TIME.


"I saw the leaves gliding down a brook;
Swift the brook ran, and bright the sun burned:
The sere and the verdant, the same course they took--
And sped gayly and fast--but they never returned.
And I thought how the years of a man pass away--
Threescore and ten--and then where are they?"


"Threescore years and ten," thought I to myself, as I walked, one rainy
morning, as a sailor walks the quarter-deck, up and down a short alcove,
extending before the windows of a modern house. It was one of those days
in June, in which our summer-hopes take umbrage at what we call
unseasonable weather, though no season was ever known to pass without
them. Unlike the rapid and delightful showers of warmer days, suddenly
succeeding to the sunshine, when the parched vegetables and arid earth
seize with avidity, and imbibe the moisture ere it becomes unpleasant to
our feelings, there had fallen a drizzling rain throughout the night;
the saturated soil returned to the atmosphere the humidity it could no
longer absorb; and there it hung, in chilling thickness, between rain
and fog. The birds did not sing, and the flowers did not open, for the
cold drop was on their cheek, and no sunbeam was there to expand them.
Nature itself wore the garb of sadness, and man's too dependent spirits
were ready to assume it--those, at least, that were not so happy as to
find means of forgetting it. Such was the case with my unfortunate self.