rave. For them that last call is apt to come
usually before sunset--and the great American question arises: What are
they going to do about it? That, of course, every one must decide for
himself, according to his inclinations and his opportunities. But a few
general considerations may be of comfort and even of greater value.

There is one thing of importance to know about this last call, that we
are apt to imagine we hear it before we actually do, from a nervous
sense that it is about time for it to sound. Our hair perhaps is growing
grey, and our years beginning to accumulate. We hypnotize ourselves with
our chronology, and say with Emerson:

It is time to grow old,
To take in sail.

Well and good, if it is and we feel like it; but may be it isn't, and we
don't. Youth is largely a habit. So is romance. And, unless we allow
ourselves to be influenced by musty conventions and superstitions, both
habits may be prolonged far beyond the moping limits of custom, and need
never be abandoned unless we become sincerely and unregretfully tired of
them. I can well conceive of an old age like that of Sophocles, as
reported by Plato, who likened the fading of the passions with the
advance of age to "being set free from service to a band of madmen."

When a man feels so, all is well and comfortable with him. He has
retired of his own free will from the banquet of life, having had his
fill, and is content. Our image of the last call does not apply to him,
but rather to those who, with appetites still keen, are sternly warned
that for them, willy-nilly, the banquet must soon end, and the prison
fare of prosaic middle age be henceforth their portion. No more ortolans
and transporting vintages for them. Nothing but Scotch oatmeal and
occasional sarsaparilla to the end of the chapter. No wonder that some,
hearing this dread sentence, go half crazy in a frenzied effort to
clutch at what remains, run amok, so to say, in their despairing
determination to have, if need be, a last "good time" and die. Their
efforts are apt to be either distasteful or pathetically comic, and the
world is apt to be cynically contemptuous of the "romantic" outbursts of
aging people. For myself, I always feel for them a deep and tender
sympathy. I know that they have heard that last fearful call to the
dining-car of life--and, poor souls, they have probably found it closed.
Their mistake has been in waiting so long for the call. From variou