festivities. Very fresh is the cool morning air, very fragrant is
the newly-lighted bird's-eye, very lively is the clink of knives
and forks, very keen is the savour of the roast beef that floats up
to the dark rafters of the College Hall. But the days are short and
the terms are few; and do not forget to be a sensible as well as a
good-humoured young man!"

Thackeray, in a delightful ballad, invites a pretty page to wait
till he comes to forty years: well, I have waited--indeed, I have
somewhat overshot the mark--and to-day the sight of all this brisk
life, going on just as it used to do, with the same insouciance and
the same merriment, makes me wish to reflect, to gather up the
fragments, to see if it is all loss, all declension, or whether
there is something left, some strength in what remains behind.

I have a theory that one ought to grow older in a tranquil and
appropriate way, that one ought to be perfectly contented with
one's time of life, that amusements and pursuits ought to alter
naturally and easily, and not be regretfully abandoned. One ought
not to be dragged protesting from the scene, catching desperately
at every doorway and balustrade; one should walk off smiling. It is
easier said than done. It is not a pleasant moment when a man first
recognizes that he is out of place in the football field, that he
cannot stoop with the old agility to pick up a skimming stroke to
cover-point, that dancing is rather too heating to be decorous,
that he cannot walk all day without undue somnolence after dinner,
or rush off after a heavy meal without indigestion. These are sad
moments which we all of us reach, but which are better laughed over
than fretted over. And a man who, out of sheer inability to part
from boyhood, clings desperately and with apoplectic puffings to