Many old people fortify themselves against the depressions and remissions of old age by familiarizing their minds with quotations from the Scriptures, hymnology, poetry, and general literature. We have a good illustration of this in Margaret E. White’s volume.[77] It consists mainly of selections, determined of course by the author’s point of view--that of a liberal religionist--which has given her, and is well calculated to give others with her point of view, mental satisfaction. She wants to have “prisms in her window” to fill the room with rainbows. As the shadows lengthen she believes the climacteric should supervene without any break at all with the prime of life, although there are really two curves that run a very different course, one of physical strength and another of experience. When one stands on the summit of his years, he is buoyed up by great plans for life; but when he retires, there is nothing ahead save death and this involves a great and often critical change. The successful life is one that solves the problems that meet it here without patheticism and without self-delusion. The author’s anthology of quotations and her own reflections are not a cry in the dark but, on the whole, strike a note of courage and her book is of psychological value because it gives us a good idea of how many authors have thought and felt. Most want to be quiet and at home. They console themselves with intimations of a lofty and spiritual, if remote, idealism. Perhaps of all the young people we knew not one will accompany the late survivors. Old age is a benefaction because service to it ennobles all who render it. When wrinkles come in the mind, one sings, the old is ever old; another, it is ever young. One conceives it as the portal to a higher life, while for another it is solely reversionary.