in my day.

No, he was nothing but a tramp, old and gray-headed, and nearly worn out
with his tramping. How long he had been going the rounds I cannot say,
but for nearly a dozen years, once each year, hi made his appearance in
the city, tarried a month, perhaps, and then quietly disappeared, and we
saw him no more for a twelvemonth. Inoffensive? Decidedly--as
mild-mannered a man as ever asked grace at a poorhouse table.

Indeed, the children were his best patrons, for he had a most winning
way with them, and he could scarcely be seen on the street without the
accompaniment of a dozen, tagging at his heels and holding on to his
hands and the skirts of his long coat. There's Dick there, six feet if
he's an inch and gone twenty last month. Well, many and many a time have
I seen the strapping fellow when he was a little chap sitting astride
the old vagabond's neck, with his little feet crooked in under his
armpits, laughing and screaming uproariously as his human horse
underneath him pranced and curvetted along the pavement, and charged
through the flock of childish admirers around him, as if they were a
hostile soldiery and Dick was a very Henry of Navarre, whose white plume
must always be found in the path to glory.

God bless the youngsters! Who of us with the burden of life's toil and
care weighing us down, ever saw a frolicsome group of them, happy in
their freedom from trouble and care, and did not wish he might slip his
shoulders from under the load of his fifty years and be a boy again?
What a pity it is that we must age and die in our wrinkles, leaving
nothing better to gaze upon than a shrunken face, colorless of bloom and
written all over with the scraggy record of our griefs, our errors, and
our pains! Why cannot death charm back the boyish vigor and girlish