AN ODD LIFE. 265
shoes on me, nor my frock. But, although my mother had made no preparations for my changed condition, she wel- comed the trouble I put her to, and carefully laid aside my useless garments, knowing I should want them again. The neighbours noticed nothing; they thought me a big boy for my age, and extremely precocious. When I was in my fifth year I went on the stage as an ' infant phenomenon,' my age being attested by my certificate of birth, though you will of course see that I was really in my ninth. In the next few years I made enough money to gild my mother's few declin- ing years ; and when I retired temporarily from the boards at the advice of my critics, it was of course with the inten- tion of studying and returning to the stage when I was younger. And so I advanced to manhood, skipping the alternate years. I rejoice to say that my mother, though she died when I was seventy-three, had the satisfaction of knowing what felicity her unselfish aspiration had brought into my life, She told me of my strange exemption from the common burden of continuous existence, as soon as I had skipped into years of discretion. Not for me did Time pass with that tragic footstep which never returns on itself; f or me he was not the irrevocable, the relentless. I regretted my lost youth — but it was not with hopeless, passionate tears, with mutinous yearnings after the impossible ; it was as one who waves a regretful adieu to a charming girl he will meet again."
"Ah ! but you will not meet her again," I said softly.
" No ; but the feeling was the same. Of course, when I was thirty I did not know I should die before I was two. I had no more privilege of prescience than the ordinary mortal. But in everything else how enviable was my lot compared to his whom every day is sweeping towards Death, for whom no vision of renewed youth gleams behind
