Excerpt from The Preparation for Old Age: A Sermon on the Death of Deacon Nathaniel Livermore, Preached in the Church of the Cambridgeport Parish, August 17, 1862 There are probably few Who have lived hap pily, and Without grave experiences, who do not consider old age as a thing especially to be desired. We cleave to the bare idea of life. That is our instinct. It is felt to be our high est good. We only ask to live. The thing sad about others is their going away so soon the thing sad about ourselves is that we may have to go early. Our books, our poetry, our sermons, our conversation, are full of very pretty, but very pernicious, very false and fatal talk about untimely death, the cutting off in one's promise or prime, so that we grow up to think it the great misfortune that some die early, our own great desire to live on through many. 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.