DEAR ABBY: I saved a favorite clipping from your column dated Aug. 5, 1982. It is an essay titled "On Youth." When you published it, you didn't know who wrote it, but later discovered that Samuel Ullman was the author. He was born in 1840 and died in 1924.
His essay is still relevant today, and I would like to see it in your column again. -- ALABAMA READER
DEAR ALABAMA READER: I'm happy to print it again. Its message is timeless.
ON YOUTH
"Youth is not entirely a time of life -- it is a state of mind. It is not wholly a matter of ripe cheeks, red lips or supple knees. It is a temper of will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions.
"Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years. People grow old only by deserting their ideals. You are as young as your self-confidence, as old as your fears; as young as your hope, as old as your despair.
"In the central place of every heart, there is a recording chamber; so long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer and courage, you are young.
"When the wires are all down and your heart is covered with the snows of pessimism and the ice of cynicism, then, and only then, have you grown old."