bedtime may be spent in play. Still, I have fancied that there is a
depth of feeling and reflection, under this superficial levity,
peculiar to one who has lived long, and is soon to die.

Show me anything that would make an infant smile, and you shall behold
a gleam of mirth over the hoary ruin of my visage. I can spend a
pleasant hour in the sun, watching the sports of the village children,
on the edge of the surf; now they chase the retreating wave far down
over the wet sand; now it steals softly up to kiss their naked feet;
now it comes onward with threatening front, and roars after the
laughing crew, as they scamper beyond its reach. Why should not an
old man be merry too, when the great sea is at play with those little
children? I delight, also, to follow in the wake of a pleasure-party
of young men and girls, strolling along the beach after an early
supper at the Point. Here, with hand kerchiefs at nose, they bend
over a heap of eel-grass, entangled in which is a dead skate, so oddly
accoutred with two legs and a long tail, that they mistake him for a
drowned animal. A few steps farther, the ladies scream, and the
gentlemen make ready to protect them against a young shark of the
dogfish kind, rolling with a life-like motion in the tide that has
thrown him up. Next, they are smit with wonder at the black shells of
a wagon-load of live lobsters, packed in rock-weed for the country
market. And when they reach the fleet of dories, just hauled ashore
after the day's fishing, how do I laugh in my sleeve, and sometimes
roar outright, at the simplicity of these young folks and the sly
humor of the fishermen! In winter, when our village is thrown into a
bustle by the arrival of perhaps a score of country dealers,
bargaining for frozen fish, to be transported hundreds of miles, and
eaten fresh in Vermont or Canada, I am a pleased but idle spectator in
the throng. For I launch my boat no more.