How It Feels to Be Fifty

To tell you the honest truth,

I am obliged to say that, if I had not been asked to write these few lines on "How it Feels to be Fifty," being fifty would n't have meant anything in my young life.

Of course this will be a terrible disappointment to the thousands of people who, for twenty-five years, have been counting off the months and days and hours and minutes, saying:

"In twenty-one years more he will be fifty; in ten months more he will be fifty; in eight minutes more he will be fifty! And then he will tell us how it feels, and we can absorb the knowledge from his wise old lips and get ready to feel as we ought to feel when we, too, are fifty."

It is a shame to disappoint such a large and intelligent audience, but I am compelled to state that I do not feel like a doddering old wreck teetering on the edge of the grave………………………………..