No voice; but oh! the silence sank
Like music on my heart.'"

I said that the lenient way in which the old look at the failings of
others naturally leads them to judge themselves more charitably. They
find an apology for their short-comings and wrong-doings in another
consideration. They know very well that they are not the same persons as
the middle-aged individuals, the young men, the boys, the children, that
bore their names, and whose lives were continuous with theirs. Here is
an old man who can remember the first time he was allowed to go shooting.
What a remorseless young destroyer he was, to be sure! Wherever he saw a
feather, wherever a poor little squirrel showed his bushy tail, bang!
went the old "king's arm," and the feathers or the fur were set flying
like so much chaff. Now that same old man,--the mortal that was called
by his name and has passed for the same person for some scores of
years,--is considered absurdly sentimental by kind-hearted women, because
he opens the fly-trap and sets all its captives free,--out-of-doors, of
course, but the dear souls all insisting, meanwhile, that the flies will,
every one of them, be back again in the house before the day is over. Do
you suppose that venerable sinner expects to be rigorously called to
account for the want of feeling he showed in those early years, when the
instinct of destruction, derived from his forest-roaming ancestors, led
him to acts which he now looks upon with pain and aversion?

"Senex" has seen three generations grow up, the son repeating the virtues
and the failings of the father, the grandson showing the same
characteristics as the father and grandfather. He knows that if such or
such a young fellow had lived to the next stage of life he would very
probably have caught up with his mother's virtues, which, like a graft of
a late fruit on an early apple or pear tree, do not ripen in her children