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Title: How It Feels to Be Fifty

Author: Ellis Parker Butler

Release date: November 10, 2013 [eBook #44155]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOW IT FEELS
TO BE FIFTY ***

HOW IT FEELS TO BE FIFTY

By Ellis Parker Butler
COPYRIGHT, 1919,

BY THE CROWELL PUBLISHING COMPANY

To tell you the honest truth,
I am obliged to say that, if I had not been asked to write these few lines
on "How it Feels to be Fifty," being fifty would n't have meant anything in
my young life.
Of course this will be a terrible disappointment to the thousands of
people who, for twenty-five years, have been counting off the months and
days and hours and minutes, saying:
"In twenty-one years more he will be fifty; in ten months more he will be
fifty; in eight minutes more he will be fifty! And then he will tell us how it
feels, and we can absorb the knowledge from his wise old lips and get ready
to feel as we ought to feel when we, too, are fifty."
It is a shame to disappoint such a large and intelligent audience, but I am
compelled to state that I do not feel like a doddering old wreck teetering on
the edge of the grave.
I remember a lovely underwear advertisement that depicted a sort of
"cradle to grave" scene, with a toddling youngster at one end of the bridge
of life and an aged man at the other end, and men of various progressive
underwear ages scattered between. They were all arrayed in nice comfy
underwear, and the bridge over which they were ambling was highest in the
middle. It suggested that a man climbs up the bridge of life half his years
and then goes down grade until he does n't need any more underwear,
because of circumstances over which he has no control.

This bridge-of-life or hill-of-life idea, with its forty years up-hill and then
forty years down-hill, is pure fake. If life were like that I would now be
writing a sadly introspective farewell ode, telling how I had reached the
apex of life's hill and now saw before me the long slope down into the
valley, toward the river all must cross.
I would ring in something about the setting sun and the cooing of the
turtle doves in the neat little cemetery at the foot of the hill, and then say I
was shouldering my heavy pack with hope and resignation for the final
weary down-hill hike. I would add something about being footsore, about
spent talents and honorable gray hairs, and everybody would weep and
begin to save up money for a floral funeral wreath for me.
The fact is that, except for the almanac, I don't know whether I am fifty
or twenty. Judged by the way I feel to-day, I shall keep right on going up-
hill, until—it may be a thousand years from now—I come to a jumping-off
place.
At fifty I have no feeling of starting down-hill, or of having reached the
top of any hill. If you want to call my life a hill, I 'll say I see the road rising
just as steadily and regularly and pleasantly ahead of me now as when I was
twenty. And the top of it is so far from where I am now, and so much
higher, that I can't even see it. Life is just beginning to be interesting.
At fifty I feel like a young teamster who has just got his skittish colts
broken in and is now ready to start out on the real job. Until now I have
been a raw hand, stopping to adjust the harness, talking about what I meant
to do, studying the guide books, getting the stiff wagon greased, laying in
provisions, fussing around one way and another trying to find out where I
wanted to go, and why I wanted to go there, and how to get there when I
started.
At fifty a man should feel younger and stronger and more fit than he ever
felt before. I do. Most men do, I believe. Younger fellows do not even play
properly. They make a sort of work of it. It is not until a man is fifty that he
knows that golf and fishing and poker and pinochle are play, and that work
is play, and that life itself is kind of an interesting big game, too.
I took out an old photograph of mine the other day—one I had taken
away back in 1887, when I was eighteen—and I remembered how full of
cares and worries I was at that time. I used to stay awake night after night

