190. AGE, Insensible to.—
It is wonderful
to me that old men should not be sensible
that their minds keep pace with their bodies
in the progress of decay. Our old revolutionary
friend Clinton, for example, who
was a hero, but never a man of mind,
is wonderfully jealous on this head. He
tells eternally the stories of his younger days
to prove his memory, as if memory and
reason were the same faculty. Nothing betrays
imbecility so much as the being insensible
of it. Had not a conviction of the
danger to which an unlimited occupation,
of the Executive chair would expose the republican
constitution of our government,
made it conscientiously a duty to refuse when
I did, the fear of becoming a dotard, and of
being insensible of it, would of itself have
resisted all solicitations to remain.—
To Dr. Benjamin Rush. Washington ed. vi, 3.
Ford ed., ix, 328.
(P.F.,,
18161816)gt;
