p. 12 | MRS. S. N. HASKELL by Mrs. S. N. Haskell

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 31, 1907

MRS. S. N. HASKELL

By Mrs. S. N. Haskell

How to Enjoy Old Age—No. 1

MRS. S. N. HASKELL

THERE is perhaps no one thing more universally unwelcome than old age. The mass of the world try to evade it by the use of hair dyes and cosmetics, but old age creeps on just the same; no amount of deception will enable us to escape it.

Old age is sure to come, and why not welcome it as a friend, and make the best of it?

A very dear friend of mine once said, “Why should I be ashamed of any of my years? I have tried to improve them as they passed, and they have each brought me many pleasant memories. I should be sorry to part with any one of them.”

There are a few suggestions which, if followed, will help one to meet old age comfortably and cheerfully. In some respects old age is like childhood. Our physical strength increases from birth until the prime of life, and then it declines until death.

Every one knows that in order to have a well-developed, healthy, good-natured child, the child must sleep many more hours than an adult. In like manner, the one who would have a cheery, bright-tempered old age, with his faculties well preserved, must increase his hours of

sleep after he passes the prime of life in proportion as his years increase.

I am acquainted with a bright, active woman about sixty years of age. When asked how she retained her strength and youthfulness, she replied, “O, I always take a nap after dinner.” I have known this lady, when she had a busy afternoon before her, to excuse herself from company in the parlor and go to her room to take her after-dinner nap. She would say, as she started to her room, “I shall be dull all the afternoon if I do not have my nap.”

Many old people are unhappy and faultfinding invalids who might have been enjoying a happy old age if they had made a practise of taking a good nap every day after they passed their forty-fifth or fiftieth year.

Old age will come. Why not use the same good sense to preserve all the faculties that a wise parent uses to develop the faculties in the child?

The nervous system wears out in many individuals before the general health breaks; this is the reason our land is filled with insane asylums. The brain is the great nerve-center, and the only time of rest for the brain and nervous system is in sleep. If nervous people would study their own needs, and sleep more than other people, nervous prostration and many other troubles would be avoided. Many nervous people neglect taking a proper amount of sleep until they come to the place where they can not sleep, and nervous prostration or insanity follows. Sleep is the Lord’s remedy for many ailments.

Scores of overworked, tired housewives go to physicians for aid, and are given drugs or are operated upon, when a half-hour’s sleep in the middle of the day, every day, would rest the tired nerves and remove many a difficulty.

Many busy housewives say, “O I can never take time to sleep in the daytime!” Which is the wisest course, to lie down with the baby and sleep while he sleeps for a few minutes, or by and by spend weary months in the hospital away from your little ones, and perhaps be laid in the grave, and leave them motherless?

One noted physician has said: “If one would lie down and relax the muscles for fifteen minutes in the middle of the day, every day, even if he did not sleep, it would add many years to his life.”

Oakland, Cal.