Let Aged People Work by Mrs. Emma Hildreth Adams

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Sep 20, 1910

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 37, No. 37.

Let Aged People Work

By Mrs. Emma Hildreth Adams

ONE day early last spring I called upon a dear friend resident in one of the cities of Southern California, whom I had not seen for many months.

The day was charming, luring one into the balmy air, into the matchless sunlight, into the soft, humming breeze.

Glad flowers talked animatedly of joy, cheer, and life all the distance from the car line to the close shorn lawn in front of the residence I sought.

I had taken a car ride of twenty miles or more expressly for the interview.

As I approached the dwelling I observed my friend seated upon the veranda, unoccupied, and apparently just passing away the time.

To my surprise she did not recognize me as I stepped upon the portico and greeted her in the old-time unceremonious manner, calling her by her loved maiden name.

For an instant she searched the little alcoves of her memory for my name and photograph. Finding them, she sprang upon her feet and welcomed me graciously, as had been her custom through twenty-seven eventful years.

Yet in the entire movement, in the expression of her eyes, in the aspect of her countenance, was written an announcement which surprised me, shocked me, gave me heartache.

Instantly I read therein a grievous story. Its sad meaning could not evade me. Some wily, subtle force was busy pilfering her mental bank-account. Had there come a beginning of the end from which there is never escape?

I could not assent to the painful suggestion. There is only an apparent slipping away of the life forces, I thought, not a real surrender.

True, her eighty-fourth birthday was speeding on, but she is in excellent physical health. Besides, being herself financially independent, she is sheltered, gladly, in the home of devoted and wealthy friends, whose highest desire is to render her passing years care-free and happy.

Wherein, then, lies her distinct loss of self-possession, the checking off, too soon, the total achievement of duty upon the earth, the yielding up, too soon, the priceless treasure of life, the smothering of a sweet, wholesome influence exerted through two thirds of a century?

At a point in our conversation, during the day, when seated alone together, and while speaking of the remarkable activity of a dear friend, at just her stage of life's journey, she remarked, with an air sad and regretful,

"My relatives here will not let me work."

Here, then, was the solution of the enigma. Because of long lack of needful activity — both mental and physical — retrogression had set in with ardor, accomplishing a clear decline in will power, a slow fading out of thought and ideas. There had started a gradual movement of the whole being back to the dust.

It was a saddening and most regrettable situation. Was it unavoidable? In her case, yes.

Judging from other cases carefully observed by the writer, had the woman, through all the years she had been relieved of labor, kept her really fine powers of mind and body in active exercise, in worthy, lawful lines of work — and she would have attempted no other — there might not now loom up threateningly above her horizon this unwelcome dissolution of the life forces, this irksome submission to incapacity, this "dying, thou shalt die."

That was a most gracious and merciful decree which God voiced to Adam immediately after his momentous transgression, Gen. 3:19: "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground." It was an edict full of tender pity, and uttered for man's highest good.

With sin launched upon the earth, imagine the condition of human society, during the past 6,000 years, had compulsion to labor, necessity for toil, been excluded. The Creator alone could conceive the black results.

It looks as tho next to redemption from sin — the obligation to labor, the being forced to toil for bread, clothing, and shelter, constitutes the richest blessing possessed by man.

Simple failure rightly to exercise our endowments, our faculties, until we "return to the ground," is to allow them to drift into decay, to merge into emptiness. So doing, we ourselves impoverish our gifts; we rob ourselves of the fine joy which accrues from their steady, loyal employment.

But the subject has another side. Our abilities are not our own. We do not provide them. They are equipments furnished us by God Himself. They are His powers, His forces, given to be employed until He recalls them. If we do not use them, up to the intended and just limit, what ensues? What happened to that servant who hid his one talent — doubtless of fine quality — "in the earth"? Matt. 25: 24-29.

The opinion is too common that, when men and women have attained about sixty years, they have really performed the required stunt, or task, in all the labor lines of life, and that they are entitled to honorable discharge from the fields in which they have wrought.

Very few of such persons would welcome or readily accept Dr. Osler's prescription for their cases. Yet, somehow, there springs in their hearts a feeling that injustice has been inflicted, if there opens to them no door of escape from wearisome toil.

It is quite certain that, in many instances, life might be lengthened by several years, and might be brightened and sweetened and blessed inexpressibly, by pursuing steadfastly some laudable line of endeavor until the divine Master should announce: It is enough. From henceforth a crown of life awaits thee.

History furnishes many an instance in which both men and women have accomplished their greatest tasks, their noblest achievements, their worthiest life-work — especially in mental lines — after the sixty-year limit, and thus have added munificently to the world's betterment.

Right work, suitable labor, in just amounts, is remedial. It often fends off disease, ever watching to invade a system inert, lazy, needing exercise. Helpful work is a loyal sentinel at the door of health and life.

This article does not overlook the sad fact that many aged people, through physical disability, through lack of opportune circumstances, through want of needful training, are compelled to sit with quiet hands, when they would gladly have part in accomplishing the world's vast sum of labor.

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