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