Every one of them is over seventy, and all writing away yet as lively as you like.

It is a crying scandal.
"Things are the same in medicine, art, divinity, law--in short, in every profession and in every trade.
"Young ladies cry out that this is not a marrying age.

How can it be a marrying age, with grey-headed parents everywhere?
Give young men their chance, and they will marry younger than ever, if only to see their children grown up before they die.
"A word in conclusion.

Looking around me, I cannot but see that most, if not all, of my hearers have passed what should plainly be the allotted span of life to man.

You would have to go.
"But, gentlemen, you would do so feeling that you were setting a noble example.