ted at once, and the exempt showed no repugnance even when it
was proved to them that they would be left alone in the community and
entitled to no honour, and never allowed even to enter the pleasant
gardens of the college. I think now that sixty was too early an age,
and that sixty-five, to which I gracefully yielded, is the proper
Fixed Period for the human race. Let any man look among his friends
and see whether men of sixty-five are not in the way of those who are
still aspiring to rise in the world. A judge shall be deaf on the
bench when younger men below him can hear with accuracy. His voice
shall have descended to a poor treble, or his eyesight shall be dim
and failing. At any rate, his limbs will have lost all that robust
agility which is needed for the adequate performance of the work of
the world. It is self-evident that at sixty-five a man has done all
that he is fit to do. He should be troubled no longer with labour,
and therefore should be troubled no longer with life. "It is all
vanity and vexation of spirit," such a one would say, if still brave,
and still desirous of honour. "Lead me into the college, and there
let me prepare myself for that brighter life which will require
no mortal strength." My words did avail with many, and then they
demanded that seventy should be the Fixed Period.

How long we fought over this point need not now be told. But we
decided at last to divide the interval. Sixty-seven and a half was
named by a majority of the Assembly as the Fixed Period. Surely the
colony was determined to grow in truth old before it could go into
the college. But then there came a further dispute. On which side
of the Fixed Period should the year of grace be taken? Our debates
even on this subject were long and animated. It was said that the
seclusion within the college would be tantamount to penal departure,
and that the old men should thus have the last lingering drops of
breath allowed them, without, in the world at large. It was at last
decided that men and women should be brought into the college at
sixty-seven, and that before their sixty-eighth birthday they should
have departed. Then the bells were rung, and the whole community
rejoiced, and banquets were eaten, and the young men and women called
each other brother and sister, and it was felt that a great reform
had been inaugurated among us for the benefit of mankind at large.

Little was thought about it at home in England when the bill was