Excerpt from Essays That Every Child Should Know: A Selection of the Writings of English and American Essayists One of the most familiar passages in dramatic literature describes the seven ages of man as they appeared to the author of "As You Like It" the infant in his nurse's arms; the whining schoolboy, with "shining morning face," creeping to school; the lover, "sighing like a furnace"; the soldier, "bearded like the pard"; the justice, "full of wise saws"; "the lean and slippered pantaloon." This is a highly imaginative rendering of the facts of life. Nobody escapes the dangers of infancy; the fortunate become schoolboys and, later, lovers; but comparatively few men turn soldiers, though every true man has some soldierly qualities; still fewer wear the robes of the judge, though every man ought to have something of his wisdom; and the number of helpless old people becomes smaller and smaller. In Shakespeare's time a man was considered old at forty; now-a-days many men and women are alive and at work at eighty. People have fallen into the habit of talking about "the good old times" when everybody lived to a great age; as a matter of fact, however, there is no doubt that the hardships of travel, absence of comforts, ignorance of the laws of health, bad air, bad food, bad drainage, lack of heat in cold and inclement seasons, indifference to sunlight and to the presence of filth, crude methods of surgery and small knowledge of medicine, in the good old days killed people by the thousands who under present conditions would live and prosper in mind and body to a vigorous old age. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.