Barry, John H.

English

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The Linacre QuarterlyVolume 8 | Number 1 Article 3January 1940The Toll of the YearsJohn H. BarryFollow this and additional works at: http://epublications.marquette.edu/lnqRecommended CitationBarry, John H. (1940) "The Toll of the Years," The Linacre Quarterly: Vol. 8 : No. 1 , Article 3.Available at: http://epublications.marquette.edu/lnq/vol8/iss1/3THE LINACRE QU A RTERLY THE TOLL OF THE YEARS By JOHN H. BARRY, M.S., M.D. Forest Hills, New York City Life, today, is in a most un-usua l period of reminiscence. Old songs, old plays , old themes are undergoing revival, as if to indi-ca t e their st andards are not being excelled by present-day thought. The history of the "horse and buggy days" holds an enchant-ment which that of today does not seem to rival. The self-satisfaction of mod-emity, with all its vaunted glory a nd pride of endeavor, is being challenged by the sweet and whole-some memories of the days not long ago. I speak as one who h~s scaled the heights of the prover· bial three-score and ten breast-works . A half-century of adult life has developed and revea led much which has been fascina ting, pro-g ress ive, in sp1rmg and informa-tive. In looking forward, it seemed a very long time ; in look-ing backward, it appears not nearly so long. The years pass us by quickly seeming to select but a few to mark for distin ction and still fewer for enduring worth or immortal achievement. ' iVe have lived through joys and sorrows, through conquest s and defeat s, through sunshine and shadow, glories and disappoint-ments in this half-century of life. W e have dreamed youth's dreams-unforgettable and irrev-ocable youth-we have awakened to the realities of maturity, we have experienced the sadness of wars, the horrors of conflict, the ha rrowing, economic distress at-t endant upon r eadjustment and rehabilitation. 'iVe have seen the Field of Flan-ders ma tch the heroism of the Lanes of Lexington . We have seen want, distress and p overty , and we a t·e glimpsing, we hope, the promi e of better days. before us. We have seen unfolded many myst eries of scien ce, many mir-a cles of modern surger y and radi-ology , many contributions to aug-mented life-expecta ncy , t he con-ques t of the air, the a nnihilation of sp a ce, the voices of t he Old V\Torld and, nota bly, that of the Vicar of Christ Himself wafted to our own fires ides . Wha t more can life ask or hold ? But one who can envisage the p as t and the present ca nnot forego a comparative thought of the same. A kaleidoscopic change has come over our mora l , spiritual and material world. Post -wa r rehabil-ita tion and readjustment have been a ttended by economic misery and distress, by unpa r alleled un-employment and poverty, and, p erhaps as a corollary, by moral depravity, lack of r eligious fer-vor, godlessness, r ecklessness, law-lessness. And yet one wonders whether these devious and exhaustive de-[ 14 l THE LIN A CRE QUARTERLY tours from the normal currents of a happy and contented life are not more seeming than real, whether the changing viewpoint of today's immodest feminine lure and appeal is, after all, less in-t entionally vicious and immoral than it is the promptings of a iet -loose young gener a tion bereft of a st ern pa renta l guidance and a iming at smartness or boldness. Precocity is encouraged and sex-hygiene repl aces the A B Cs. Between the extremes of Puritani-cal p rudishn ess of the past and the swing and "jitterbug" atmos-phere of the present, there must be a mean appr oaching the sweet , t ender and wholesome Hoosier set-ting of the immorta l Whitcomb R iley's "Old Sweeth eart of Mine." It has almost become a trite-bu t yet how t rue-solution of the ills which beset us, of the clouds whi ch darken the horizon of human happ in ess a nd content-ment, that it r est s in the restora-tion of lost spiritual values, and a prompt return to Godliness and F a ith. I speak a s one who has been through the storms of life. A modicum of success and achieve-ment has attended a long life of effort. A prot ract ed period of training, man y years of minist er-ing to a suffering humanity , a long chapter of public health ser-vice have formed the complex of an arduous, long a nd busy life. May one hope to find in its Winter, thoughts to cheer, hopes to fost er and encouragement to assure that the toll the past has p a id to the "days of our years" will be r edeemed by moral right-eousness, the outst anding F a ith of our F athers a nd, because of these, the clear and wholesome out look on life which we confi-dently hope for and predict from the youth of our L and. "Stone walls do not a prison make Nor iron bars a cage." Winter is a j a iler who shuts us a ll in f rom the fullest vitamin D valu e of sunlight. The baby be-comes virtually a prisoner, in sev-er al senses: First of all, meteo-rologic observations prove that winter sunshine in most sect ions of t he country aver ag es 10 to 50 per cent less than summer sun-shine. Secondly , the quality of the a vai lable sunshine is inferior, due to t he shorter dist ance of the sun f rom the earth, ther eby altering the angle of the sun's rays . While neither Mead's Oleum P er comorphum nor Mead's Cod Liver Oil Fortified with P erco-mOI·ph Liver Oil constitutes a sub-stitute for sunshine, they do of;ier an effective, controllable supple-ment especially important because the only na tural foodstuff tha t contains appreciable quantities of vitamin D is egg-yolk. Unlike winter sunshine, the vitamin D value of Mead's a ntiricketic prod-uct s does not vary from day to day or from hour t o hour. [ 15 1 

The Toll of the Years

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The Toll of the Years

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