once easily cleared to the four feet that is impossible for me now.

“You are not getting older, you are getting better.” says Dr. Joyce Brothers. This, however, is the kind of doctor who inspires a second opinion.

And so，as I approach the day when I cannot even jump over the tennis net, I am moved to share some thoughts on aging with you. I am moved to show how aging feels to me physically and mentally. Getting older, of course, is obviously a better change than the one that brings you eulogies（悼词）. In fact, a poet named Robert Browning considered it the best change of all：Grow old along with me!The best is yet to be.

Whether or not Browning was right, most of my first fifty years have been golden ones, so I will settle for what is ahead being as good as what has gone by. I find myself moving toward what is ahead with a curious blend （混合） of both fighting and accepting my aging, hoping that the philosopher （哲学家）was right when he said. “Old is always fifteen years from now.”

21. The author seems to tell us in Paragraph I that ______.

A. time alone will tell

B. time goes by quickly

C. time will show what is right

D. time makes one forget the past

22. When the author turned fifty, people around him ______.

A. tried to comfort him

B. got inspiration from him

C. were friendlier with him

D. found him more talkative

23. The author considers his fifty years of life______.

A. peaceful

B. ordinary

C. satisfactory

D. regretful

24. We can infer from the passage that ______.

A. the old should lead a simple life

B. the old should face the fact of aging