singularly-conceited only, I retire, impenetrable to ridicule, under
the phantom cloud of Elia.

The elders, with whom I was brought up, were of a character not likely
to let slip the sacred observance of any old institution; and the
ringing out of the Old Year was kept by them with circumstances of
peculiar ceremony.--In those days the sound of those midnight chimes,
though it seemed to raise hilarity in all around me, never failed to
bring a train of pensive imagery into my fancy. Yet I then scarce
conceived what it meant, or thought of it as a reckoning that
concerned me. Not childhood alone, but the young man till thirty,
never feels practically that he is mortal. He knows it indeed, and,
if need were, he could preach a homily on the fragility of life; but
he brings it not home to himself, any more than in a hot June we can
appropriate to our imagination the freezing days of December. But now,
shall I confess a truth?--I feel these audits but too powerfully. I
begin to count the probabilities of my duration, and to grudge at the
expenditure of moments and shortest periods, like miser's farthings.
In proportion as the years both lessen and shorten, I set more count
upon their periods, and would fain lay my ineffectual finger upon
the spoke of the great wheel. I am not content to pass away "like a
weaver's shuttle." Those metaphors solace me not, nor sweeten the
unpalatable draught of mortality. I care not to be carried with the
tide, that smoothly bears human life to eternity; and reluct at the
inevitable course of destiny. I am in love with this green earth; the
face of town and country; the unspeakable rural solitudes, and the
sweet security of streets. I would set up my tabernacle here. I am
content to stand still at the age to which I am arrived; I, and my
friends: to be no younger, no richer, no handsomer. I do not want to
be weaned by age; or drop, like mellow fruit, as they say, into the