This letter to the editor appeared in the Minneapolis Star. Newspapers rarely publish melancholy musings like this anymore, unless you count Garrison Keillor’s work.

A Lawyer at 94

To the editor: I am the oldest lawyer in Hennepin County in age and practice. I am the last of three generations covering a period of 190 years. Grandfather born in 1776, father in 1808, both in Pennsylvania, and I in 1871 at Long Lake. For me there is nothing to do except to sit and think and to try to compose.

I am alone in a desolate home. I am alone with a vacant chair; from the roof-ridge down to the base nothing alive is there. Time has no meaning. Days fade. Nights pass away. I sleep, I dream and I hope to awake nevermore.

I recognize a Creator by the work he has done. My death will not be a transition from this to another sphere, but will come at the close of a final day, when all that I am will be ended and I will cease to be.

For me at 94 I deem it better to sit and try to compose than to worry about a future of which no one knows.

Long Lake.                – W. L. Hursh.

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