered with better intellectual equipment. Here, too, belong professors, librarians, and teachers. Next come actors and authors, in whom ability is partly born and partly made. Compared with science, inventive genius gains a foothold on the ladder of fame late in life. The business man and financier, the lawyer, doctor, and minister, must often enter their profession from the bottom, and almost no great inventor is below forty. For woman, however, recognition comes earlier, and attractiveness of person has a greater premium here than with her brother. Having outlived her youth, however, progress is harder. W. A. Newman Dorland[5] studied the histories of four hundred great men of modern times and concluded that they refute Osler’s theory, the large majority of them being still active at sixty, although he distinguishes between workers and thinkers. He tells us that only that which is fittest survives and almost seems to imply that man became man when he was able to live and work productively after 40.[6] He considers old age one of the choicest products of evolution. His painstaking article is divided into three sections: (1) enumerating the great things done by men after 70; (2) by those between 60 and 70; (3) by those between 50 and 60. He thinks that if Osler’s dictum has any validity, it is found among manual laborers. It doubtless had its influence in the practice of so many industries that employ no new men above the age of 40. E. S. P. Haynes[7] resents the idea that people should retire from public affairs at forty, although he recognizes that near this age in both men and women there is often an impatience with a future that promises to be just like the past and there is a peculiar liability to amorous, financial, or other adventures. If people do anything, they are labeled and so get into grooves, and their friends, if they break out in new lines, as for example, Ruskin did, are shocked. But the groove is liable to grow narrow, and when this is realized, abrupt changes may occur. Nature protests against decay and hence it is that we often see the spectacle of impatient old people who are in a hurry, due perhaps to a subconscious effort to feel young again. This is akin to the “dangerous age” in women. Life is not a bed of roses for those who have succeeded, for it is sometimes as difficult to retain as it is to achieve success. Very often our ideas, when we are young, are ahead of our age but the world may catch up with us in middle or later life. Very often, too, by ostentatiously turning their backs upon some new movement the old thereby compel the young to take it up in order to deploy themselves.