kiss.

As he has grown older--rather let me say, as we have approximated to his
years--he has, in spite of the apparent paradox, lost much of his senile
gravity. It must be confessed that some of his actions of late appear to
our imperfect comprehension inconsistent with his extreme age. A habit
of marching up and down with a string tied to a soda-water bottle, a
disposition to ride anything that could by any exercise of the liveliest
fancy be made to assume equine proportions, a propensity to blacken his
venerable white hair with ink and coal dust, and an omnivorous appetite
which did not stop at chalk, clay, or cinders, were peculiarities not
calculated to excite respect. In fact, he would seem to have become
demoralized, and when, after a prolonged absence the other day, he was
finally discovered standing upon the front steps addressing a group of
delighted children out of his limited vocabulary, the circumstance could
only be accounted for as the garrulity of age.

But I lay aside my pen amidst an ominous silence and the disappearance
of the venerable head from my plane of vision. As I step to the other
side of the table, I find that sleep has overtaken him in an overt act
of hoary wickedness. The very pages I have devoted to an exposition
of his deceit he has quietly abstracted, and I find them covered
with cabalistic figures and wild-looking hieroglyphs traced with his
forefinger dipped in ink, which doubtless in his own language conveys
a scathing commentary on my composition. But he sleeps peacefully,
and there is something in his face which tells me that he has already
wandered away to that dim region of his youth where I cannot follow him.
And as there comes a strange stirring at my heart when I contemplate the
immeasurable gulf which lies between us, and how slight and feeble as
yet is his grasp on this world and its strange realities, I find, too