But, alas! it was a terrible mistake. This weight of years had a perennial
novelty for the poor sufferer. He never grew accustomed to it, but, long
as he had now borne the fretful torpor of his waning life, and patient as
he seemed, he still retained an inward consciousness that these stiffened
shoulders, these quailing knees, this cloudiness of sight and brain, this
confused forgetfulness of men and affairs, were troublesome accidents that
did not really belong to him. He possibly cherished a half-recognized idea
that they might pass away. Youth, however eclipsed for a season, is
undoubtedly the proper, permanent, and genuine condition of man; and if we
look closely into this dreary delusion of growing old, we shall find that
it never absolutely succeeds in laying hold of our innermost convictions.
A sombre garment, woven of life's unrealities, has muffled us from our
true self, but within it smiles the young man whom we knew; the ashes of
many perishable things have fallen upon our youthful fire, but beneath
them lurk the seeds of inextinguishable flame. So powerful is this
instinctive faith, that men of simple modes of character are prone to
antedate its consummation. And thus it happened with poor Grandsir
Dolliver, who often awoke from an old man's fitful sleep with a sense that
his senile predicament was but a dream of the past night; and hobbling
hastily across the cold floor to the looking-glass, he would be grievously
disappointed at beholding the white hair, the wrinkles and furrows, the
ashen visage and bent form, the melancholy mask of Age, in which, as he
now remembered, some strange and sad enchantment had involved him for
years gone by!

To other eyes than his own, however, the shrivelled old gentleman looked
as if there were little hope of his throwing off this too artfully wrought
disguise, until, at no distant day, his stooping figure should be
straightened out, his hoary locks be smoothed over his brows, and his
much-enduring bones be laid safely away, with a green coverlet spread over