The death of Daniel Manning, ex-Secretary of the Treasury,
in December, 1887, was another proof of this.
He fell prostrate on the steps of his office, in a
sickness that no medical aid could relieve. Four
years before no one realised the strength that was
in him. He threw body and soul into the whirlpool
of his work, and was left in the rapids of celebrity.
In the closing notes of 1887, I find recorded the death
of Mrs. William Astor. What a sublime lifetime
of charity and kindness was hers! Mrs. Astor’s
will read like a poem. It had a beauty and a pathos,
and a power entirely independent of rhythmical cadence.
The document was published to the world on a cold
December morning, with its bequests of hundreds of
thousands of dollars to the poor and needy, the invalids
and the churches. It put a warm glow over the
tired and grizzled face of the old year. It was
a benediction upon the coming years.
1888
It seems to me that the constructive age of man begins
when he has passed fifty. Not until then can
he be a master builder. As I sped past the fifty-fifth
milestone life itself became better, broader, fuller.
My plans were wider, the distances I wanted to go
stretched before me, beyond the normal strength of
an average lifetime. This I knew, but still I
pressed on, indifferent of the speed or strain.
There were indications that my strength had not been
dissipated, that the years were merely notches that
had not cut deep, that had scarcely scarred the surface
of the trunk. The soul, the mind, the zest of
doing—all were keen and eager.
The conservation of the soul is not so profound a
matter as it is described. It consists in a guardianship
of the gateways through which impressions enter, or
pass by; it consists in protecting one’s inner
self from wasteful associations.
The influence of what we read is of chief importance
to character. At the beginning of 1888 I received
innumerable requests from people all over New York
and Brooklyn for advice on the subject of reading.
In the deluge of books that were beginning to sweep
over us many readers were drowned. The question
of what to read was being discussed everywhere.
I opposed the majority of novels because they were
made chiefly to set forth desperate love scrapes.
Much reading of love stories makes one soft, insipid,
absent-minded, and useless. Affections in life
usually work out very differently. The lady does
not always break into tears, nor faint, nor do the
parents always oppose the situation, so that a romantic
elopement is possible. Excessive reading of these
stories makes fools of men and women. Neither
is it advisable to read a book because someone else
likes it. It is not necessary to waste time on
Shakespeare if you have no taste for poetry or drama
merely because so many others like them; nor to pass
a long time with Sir William Hamilton when metaphysics
are not to your taste. When you read a book by
the page, every few minutes looking ahead to see how
many chapters there are before the book will be finished,
you had better stop reading it. There was even
a fashion in books that was absurd. People were
bored to death by literature in the fashion.
