When Time, who steals our hours away.
Shall steal our pleasures too;
The memory of the past shall stay
And half our joys renew.

As I grow older my thoughts often revert to the past, and like the old
Persian poet, Khosros, when he walked by the churchyard and thought how
many of his friends were numbered with the dead, I am often tempted to
exclaim: "The friends of my youth! where are they?" but there is only
the mocking echo to answer, as if from a far-distant land, "Where are
they?"

"One generation passeth away; and another generation cometh," and
enormous changes have taken place in this country during the past
seventy years, which one can only realise by looking back and comparing
the past with the present.

The railways then were gradually replacing the stage-coaches, of which
the people then living had many stories to tell, and the roads which
formerly had mostly been paved with cobble or other stones were being
macadamised; the brooks which ran across the surface of the roads were
being covered with bridges; toll-gates still barred the highways, and
stories of highway robbers were still largely in circulation, those
about Dick Turpin, whose wonderful mare "Black Bess" could jump over the
turnpike gates, being the most prominent, while Robin Hood and Little
John still retained a place in the minds of the people as former heroes
of the roads and forests.

Primitive methods were still being employed in agriculture. Crops were