lately,—[Do remember all the time that this is the Professor’s paper,]—I satisfied myself that I had better concede the fact that—my contemporaries are not so young as they have been,—and that,— awkward as it is,—science and history agree in telling me that I can claim the immunities and must own the humiliations of the early stage of senility. Ah! but we have all gone down the hill together. The dandies of my time have split their waistbands and taken to highlow shoes. The beauties of my recollections—where are they? They have run the gantlet of the years as well as I. First the years pelted them with red roses till their cheeks were all on fire. By and by they began throwing white roses, and that morning flush passed away. At last one of the years threw a snow-ball, and after that no year let the poor girls pass without throwing snow-balls. And then came rougher missiles,—ice and stones; and from time to time an arrow whistled, and down went one of the poor girls. So there are but few left; and we don't call those few girls, but———
Ah, me! here am I groaning just as the old Greek sighed Aĭ, aĭ! and the old Roman, Eheu! I have no doubt we should die of shame and grief at the indignities offered us by age, if it were not that we see so many others as badly or worse off than ourselves. We always compare ourselves with our contemporaries.
[I was interrupted in my reading just here. Before I began at the next breakfast, I read them these verses—I hope you will like them, and get a useful lesson from them.]
THE LAST BLOSSOM.
Though young no more, we still would dream
Of beauty’s dear deluding wiles;
The leagues of life to graybeards seem
Shorter than boyhood's lingering miles.
Who knows & woman's wild caprice?
It played with Goethe’s silvered hair,
And many a Holy Father's “ niece”
Has softly smoothed the papal chair.
When sixty bids us sigh in vain
To melt the heart of sweet sixteen
We think upon those ladies twain
Who loved so well the tough old Dean.
We see the Patriarch's wintry face,
The maid of Egypt’s dusky glow,
And dream that Youth and Age embrace,
As April violets fill with snow.
Tranced in her Lord’s Olympian smile
His lotus-loving Memphian lies,—
The musky daughter of the Nile
With plaited hair and almond eyes.
Might we but share one wild caress
Ere life’s autumnal blossoms fail,
And Earth’s brown, dinging lips impress
The long cold kiss that waits us all!
My bosom heaves, remembering yet
The morning of that blissful day
When Bose, the flower of spring, I met,
And gave my raptured soul away.
Flung from her eves of purest blue,
A lasso, with its leaping chain
Light as a loop of larkspurs, flew
O’er sense and spirit, heart and brain.
Thou com’st to cheer my waning age,
Sweet vision, waited for so long!
Dove that wouldst seek the poet’s cage,
Lured by the magic breath of song!
She blushes! Ah, reluctant maid,
Love’s drapeau rouge the truth has told!
O’er girlhood's yielding barricade
Floats the great Leveller’s crimson fold!
Come to my arms!—love heeds not years;
No frost the bud of passion knows.—
Ha! what is this my frenzy hears?
A voice behind me uttered,—Rose!
Sweet was her smile,—-but not for me;
Alas, when woman looks too kind,
Just turn your foolish head and see,—
Some youth is walking close behind!
As to giving up because the almanac or the Family-Bible says that it is about time to do it, I have no intention of doing any such thing. I grant you that I burn, less carbon than some years ago. I see people of my standing really good for nothing, decrepit, effete, la lèvre inférieure déjà pendante, with what little life they have left mainly concentrated in their epigastrium. But as the disease of old age is epidemic, endemic, and spo-
