Page:Morley--Translations from the Chinese.djvu/22

xii rather than a sedative. And so I sincerely elect to Stand Up for the Senior Generation. (And then also, when I myself am a Senior, perhaps the Grandchildren will Stand Up for me.)

I don't know just why I should be saying all this to you, dear Pearsall Smith—except that you seem to have been singularly skilful in carrying on into what one may without offence call Maturity the very spirit and virtue of Youth. I take it that you were perhaps a little elderly in your twenties, which makes you adorably sprightly in your fifties; so much so that you have served in many ways as the Perfect Ambassador from the Men of the Nineties to the men of the Teens. In you we see how the irreverent humor and hilarious gusto we associate with youth may not merely perdure unabated into the rich urbanity of Middle Age: nay, that they are increased and quick ened. Uncanonical as it may seem, Youth is the time to be docile and acceptive; not until the Fifth Decade has the mind any real right to begin laughing. Skepticism is meaningless until it emerges from a complete and experienced knowledge of all possible beliefs. Longfellow (I can hear some of my contemporaries titter)—Longfellow wrote an admirable potent little satire in his rhymed description of "What the Heart of the Young Man Said to the Psalmist." For that is exactly what the hearts of healthy-minded young men do say, and should say. It is a delicious picture of that heavenly earnestness of adolescence. The skepticism of sophomores is only an extroverted form of the same too easy credulity. No