THE OLD MAN

[Response made to the sentiment, "The Old Man,"
at a dinner of the Indianapolis Literary Club.]

"You are old, Father William," the young man said,
"And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head--
Do you think, at your age, it is right?"

THE OLD MAN never grows so old as to be
come either stale, juiceless, or unpalatable. The
older he grows, the mellower and riper he becomes.
His eyes may fail him, his step falter, and his big-
mouthed shoes--"a world too wide for his shrunk
shank"--may cluck and shuffle as he walks; his
rheumatics may make great knuckles of his knees;
the rusty hinges of his vertebrae may refuse
cunningly to articulate, but all the same the "backbone"
of the old man has been time-seasoned, tried, and
tested, and no deerskin vest was ever buttoned
round a tougher! Look at the eccentric kinks and
curvings of it--its abrupt depression at the base,
and its rounded bulging at the shoulders; but don't
laugh with the smart young man who airily observes
how full-chested the old man would be if his head
were only turned around, and don't kill the young
man, either, until you take him out some place and
tell him that the old man got himself warped up in
that shape along about the time when everybody