This realization not infrequently begins in the forties and increases thereafter, often intensively with the beginning of each new decade. The first sign of baldness, the first touch of fatigue at stated tasks, lapse of memory for names, waning potency in men; and the first gray hairs, wrinkles, fading of complexion, and change of figure, etc., in women are often specified in our returns. Such and many other signs usually gave the first sad recognition that the meridian of life was being crossed and that gradual declination was just ahead. In many a man and woman this is, as has been recognized, a dangerous age and it often comes in the middle and later thirties in women. The latter, realizing that their summer is ending, sometimes break away from old restraints and give themselves more liberties, not only social but moral. The first glimpse of the specter of senility ahead puts them in a now-or-never mood. Men ask themselves if they will be content to go on as they are so far heading, so that there will be nothing new to be written in the story of their life save only the date of their death. They wonder if the future is to be as the past and perhaps make an inventory of their unrealized ideals, hopes, and wishes, and cross many of them off their ledger as bad debts they owe themselves but can never collect. This crossing the line is for some so serious a matter that it may cause an abrupt turn in their life line, which starts off in a new direction, as is illustrated in a few conspicuous examples in Chapter I. This touch of autumn in August, however, rarely brings frost or blight but leaves only a trace of a new seriousness and perhaps sadness, while otherwise all goes on as before. In a few cases the first realization that one is getting old springs upon the soul, as if from ambush, on some trivial occasion and clings like an obsession that remits only to recur again and again. The majority, however, promptly and ruthlessly suppress all such intimations beneath the threshold of consciousness, telling not only others but themselves that they are just as young and capable as ever, thus refusing to recognize that age is upon them till perhaps the sixth or seventh decade. Thus the old are often the last to recognize in themselves infirmities that have long been patent to others. This is one of the benignities of nature, for to no disease, not even consumption, does she give a more effective opiate. A man of ninety still retains his post as head of a great concern he created in his youth, to its serious detriment, convinced that he is better than ever and that the scores of younger men under him lack the efficiency of those of his own generation. “He was on the verge of resigning twenty years ago,” said one of his subordinates to me, “but now he does not know enough to do so.”