knees! Look back in fancy at the faces blending
there--the old man's and the boy's--and, with the
nimbus of the smoke-wreaths round the brows, the
gilding of the firelight on cheek and chin, and the
rapt and far-off gazings of the eyes of both, why,
but for the silver tinsel of the beard of one and the
dusky elf-locks of the other, the faces seem almost
like twins.

With such a view of age, one feels like whipping
up the lazy years and getting old at once. In heart
and soul the old man is not old--and never will be.
He is paradoxically old, and that is all. So it is that
he grows younger with increasing years, until old
age at worst is always at a level par with youth.
Who ever saw a man so old as not secretly and most
heartily to wish the veteran years upon years of
greater age? And at what great age did ever any
old man pass away and leave behind no sudden
shock, and no selfish hearts still to yearn after him
and grieve on unconsoled? Why, even in the slow
declining years of old Methuselah--the banner old
man of the universe,--so old that history grew
absolutely tired waiting for him to go off some place and
die--even Methuselah's taking off must have seemed
abrupt to his immediate friends, and a blow to the
general public that doubtless plunged it into the
profoundest gloom. For nine hundred and sixty-nine
years this durable old man had "smelt the rose above
the mold," and doubtless had a thousand times