Old Point Comfort

“ But all this countryside has the brooding quietude of a sort of honourable old age, dignity and pensiveness and comfort behind its natural rampart of sand dunes, but not the stir of life at full pressure. ”

“ I feel more reconciled after unburdening myself of some of this weighty concern by making presents to all who love and esteem you so truly, and after setting apart a portion, according to Captain Müller’s advice, with which you may be treated when at your return you may perhaps visit Hanover again, there remains more than ever I can get through with, for I am very desirous to spin out the thread of my life till you return home. And I know it is a mistaken notion that old folks want more of what they call comfort than young ones. ”

“ And really there is nothing strange about this. Old people generally feel that way, in their homes as in their offices, not as a matter of economy necessarily, but of personal comfort and ease of mind. ”

“ The constant attendance at home, which is necessary for receiving and accepting your bills of exchange (a matter foreign to my ministerial functions) , to answer letters, and perform other parts of my employment, pre vents my taking the air and exercise which my annual journeys formerly used to afford me, and which contributed much to the preservation of my health. There are many other little personal attentions which the infirmities of age render necessary to an old man's comfort, even in some degree to the continuance of his existence, and with which business often interferes. ”

“ We lodged one summer at an old house in that odd suburb of Oldport called "The Point." It is a sort of Artists' Quarter of the town, frequented by a class of summer visitors more addicted to sailing and sketching than to driving and bowing,—persons who do not object to simple fare, and can live, as one of them said, on potatoes and Point. ”

“ It was such a comfort to be able to tend upon them to the last, and to have them die blessing me!” The daughter married and removed to Illinois. The heart of the bereaved mother yearned to follow her; but her husband’s parents were very infirm, and she had become necessary to their comfort. When she gave the farewell kiss to her child, she said: “There is no one to take good care of the old folks if I leave them. ”

“ Nay, old folks are always wanting more and more comfort, until they seem out of harmony with surrounding objects and circumstances. I think it is Ruskin who says that there are “much sadder days than the early ones; not sadder in a noble, deep way, but in a dim, wearied way—the way of ennui and jaded intellect. ”

“ Often when she woke Jo found Beth reading in her well-worn little book, heard her singing softly, to beguile the sleepless night, or saw her lean her face upon her hands, while slow tears dropped through the transparent fingers, and Jo would lie watching her with thoughts too deep for tears, feeling that Beth, in her simple, unselfish way, was trying to wean herself from the dear old life, and fit herself for the life to come, by sacred words of comfort, quiet prayers, and the music she loved so well. ”

“ There is a sense of winter quiet that makes a stranger soon feel at home in Oldport, while the prospective stir of next summer precludes all feeling of stagnation. Commonly, in quiet places, one suffers from the knowledge that everybody would prefer to be unquiet; but nobody has any such longing here. Doubtless there are aged persons who deplore the good old times when the Oldport mail-bags were larger than those arriving at New York. ”

“ Chelles is now one of the fortified places in the outer belt of forts surrounding Paris.
So, if you will not accept all this as an explanation of what you are pleased to call my "desertion," may I humbly and reluctantly put up a plea for my health, and hope for a sympathetic hearing?
If I am to live much longer,—and I am on the road down the hill, you know,—I demand of Life my physical well-being. I want a robust old age. ”

“ The move is made for the sake of the {105} young people, but it takes the old folks out of the precious, simple habits of a life-time which meant much for the preservation of health, so that it is no wonder that many a physician has had a patient whose breakdown in health followed not long after the move to a new and handsome house that carried people away from their old associations and their old neighbors and left them without those heart resources which are so important for the preservation of a healthy mind in a healthy body. ”

“ The relief from daily routine,—a little home in a country place where he could raise vegetables and flowers,—a quiet smoke in the twilight on a porch all his own,—all this would be paradise to the tired old man, and as he dwelt upon its charms he became impatient at his master's robust health, and began to note the difference in their years—which, alas! ”

“ The number of the aged among us is surprising, and explains some phenomena otherwise strange. You will notice, for instance, that there are no posts before the houses in Oldport to which horses may be tied. Fashionable visitors might infer that every horse is supposed to be attended by a groom. Yet the tradition is, that there were once as many posts here as elsewhere, but that they were removed to get rid of the multitude of old men who leaned all day against them. ”

“ We do not go through the wards of an hospital to search for samples of rude health—neither ought we to go to Schlangenbad for specimens of smooth skin and delicate complexion.
We rambled through winding and umbrageous paths up the mountain behind the Old Bad-haus, to its summit—and I think there are few places in the world better adapted to profound meditation, while, at the same time, inspiring the most pure, bracing, and salubrious atmosphere. I descended in a contemplative mood, when I stumbled into a long kind of gallery or hall, which looked like an enclosed promenade. ”

“ But at last the farms thickened into suburbs, and the houses into streets, and a little before midnight we drew up and halted at the Salt-Lake House. A smart-looking colored man, acting both as porter and night-clerk, showed us to a comfortable room, and I need scarcely say we retired at once. What a luxury it was, to get between clean sheets once more, and stretch our cramped up limbs wholly out again, ad libitum! No one but an Overland stage-passenger can fully appreciate the downy comfort of a bed, or truly sleep almost the sleep that knows no waking. ”

“ The younger one specially attracted me—they way she beamed through her spectacles and said 'Yes' unexpectedly, whenever a pause occurred in the conversation. They are going to help me a lot with the garden; their own place is lovely. It's a nice happy way to end one's days—living peacefully among growing flowers! Think of all the old women who live in hotels and boarding-houses, quite comfortable, I dare say, so far as fires and light and a good bed, and well-cooked food go, but so barren of all interest except a morbid curiosity about their fellow-prisoners! How spacious a country life is! ”