and worry over getting married, for instance. I used to wonder how I could
ever get up enough courage to go up to a girl and ask her to marry me.
That awful necessity loomed up before me and filled me with woe and
agony, gave me cold chills and hot flushes, and made me absolutely
miserable for years.
I remember that when I was about twenty I saw an item in a newspaper,
away inside somewheres and tucked in a corner. It said statistics showed
that bashful men were usually the first to marry. That item was a wonderful
source of relief to me. I cut it out and carried it in my pocket, and whenever
I felt the cold chill of fear come over me and I began to sweat at the thought
that some day I must ask a girl to marry me, I got out that clipping and read
it, and tried to brace up and be brave. To-day I have a wife and four children
and that worry is gone.
My hair was another great worry in those days. My father is quite bald,
and he had become bald when he was a very young man; when he was
twenty-one or twenty-two, I believe.
I don't know why a young man should think a heavy head of hair is such
an imperative necessity, when hats are so cheap, but I was haunted by a dire
fear that I might grow bald while still young. I was in continual distress lest
the Butler baldness might be hereditary. I had just one great hope—that at
least some of my hair might stay on my head until I was married, anyway.
When I became engaged, this hair-fear took the place of the afraid-to-
propose fear. It was with me night and day. It was a keen, personal agony.
The thought that I might have to walk up the church aisle to the music of
the wedding march, with my bald head shining like a white watermelon,
almost made me collapse with shame. And the worst of it was that my hair
did begin to come out by handfuls. I shed hair like a cat in the springtime.
Those were awful days! I saw myself doomed to a life of hairless disgrace
and degradation.
At fifty I have more hair than a man of that age is expected to have; and I
don't care a continental whether it stays or goes. It has worn well. If it goes
to-morrow I can say, "No matter; it was a good crop while it lasted, and it
lasted well." If I become absolutely bald it will be a good publicity feature,
like the late Bill Nye's baldness. I should worry!
At fifty the few pains and aches I have are, so to speak, standardized.
They are old friends; if they went away I should miss them. I should not be

myself without them.
There is one I am especially fond of, because I have had it so long. It
resides in my tummy. I have had that pain so many years that I have, so to
speak, built my character around it, as an oyster builds the beautiful,
lustrous pearl around the intruding grain of sand.
Forty years ago I used to howl when that pain came. I used to lie across a
chair, or a log, or a hummock of ground, and howl when it made remarks.
Twenty years ago, when that pain gripped me I used to imagine death was
about to end my promising career. To-day I treat it like an old friend when it
makes itself felt. It can't fool me. I know its tricks and its manners. I say
"'Ullo! 'Ullo! 'Ere you are again, are you? Welcome 'ome, old top! Sorry I
can't give you more attention, but I 've got such a lot to do; just 'ang around
until you get ready to go, old sport, and make yourself comfortable."
At fifty my general health is better than it ever was. I have shaken off a
bilious headache that was the curse of my youthful days. Proper eyeglasses
have corrected an astigmatism that gave me other headaches twenty years
ago. With the same glasses I can see as well now as I ever did. My appetite
is as good as it ever was. I enjoy everything in life more than I ever did. I
am more sure of myself. I know what I can do, and I am not afraid to do it.
At fifty a young man should have just about completed his preparations
to begin to live his real life. There are some precocious young fellows who
"get their growth" by the time they are forty-five, but I am not one of them.
There are some few prodigies who do worthwhile living before forty, but
there are not many of them.
At fifty a man begins to live the worth-while life of a man, as
distinguished from his life as a mere animal. At fifty he should have his
family pretty well built up and complete, his experimental crops sown, and
be ready to do his work and to enjoy his life in a hearty, unafraid, efficient
manner.
Without checking up the items carefully, and without claiming that some
things done by the youngsters are not worth keeping, I venture to say the
world would be surprised to find how much of its best in literature, art, the
drama, mechanical inventions and so on would remain if everything done
by men and women under fifty were eliminated.
At fifty a man is just about mature, in this climate. And he is not a
tomato; he does not decay as soon as he is ripe. He stays ripe and sound for

