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I have lost a world of delight through this matter of delaying
invitations. Fifty years ago I would have gone eagerly across the world
to help celebrate anything that might turn up. IT would have made no
difference to me what it was, so that I was there and allowed a chance
to make a noise.
The whole scheme of things is turned wrong end to. Life should begin
with age and its privileges and accumulations, and end with youth and
its capacity to splendidly enjoy such advantages. As things are now,
when in youth a dollar would bring a hundred pleasures, you can't have
it. When you are old, you get it and there is nothing worth buying with
it then.
It's an epitome of life. The first half of it consists of the capacity
to enjoy without the chance; the last half consists of the chance
without the capacity.
I am admonished in many ways that time is pushing me inexorably along. I
am approaching the threshold of age; in 1977 I shall be 142. This is no
time to be flitting about the earth. I must cease from the activities
proper to youth and begin to take on the dignities and gravities and
inertia proper to that season of honorable senility which is on its way
and imminent as indicated above.
Yours is a great and memorable occasion, and as a son of Missouri I
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