I retain in my memory certain films, which record impressions of long
ago. Can I not possibly develop and present these film records for a
moving picture of the men and events of an eventful period?

We old story-tellers do our talking under a heavy handicap. Homer,
long ago, found us garrulous, and compared us to cicadas chirping
unprofitably in the city-gate. In the modern time, too, Dr. Holmes,
ensconced in smug youth, could "sit and grin" at one of our kind as he

"Totters o'er the ground
With his cane."

He thought

"His breeches and all that
Were so queer."

The "all that" is significant. To the callow young doctor, men of our
kind were throughout queered, and so, too, think the spruce and jaunty
company who are shouldering us so fast out of the front place. In
their thought we are more than depositors of last leaves, in fact we
are last leaves ourselves, capable in the green possibly of a pleasant
murmur, but in the dry with no voice but a rattle prophetic of winter.
I hope Dr. Holmes lived to repent his grin. At any rate he lived to
refute the notion that youthful fire and white hairs exclude each
other. If we must totter, what ground we have to totter over, with
two generations and more behind us! The ground is ours. We only have
looked into the faces of the great actors, and have taken part in the
epoch-making events. As I unroll my panorama I may totter, but I hope