THE DIARY OF A MAN OF FIFTY
by Henry James


Florence, _April 5th_, 1874.--They told me I should find Italy greatly
changed; and in seven-and-twenty years there is room for changes. But to
me everything is so perfectly the same that I seem to be living my youth
over again; all the forgotten impressions of that enchanting time come
back to me. At the moment they were powerful enough; but they afterwards
faded away. What in the world became of them? Whatever becomes of such
things, in the long intervals of consciousness? Where do they hide
themselves away? in what unvisited cupboards and crannies of our being do
they preserve themselves? They are like the lines of a letter written in
sympathetic ink; hold the letter to the fire for a while and the grateful
warmth brings out the invisible words. It is the warmth of this yellow
sun of Florence that has been restoring the text of my own young romance;
the thing has been lying before me today as a clear, fresh page. There
have been moments during the last ten years when I have fell so
portentously old, so fagged and finished, that I should have taken as a
very bad joke any intimation that this present sense of juvenility was
still in store for me. It won't last, at any rate; so I had better make
the best of it. But I confess it surprises me. I have led too serious a
life; but that perhaps, after all, preserves one's youth. At all events,
I have travelled too far, I have worked too hard, I have lived in brutal
climates and associated with tiresome people. When a man has reached his
fifty-second year without being, materially, the worse for wear--when he
has fair health, a fair fortune, a tidy conscience and a complete
exemption from embarrassing relatives--I suppose he is bound, in
delicacy, to write himself happy. But I confess I shirk this obligation.
I have not been miserable; I won't go so far as to say that--or at least