many years, and each of his years beyond fifty should be worth five or ten
of his earlier unripe years.
To the young fellow of twenty-five it may seem that the man of fifty is an
aged and doddering wreck who must have the thought of death constantly
in mind. I'll venture to say, judging by myself, that—except when the life-
insurance man comes around with his propaganda—the man of fifty never
thinks of death at all. Why should he?
Personally, I worried a great deal more about life insurance and what
style of coffin I'd like when I was twenty-one than I do now. Now I carry all
the life insurance I can afford, as a plain business proposition, and let it go
at that. When I was twenty-one I worried about dying at some untimely age
and leaving someone or other to starve to death, as per the prospectus. Well,
I have become skeptical about people starving to death. I've never yet seen
any one do it.
I mention this death business because I am trying to imagine what a
young fellow believes a man of fifty thinks of. I know some of them think
we fifty-year-olders are decrepit old ruins, dwelling in the past and looking
fearfully forward to an early dissolution.
Take my word for it, sonny, no man of fifty, unless he be suffering from
some dire disease, thinks of death at all, as applicable to himself. As for
myself, seeing how things are going nowadays, I don't give death a thought.
For all I know, and all you know, before I am ten years older the Great
Manager of Things may decide it is time to go back to the old régime, and
make men live five hundred or six hundred or nine hundred and sixty-nine
years, as they did in the days of Methuselah and Noah. So why should I
worry?
At eighty or ninety, I imagine, some men do get a little weary of life and
begin to be indifferent to its continuance; but at fifty many things are just
beginning to be interesting. Until lately I have been so busy raising a
family, and getting a home, and one thing and another, that I have not had
time to give proper attention to my golf. I am planning to put in thirty or
forty good years improving my game. I have discovered that you cannot
avoid faults in your golf unless you know what they are, and you cannot
thoroughly know a golf fault until you acquire it. I think I have now
acquired all the golf faults there are, and from now on I mean to have a lot
of fun getting rid of them.

Another thing I need a lot of time for now is my postage stamp
collection. For forty years or so I have sort of fooled along with it, getting
acquainted with the general methods and outlines of the sport, and deciding
just what to specialize in.
I have now a pretty fair working knowledge, and know what I want to do
in that line. I need a lot of time for that; I don't expect to do any very great
things at it until I really get some leisure—say when I am eighty or ninety
years old—but in the meanwhile I want to pick up a few rarities now and
then. To do that I'll have to make a little more money than I have been
making, because I have reached a point where the stamps I need run into
money rapidly.
And I expect, in the next twenty or thirty years, to spend quite a little on
my fishing. After forty years of it I am just beginning to learn how to fish
properly. And I want to grow some real flowers. I want to have a tulip bed
that will draw people from a hundred miles and make them beg for bulbs.
But I have n't been able to get at the tulip affair this year because I have
been out touring the country as a platform humorist. There are a half-dozen
other things I am planning to do; but all these are subsidiary to my writing,
of course.
At fifty I feel that I am about ready to begin my life work as a writer. For
the past few years, thirty or forty of them, I have been experimenting
around and trying to get my bearings and learn what life really is. I have
done some pretty raw, inexperienced stuff, but it has been worth while
because a young fellow has to go through the experimental stage. It takes
time to decide what one really wants to do, and how he wants to do it. But
when a man is fifty, with a long life ahead of him and a fair notion of what
he wants to do, he begins to be hopeful.
At fifty, I feel that I am about ready to begin writing the eight or ten
novels I have been wanting to write. Amelia E. Barr was about fifty years
old when she began writing novels, and she wrote about seventy of them
after that. Richardson wrote "Pamela"—some call it the first modern novel
—when he was fifty. Daniel De Foe turned to fiction only when he was
fifty-five.
There are hundreds of writers who did all their work, or most of their best
work, after fifty. Oliver Wendell Holmes was forty-eight when he wrote the
"Autocrat of the Breakfast Table," his first great work. Longfellow wrote

"Hiawatha" when he was forty-eight, and much of his best work followed.
Whittier wrote "Snow-Bound" and "Maud Muller" at fifty-nine, and
continued writing until he was seventy-nine. Tennyson was still writing at
eighty-three. "Trilby" was written when Du Maurier was sixty; "Les
Miserables" when Victor Hugo was sixty; "Kenilworth" when Scott was
sixty, with sixteen novels following it. Reckoning a man's life by years is
the biggest sort of flapdoodle. All of a man's worth-while living may come
after he is fifty. Between fifty and fifty-one I may catch my biggest trout,
and I expect to do it. After fifty I may write my best stories, and I mean to
do it.
In my back yard is a huge white-oak tree. Some tree experts say it is
three hundred and fifty years old, some say six hundred, and one has
estimated it at eight hundred. It does not make a bit of difference to the tree.
It is as young and enthusiastic when spring comes as it was when it was two
years old. It puts forth leaves, grows new and tender twigs, bears sound
acorns, shelters its colony of bird families, and holds one end of the
clothesline just as well as it ever did.
It is a healthier, happier tree at six hundred years of age than thousands of
pert young ten-year-olds, and is producing more and better oak leaves. If
you went and asked it how it feels to be six hundred years old, it would say,
"What do you mean, six hundred years old? What has that got to do with
it?" A few hundred years one way or the other mean nothing to a sound,
healthy white-oak tree. A few tens of years one way or the other mean
nothing to a sound, healthy man.
We know that Homer and Socrates were aged men because certain
famous portrait busts have advertised it. But how many know whether
Cicero, Plato, Marcus Aurelius, or Pythagoras did their best work before or
after fifty? We don't know and we don't care.
Take Noah, for example. At fifty Noah was a comparatively unknown
citizen, with a neighborhood reputation for homely virtues, and a nice
growing family; but he had cut no very great figure in the world. Some of
the younger fellows thought of him now and then as a sort of aged
gentleman who was about ready to drop into the grave. Probably they
thought it was quite a feather in Noah's cap when one of them stopped him
and asked him to write a short paper on the subject, "How it Feels to be
Fifty."