“ I avoided, therefore, going abroad when I had a chance of being seen by any former acquaintance, nor indeed did my health for a great while permit it; and suffered the old woman, at her own suggestion, to call me niece at home, where we now and then saw (when they could prevail on me to leave my room) one or two other elderly women, and sometimes a grave business-like man, who showed great compassion for my indisposition, and made me very obligingly an offer of a room at his country-house for the recovery of my health. ”

“ It was pleasant to see their old home loves, brought into connection with their new splendors. Wherever there were traces of this tenderness of feeling, only too rare among Americans, other things bore signs also of prosperity and intelligence, as if the ordering mind of man had some idea of home beyond a mere shelter, beneath which to eat and sleep.
No heaven need wear a lovelier aspect than earth did this afternoon, after the clearing up of the shower. ”

“ Peace had taken leave of the house, and had gone forth calmly to the place from whence she came, and during that time of illness, care and sorrow had taken up their abode there, deepening with the growing weakness of the good old man. ”

“ Forming along the brink of the lake, a line of outposts was planted, and the soldiers were commanded to make themselves as comfortable as they could. But, in truth, the word comfort is one which cannot in any sense be applied to people in such a situation. Without tents or huts of any description (for the few from which the place is named were occupied by the General and other heads of departments) , our bed was the morass, and our sole covering the clothes which had not quitted our backs for upwards of a month. ”

“ Aged people, grey-haired old men, and old women bent with age, exhibited a wild and excited alacrity that was grievous to witness, while hurrying homewards—if they had a home, or if not, to the first friendly shelter they could get—a kind of dim exulting joy feebly blazing in their heavy eyes, and a wild sense of unexpected good fortune working in unnatural play upon the muscles of their wrinkled and miserable faces. ”

“ These good old people declared that they had not seen better days, but that they were living the simple life from choice. They loved the peace of this isolated mountain home and the companionship of the grand old peak. ”

“ A comfortable bed-sitting-room, with a fire to go to bed by (each pensioner is allowed two tons and a quarter of coal a year) , good food, and forty pounds a year pocket money: what more could one want in those later years when desires become fewer with the growing restfulness of old age! ”

“ When she was not away from home on camping or picnic excursions, she would find time to visit the cabin of an old man who lived alone, and had sore eyes so that he could not see to read. She would read to him whatever he liked, cheer him up by her bright, happy talk, and when she left the old man often thought to himself that her comings were like angels' visits, for she seemed to lift him up completely out of himself into a new world. ”

“ When John Hiram built a hospital for worn-out old men, worn-out old labouring men, infirm old men past their work, cripples, blind, bed-ridden, and such like, do you think he meant to make gentlemen of them? ”

“ The village had been there yesterday, and now was gone!
"Alas!" cried these kind-hearted old people, "what has become of our poor neighbors!"
"They exist no longer as men and women," said the elder traveler, in his grand and deep voice, while a roll of thunder seemed to echo it at a distance. "There was neither use nor beauty in such a life as theirs; for they never softened or sweetened the hard lot of mortality by the exercise of kindly affections between man and man. ”

“ When in the fitful pauses of busy life our feet wander back to the old homestead, and, crossing the well-worn threshold, stand once more in the low, quaint room, so hallowed by her presence, how the feeling of childish innocence and dependence comes over us, and we kneel down in the molten sunshine, streaming through the western window — just where long years ago we knelt by our mother's knee, lisping "Our Father." ”

“ The old man had been so long absent from home, and was so much accustomed to attribute the want of human kindness, which of course he had seen many times in his life, to the deteriorating effect of a strange country, and the entire want of home influences, that it amazed him now to perceive how even the primitive bosom of an English rural village held sentiments of self-regard as cold and unneighbourly as anything he had met with in the faraway world to which he was accustomed. ”

“ In 1847 he opened a small building of sufficient size to house eight pensioners who had sunk from comparative comfort into evil times through no fault of their own. "Having run our little bark into the smooth and tranquil waters of the summer evening of life," said the founder in his opening speech, "may we sail on happily to the end of our voyage here below!" ”

“ The injured or afflicted youth, taken straight from his rough, hard life and poor cottage, wonders at the place he finds himself in—the wide, clean, airy room and white, easy bed, the care and skill of the doctors, the tender nursing by women, and comforts and luxuries, all without payment, but given as it seems to him out of pure divine love and compassion—all this comes to him as something strange, almost incredible. ”

“ Would you not think a seat by Mother in some cool room preferable? Sometimes my wicked heart has been desposed to murmur, thinking I should have no rest for the heat when I stoped. But have always been reproved for it by the comfort and rest I received under these circumstances. I never have wished to go back such a thought finds no place in my heart. "The Lord is better to us than our fears. ”

“ I have found over and over again that where people could not be persuaded to leave a window open all night (and when they are old and deeply prejudiced in the matter I do not insist, for the suggestion of possibly catching cold would almost surely keep them awake) , the thorough airing of rooms before retiring made a great difference in the sleep of elderly people. When patients are young, I simply insist on the window being wide open for some time before they go to bed and slightly during the night, except in extreme cold weather. ”

“ In their eyes it possesses far greater charm than anything that has been mellowed by years of use. There are others to whom nothing is more satisfying than to take an existing structure and alter it to their liking and needs. An elderly acquaintance, now a widow and living in a sleepy New England village, is taking keen pleasure in an old house of almost doll-like proportions. "All my life," she said, "I've wanted to live in a really old house but until now it has always been one new house or city apartment after another and I never got my roots down." ”