important one, being the day on which he planted Caresfoot's Staff,
the great oak by the water yonder, to mark the founding of a house of
country gentry. Some centuries have elapsed since my forefather stood
where I stand, most like with his hand upon this board as mine is now,
and addressed a company not so fine or so well dressed, but perhaps--I
mean no disrespect--on the whole, as good at heart as that before me
now. Yes, the sapling oak has grown into the biggest tree in the
country-side 'twixt then and now. It seems, therefore, to be fit that
on what is to me as great a day as the planting of that oak was to my
yeoman forefather, that I, like him, should gather my ancient friends
and neighbours round me under the same ancient roof that I may, like
him, make them the partakers of my joy.

"None of you sitting at this board to-day can look upon the old man
who now asks your attention, without realizing what he himself has
already learned: namely, that his day is over. Now, life is hard to
quit. When a man grows old, the terrors of the unknown land loom just
as large and terrible as they did to his youthful imagination, larger
perhaps. But it is a fact that must be faced, a hard, inevitable fact.
And age, realizing this, looks round it for consolations, and finds
only two: first, that as its interests and affections _here_ fade and
fall away, in just that same proportion do they grow and gather
_there_ upon the further shore; and secondly that, after Nature's
eternal fashion, the youth and vigour of a new generation is waiting
to replace the worn-out decrepitude of that which sinks into oblivion.
My life is done, it cannot be long before the churchyard claims its
own, but I live again in my son; and take such cold comfort as I may
from that idea of family, and of long-continued and assured
succession, that has so largely helped to make this country what she
is.