sailing-packet voyages, of the semi-barbarous destitution of all modern
comforts and conveniences through which we bravely lived and came out the
estimable personages you find us.

Think of it! All my boyish shooting was done with a flint-lock gun; the
percussion lock came to me as one of those new-fangled notions people had
just got hold of. We ancients can make a grand display of minus
quantities in our reminiscences, and the figures look almost as well as
if they had the plus sign before them.

I am afraid that old people found life rather a dull business in the time
of King David and his rich old subject and friend, Barzillai, who, poor
man, could not have read a wicked novel, nor enjoyed a symphony concert,
if they had had those luxuries in his day. There were no pleasant
firesides, for there were no chimneys. There were no daily newspapers
for the old man to read, and he could not read them if there were, with
his dimmed eyes, nor hear them read, very probably, with his dulled ears.
There was no tobacco, a soothing drug, which in its various forms is a
great solace to many old men and to some old women, Carlyle and his
mother used to smoke their pipes together, you remember.

Old age is infinitely more cheerful, for intelligent people at least,
than it was two or three thousand years ago. It is our duty, so far as
we can, to keep it so. There will always be enough about it that is
solemn, and more than enough, alas! that is saddening. But how much
there is in our times to lighten its burdens! If they that look out at
the windows be darkened, the optician is happy to supply them with
eye-glasses for use before the public, and spectacles for their hours of
privacy. If the grinders cease because they are few, they can be made
many again by a third dentition, which brings no toothache in its train.