was pleasant to hear them chatting in the back entry, a row of
them all tipped against the wall, as usual; while the frozen
witticisms of past generations were thawed out, and came
bubbling with laughter from their lips. Externally, the jollity
of aged men has much in common with the mirth of children; the
intellect, any more than a deep sense of humour, has little to
do with the matter; it is, with both, a gleam that plays upon
the surface, and imparts a sunny and cheery aspect alike to the
green branch and grey, mouldering trunk. In one case, however,
it is real sunshine; in the other, it more resembles the
phosphorescent glow of decaying wood.

It would be sad injustice, the reader must understand, to
represent all my excellent old friends as in their dotage. In
the first place, my coadjutors were not invariably old; there
were men among them in their strength and prime, of marked
ability and energy, and altogether superior to the sluggish and
dependent mode of life on which their evil stars had cast them.
Then, moreover, the white locks of age were sometimes found to
be the thatch of an intellectual tenement in good repair. But,
as respects the majority of my corps of veterans, there will be
no wrong done if I characterize them generally as a set of
wearisome old souls, who had gathered nothing worth preservation
from their varied experience of life. They seemed to have flung
away all the golden grain of practical wisdom, which they had
enjoyed so many opportunities of harvesting, and most carefully
to have stored their memory with the husks. They spoke with far
more interest and unction of their morning's breakfast, or
yesterday's, to-day's, or tomorrow's dinner, than of the
shipwreck of forty or fifty years ago, and all the world's