A Backward Glance

Years ago I said to myself: "There's no such thing as old age; there is
only sorrow."

I have learned with the passing of time that this, though true, is not
the whole truth. The other producer of old age is habit: the deathly
process of doing the same thing in the same way at the same hour day
after day, first from carelessness, then from inclination, at last from
cowardice or inertia. Luckily the inconsequent life is not the only
alternative; for caprice is as ruinous as routine. Habit is necessary;
it is the habit of having habits, of turning a trail into a rut, that
must be incessantly fought against if one is to remain alive.

In spite of illness, in spite even of the arch-enemy sorrow, one CAN
remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is
unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in
big things, and happy in small ways. In the course of sorting and
setting down of my memories I have learned that these advantages are
usually independent of one's merits, and that I probably owe my happy
old age to the ancestor who accidentally endowed me with these
qualities.

Another advantage (equally accidental) is that I do not remember long to
be angry. I seldom forget a bruise to the soul--who does? But life puts
a quick balm on it, and it is recorded in a book I seldom open. Not long
ago I read a number of reviews of a recently published autobiography.
All the reviewers united in praising it on the score that here at last
was an autobiographer who was not afraid to tell the truth! And what
gave the book this air of truthfulness? Simply the fact that the
memorialist "spared no one," set down in detail every defect and
absurdity in others, and every resentment in the writer. That was the
kind of autobiography worth reading!

Judged by that standard mine, I fear, will find few readers. I have not
escaped contact with the uncongenial; but the antipathy they aroused was
usually reciprocal, and this simplified and restricted our intercourse.
Nor do I remember that these unappreciative persons ever marked their
lack of interest in me by anything more harmful than indifference. I
recall no sensational grievances. Everywhere on my path I have met with
kindness and furtherance; and from the few dearest to me an exquisite
understanding. It will be seen, then, that in telling my story I have
had to make the best of unsensational material; and if what I have to
tell interests my readers, that merit at least will be my own.

Madame Swetchine, that eminent Christian, was once asked how she managed
to feel Christianly toward her enemies. She looked surprised. "Un
ennemi? Mais de tous les accidents c'est le plus rare!"

So I have found it.

Several chapters of this book have already appeared in the "Atlantic
Monthly" and "The Ladies' Home Journal." I have also to thank Sir John
Murray for kindly permitting me to incorporate in the book two or three
passages from an essay on Henry James, published in "The Quarterly
Review" of July 1920 and the Editor of "The Colophon" for the use of a
few paragraphs on the writing of "Ethan Frome."