of their being dry. My dear old brothers and sisters, we know better, do we
not? We have nice old jokes, with no end of fun in them; only they cannot
see the fun. We have strange tales, that we know to be true, and which look
more and more marvellous every time we turn them over again; only
somehow they do not belong to the ways of this year--I was going to say
_week_,--and so the young people generally do not care to hear them. I have
had one pale-faced boy, to be sure, who will sit at his mother's feet, and
listen for hours to what took place before he was born. To him his mother's
wedding-gown was as old as Eve's coat of skins. But then he was young
enough not yet to have had a chance of losing the childhood common to the
young and the old. Ah! I should like to write for you, old men, old women,
to help you to read the past, to help you to look for the future. Now is
your salvation nearer than when you believed; for, however your souls may
be at peace, however your quietness and confidence may give you strength,
in the decay of your earthly tabernacle, in the shortening of its cords, in
the weakening of its stakes, in the rents through which you see the stars,
you have yet your share in the cry of the creation after the sonship. But
the one thing I should keep saying to you, my companions in old age, would
be, "Friends, let us not grow old." Old age is but a mask; let us not call
the mask the face. Is the acorn old, because its cup dries and drops it
from its hold--because its skin has grown brown and cracks in the earth?
Then only is a man growing old when he ceases to have sympathy with the
young. That is a sign that his heart has begun to wither. And that is a
dreadful kind of old age. The heart needs never be old. Indeed it should
always be growing younger. Some of us feel younger, do we not, than when
we were nine or ten? It is not necessary to be able to play at leapfrog to
enjoy the game. There are young creatures whose turn it is, and perhaps
whose duty it would be, to play at leap-frog if there was any necessity for
putting the matter in that light; and for us, we have the privilege, or if
we will not accept the privilege, then I say we have the duty, of enjoying