left them.

Age brings other obvious changes besides the loss of active power. The
sensibilities are less keen, the intelligence is less lively, as we might
expect under the influence of that narcotic which Nature administers.
But there is another effect of her "black drop" which is not so commonly
recognized. Old age is like an opium-dream. Nothing seems real except
what is unreal. I am sure that the pictures painted by the
imagination,--the faded frescos on the walls of memory,--come out in
clearer and brighter colors than belonged to them many years earlier.
Nature has her special favors for her children of every age, and this is
one which she reserves for our second childhood.

No man can reach an advanced age without thinking of that great change to
which, in the course of nature, he must be so near. It has been remarked
that the sterner beliefs of rigid theologians are apt to soften in their
later years. All reflecting persons, even those whose minds have been
half palsied by the deadly dogmas which have done all they could to
disorganize their thinking powers,--all reflecting persons, I say, must
recognize, in looking back over a long life, how largely their creeds,
their course of life, their wisdom and unwisdom, their whole characters,
were shaped by the conditions which surrounded them. Little children
they came from the hands of the Father of all; little children in their
helplessness, their ignorance, they are going back to Him. They cannot
help feeling that they are to be transferred from the rude embrace of the
boisterous elements to arms that will receive them tenderly. Poor
planetary foundlings, they have known hard treatment at the hands of the
brute forces of nature, from the control of which they are soon to be set
free. There are some old pessimists, it is true, who believe that they
and a few others are on a raft, and that the ship which they have