Owen Chapter 16

Sketch XVI

Comforts of Old Age

Old age has its comforts as well as middle life and youth. Youth finds its comforts in hopes and aspirations; middle life, in achievements; and old age, in golden fruition. There are only three steps from the cradle to the grave, marking three distinct periods of human existence. The first step means choice and preparation; the second, busy activity; and the third, rest and reflection. If we neglect the first, we shuffle into the second, where we are jostled about in the busy world, and if the active forces tumble us into a place of usefulness we may redeem ourselves; but whether chance permits us to make amends for the neglect of youth or not, time shoves us on into the third and last period, where for a brief time we live in the reflection of the past, and then comes the end. The youth who idles away the fleeting moments, without a thought or care to the part he is to play in the great drama of life, not only robs himself of the real, solid comforts of youth, but he nips in the bud the comforts of old age as well. By thus idling away his morning hours, he is forced to enter life’s great contest with no fixed purpose in view, and without the qualifications necessary to ensure success; and to fall short of success in life’s contest is to make a comfortable old age quite impossible. There is one essential upon which the comforts of old age depend that is absolutely indispensable. It matters not how elaborately upholstered the easy chair may be, it cannot make up for a life ill-spent. Old age that possesses not the consciousness of having improved the golden opportunities of the past, and having performed the duties of life fearlessly and conscientiously, knows nothing of the real comforts of old age.

No more striking illustration of the comforts of a good, ripe old age can be found than that which the home of Simpson McCall., Esq., of Vittoria, presents. He is in his ninety-first year, and she who won the love in the days of “auld lang syne,” when she was known and admired by a stalwart young settler as Miss Priscilla Lamport, is still the sharer of his joys and his sorrows. Together they have fought the battles of life successfully, and now in their declining years, they sit under their own vine and fig-tree and enjoy the fruit of their industry together. It is very seldom, indeed, that we find a husband and wife who have lived as many years together; and when we find people of their age possessing such vigorous mental powers and retaining so much of the intellectual attainments of their younger days, it certainly calls for more than a mere passing comment.

Mrs. McCall was born in the famous Cheddar cheese section of Somersetshire, England, in 1818, and to her intellectual accomplishments may be attributed, in no small degree, the large measure of success which has attended Mr. McCall’s public life.

Mr. McCall came of splendid parentage. He is the grandson of that staunch, loyal old Highlander, Donald McCall, who fought under General Wolfe at the taking of Louisburg, C.B., and, subsequently, at the capture of Quebec. His grandmother, on his father’s side, was Elsie Simpson, sister of David Simpson, who was President Ulysses Simpson Grant’s grandfather. This would make Mr. McCall and U. S. Grant second cousins.

Simpson McCall was the eldest son of James McCall who was the fourth son of Donald McCall. Simpson was in his thirteenth year when his father died. At this early age the boy was called upon to exercise the mettle that was in him in assuming the cares and responsibilities of looking after things. There were six brothers and three sisters, all younger than himself, a widowed mother and an aged grandmother to look after, beside the management of the farm. Of course his uncles looked after things; but from that time he felt that grave responsibilities were his, and he responded to do his level best. When in his fourteenth year he summer-fallowed twenty-nine acres, and thus commenced the real work of life.

Mr. McCall gave a good share of his life to the public, and this public service is a matter of history, known to everyone who keeps himself posted in public affairs. In his younger days, a republican form of government seemed to him as though it might be the most natural form of government for a free, enlightened people. These early thoughts never led his sympathies astray, or weakened his love for the Old Flag his grandfather fought under. In 1832 he visited New York and New Jersey, and during this visit he made a careful note of the practical effects of republicanism in those states, and came home with a firm belief that republicanism may sound all right in theory, but in its tendency to develop a moral and order-loving citizenship it was, practically, a most dismal failure. In all of his public career, however, Mr. McCall has been moderate in dealing with party questions. He was always opposed to political ultraism, and he deplores the evils which have been caused by party strife. With him it has always been the principles first, and party last. He has always been identified with one of the great political parties, but whenever his party departed from principle, according to his judgement, he departed from his party. Independent in thought and action, he has always been a strong, fearless advocate of any measure he consciously believed would tend to the betterment of the township, county, or provincial conditions. His watchword has ever been “Economy.” Mr. McCall has been an economist from the very morning he held aloft one end of the ox-yoke and waving the ox-bow, shouted, “Come under, Buck!” preparatory to the starting of the plough on that twenty-nine acre fallow, down to the present day. Economy in private life stamped prosperity on everything he touched; and his advocacy of economy in the management of public affairs kept a hard-earned dollar in the pockets of the tax-payers. Many illustrations might be cited in proof of this, but one only will be given here. When Mr. McCall first entered the District Council, in 1848, he found that the district printing cost the taxpayers too much money. He possessed sufficient business acumen to know that the price paid was an extravagant one, and he advocated the plan of letting the work by public tender. The result of this change was that the next year’s printing bill was very much reduced. Among the many measures of retrenchment advocated by him during his fighting days were: Increase of Division Court jurisdiction, and thereby reducing the Quarter Sessions to two annual sessions, instead of four; and the abolition of the Court of Chancery by merger with the Common Pleas.

Of James McCall’s family, only two are living—Simpson, the eldest and Jacob, the youngest. Mr. and Mrs. Simpson McCall have been blessed with six children, all of whom are living and occupying prominent and useful positions in life—George who occupies the old homestead, being the present Reeve of Charlotteville.