I don't know what it is,--whether a spontaneous change, mental or bodily, or whether it is thorough experience of the thanklessness of critical honesty,--but it is a fact, that most writers, except sour and unsuccessful ones, get tired of finding fault at about the time when they are beginning to grow old.

As a general thing, I would not give a great deal for the fair words of a critic, if he is himself an author, over fifty years of age.

At thirty we are all trying to cut our names in big letters upon the walls of this tenement of life; twenty years later we have carved it, or shut up our jack-knives.

Then we are ready to help others, and care less to hinder any, because nobody's elbows are in our way.

So I am glad you have a little life left; you will be saccharine enough in a few years.
-- Some of the softening effects of advancing age have struck me very much in what I have heard or seen here and elsewhere.