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Growing Old Together.

It is wonderfully subtle, yet curiously simple, the interweaving of thought, feeling and desire in two who are growing old together. It is almost as if they had but one soul between them, so identified are the interests of both, so responsive are their sympathies, so instantaneous is their comprehension of one another's needs. Old husband and old wife, neither very strong in these latter years, but mutually helpful and each the other's complement. One can see how incomplete would either character, either life, have been had the other been lacking, so perfectly do the two unite to make the rounded whole. If the children have grown up and gone away to their separate homes and their own work in the world, the interdependence of the old parents is the more touching, and their solitude is sweetened by a thousand associations, by uncounted memories, by a

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blended Christian faith and a certain indispensableness which has grown to be the very atmosphere of their being. It is lovely to see the children, and the grandchildren are an unspeakable pride and delight. When these come back to the old nest it rings with mirth and glad elation, but even the children are not essential to the parents in the sense in which they are essential to each other.

Time was that there were angles and sharp points which now and then caused a moment's pain, when the two hearts, passionately loving though they were, knew occasional antagonisms or at least irritations which led to friction. But in the daily intercourse of many faithful years the angles have worn away; they are no longer hurt by misunderstandings, their differences of opinion lend zest and piquancy to their talk but never mar their deep and beautiful peace.

There is a tender little touch in Maria Pool's story of "Salome," where, in the early dawn of a frosty autumn day, an elderly husband and wife, silent,

undemonstrative people, seldom giving way to their emotions, part from one another for what stretches before them-a long, dreary, lonely winter. The wife must go. The husband must stay. A daughter's health and life are at stake, and there is nothing else to do but what they are doing, and out in the barn, in the cold, gray morning, they have the swift, sharp wrench of their farewell, which not even their idolized child may see or suspect.

We are always sorrowful and compassionate at the separation by death of those who have not.long been wedded. A few weeks or months, a brief year or two, there is here a downfall of hope, there is disappointment, there is heartache. Yet heartbreak does not so often follow heartache in such cases as where the partnership of a long life is severed. Then it often seems as if the two cannot live

apart, and sometimes, as in an instance I recall,

One knock opes heaven's gate

And lets both in.

It was on a summer day in a city of palms and roses, a city of the South. The husband had been ailing for several weeks. Suddenly his malady developed rapidly, and, unexpectedly, he died, the silver cord so gently loosed that there was no time to call anyone to his side. "Mother" was in a chamber on the other side of the hall. Who should tell her that "father" was gone? In the midst of the consternation and distress the youngest and best beloved child gathered up her courage and went to her mother, but there was no need of speech, a look told the tale. "Yes, darling," the mother said, "he is gone. I know it, and I am going with him!" There was no pain, not a sigh nor a tear, only a soft breathing out of life and in an hour the wife, for whom none had feared, was "away" with the husband whose bride she had been fifty golden years ago.

Growing old together! It is sacred, it is mysterious, it is the most beautiful thing on earth. Blessed are they who have been faithful to their early love, and through all joy, all sorrow, all experience, drunk from the same cup, broken from the same loaf.

Altruism.

Altruism has become a familiar word in the last decade, not that it is a newlycoined word by any means, but that we have heard it oftener than we used to. The thing for which the word stands has always been in existence and in practice ever since to do unto others as ye would that others should do unto you fell in golden syllables on the ear of a listening world. And that was long ago.

There is a very commonplace sort of altruism which some of us might practice. to advantage. For example, there is something coming off at our church, a festival

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or entertainment, or among our friends somebody has a plan or a project which can succeed only if it is resolutely seconded and carried forward by enthusiastic and sympathetic helpers. It is not always easy to enjoy to the full a recreative or social scheme which others have set on foot. Our own home may have a charm for us that the church parlors lack. Our own old friends may be more congenial than the people we meet at the church sociable. If we are busy most of the time, we may be chary of breaking into the scanty leisure of the intervals when business is barred from our door. If we are pleasure-loving, we may have a choice as to our pleasures.

But Christian altruism has always and everywhere a large infusion of that love which seeketh not her own. The question should always be, not "What shall I get by this course or that?" but "What shall I impart?" It should be, not, "Are these people interesting to me?" but, "How can I be interesting to them?" As a simple matter of fact, everybody one meets, however obscure and unlearned, is interesting, if looked at from the right side.

The great trouble is that we are too remote from many of the people we meet, too alien in sentiment to know them in the least. They are to us unexplored territories, and we never penetrate farther than their outer banks. It is so with women whom we have seen in the church we and they attend, sitting in pews on side aisles, or well up to the front under the pulpit's shadow. We know the very set of their shoulders under their cloaks, and we have exchanged a chilly "Good morning" now and then, but this is the extent of our acquaintance. Hired service is ours from women in our kitchens, but we remain strangers to them and they to us, the home bond altogether lacking, because there has been neither interest nor reciprocity in the relation established lightly and lightly broken.

It is wonderful how much we like the neighbor that we know. "Better is a neighbor that is near than a brother that is far off." This is why few of us are indifferent to the family physician, whose coming into the household has been familiar and friendly, and whom we care for and champion hotly upon occasion. People whom we have come close to have shown us their interesting points, and our way of looking at them is entirely different from the semi-hostile, semi-heedless way with which we regard the stranger.

Not long ago a young girl had occasion to call several times on a well-known society woman in a large city. The girl was country-bred and was valiantly buffeting the waves in an effort to find dry standing ground for the soles of her feet in city journalism. She found the well-to-do woman cold and disdainful, as she thought-it was really only shyness-and her first call and her second were not agreeable to either. But my country girl is a lovely creature, a true, simplehearted altruist, and she won her way. She came to me one morning radiant.

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other out."

self.

is an angel," she said. "She has been so kind. We have found each

True altruism can put self in the background, and that is the true place for

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