"There is a chance for you to produce a wonder," the young fellow said to
Noah. "Make the essay just as personal and real and funny as you possibly
can. Age is one of the most interesting subjects in the world. Everybody
either looks forward to being fifty or back to having been fifty. There is no
subject about which human beings think more."
"All right," Noah said. "I 'll do it; but you must expect to be disappointed,
because I don't feel old, or aged, or anything of that sort. I feel young and
lively, as if I were just beginning to live—"
"Slush!" said the young fellow. "You 're old. At fifty you have one foot in
the grave. That stands to reason. Now be a nice old fellow and write
something that will please the Neighborhood Society. Something about
standing on the apex of the hill of life, looking down the farther side, and
that sort of thing." So Noah did. He aimed to please. He wrote the essay and
said he was now fifty and had but a few years to live, and that he did hate to
think of so soon having to part from one and all. The paper made a great hit.
It was loudly applauded.
And fifty years after that, Noah was still alive.
And fifty years after that, Noah was still alive.
And then another fifty years passed, and Noah was still alive.
And then a hundred years passed, and Noah was still alive.
And two hundred years after that, Noah was still alive and going strong.
And it was n't until one hundred years after that, that Noah made the big
hit of his life by gathering his folks and his live stock into the ark. He was
six hundred years two months and seventeen days old when the big rain
began that was to make him famous. You can read that in Genesis, 7th
chapter, 11th verse. That was just five hundred and fifty years two months
and seventeen days after the young fellow asked Noah to write how it felt to
be an old man of fifty starting on the downward path.
I think we should all take Noah as a model, and keep a young heart and
an eager, forward-looking spirit until we are at least six hundred years two
months and seventeen days old. Our forty days of glory and greatness and
good service may come long after we are fifty—five hundred and fifty
years after, for all we know.
I like Noah. He had no surrender in him. Old at fifty? He considered
himself a mere baby at fifty! At six hundred he was just getting into his

proper stride. He was just ripe to tackle a big job like the flood.
Chapter 9, verse 28: And Noah lived after the flood three hundred and
fifty years.
Verse 29: And all the days of Noah were nine hundred and fifty years;
and he died.
It was about time he died. Nine hundred and fifty years ought to satisfy
any man. In my family, barring accidents and diseases, we live to be ninety
or ninety-six, and I ask you, frankly, how you can expect me to fret and
worry and be agedly philosophical when I am still only a young tart of fifty.
It is too much to ask of me.
At fifty, I feel myself just reaching my full powers, mentally and
physically; capable of more work and better work, more play and better
play, and with so many years of work and play ahead of me that I never so
much as think of my age or of being any age. I am keen and eager to get
right at the next job I have on hand, and to make it a better piece of work
than any I have ever done.
The great expectations are not all on the younger side of fifty. But the
great satisfactions are nearly all on the onward side of it. Life is not an up-
one-side, down-the-other-side hill. It is a long, winding road, good all the
way, and the freshest, brightest flowers and the sweetest, solidest fruit
usually grow beyond the fifty-year mile-post.
At twenty my life was a feverish adventure, at thirty it was a problem, at
forty it was a labor, at fifty it is a joyful journey well begun.
THE END

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOW IT FEELS TO
BE FIFTY ***

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