Help! help! He's gone! Oh, fearful woe, I am not mad, but soon shall be. 8. Yes, soon; for lo, you! while I speak, LESSON CXL. OLD AGE. BY THEODORE PARKER. 1. I CANNOT tell where childhood ends, and manhood begins; nor where manhood ends, and old age begins. It is a wavering and uncertain line, not straight and definite, which borders betwixt the two. But the outward characteristics of old age are obvious enough. The weight diminishes. Man is commonly heaviest at forty, woman at fifty. After that, the body shrinks a little; the height shortens as the cartilages become thin and dry. The hair whitens and falls away. The frame stoops; the bones become smaller, feebler, have less animal and more mere earthy matter. The senses decay slowly and handsomely. The eye is not so sharp; and, while it penetrates farther into space, it has less power clearly to define the outline of what it sees. The ear is dull; the appetite less. Bodily heat is lower; the breath produces less carbonic acid, than before. 2. The old man consumes less food, water, air. The hands grasp less strongly; the feet tread less firmly. The lungs suck the breast of heaven with less powerful collapse. The eye and ear take not so strong a hold upon the world : "And the big manly voice, Turning again toward childish treble, pipes The animal life is making ready to go out. The very old man loves the sunshine and the fire, the arm-chair and the shady nook. A rude wind would jostle the full-grown apple from its bough,-full-ripe, full-colored, too. The internal characteristics correspond. General activity is less. Salient love of new things and new persons, which bit the young man's heart, fades away. thinks the old is better. He 3. In intellectual matters, the venerable man loves to recall the old times, to revive his favorite old men,- -no new ones half so fair. So in Homer, Nestor, who is the oldest of the Greeks, is always talking of the old times, before the grandfathers of men then living had come into being,-"not such as live in these degenerate days. Verse-loving John Quincy Adams turns off from Byron, and Shelley, and Wieland, and Goethe, and returns to Pope, "who pleased his childhood and informed his youth." The pleasure of hope is smaller; that of memory greater. The venerable man loves to set Recollection to beat the roll-call, and summon up from the grave the old time," the good old time,”the old places, old friends, old games, old talk: nay, to his ear, the old familiar tunes are sweeter than any thing that Mendelssohn, or Strauss, or Rossini, can bring to pass. Elder Brewster expects to hear St. Martin's and Old Hundred chanted in heaven. Why not? 4. Then the scholar becomes an antiquary; he likes not young men unless he knew their grandfathers. The young woman looks in the newspaper for the marriages, the old man for the deaths. The young man's eye looks forward: the world is "all before him where to choose." It is a hard world: he does not know it; he works a little, and hopes much. The middle-aged man looks around at the present; he has found out that it is a hard world; he hopes less and works more. The old man looks back on the fields he nas trod,-"This is the tree I planted, this is my footstep," and he loves the old house, his old carriage, cat, dog, staff, and friend. 5. In lands where the vine grows, I have seen an old man sit all day long, a sunny autumn day, before his cottage-door, in a great arm-chair, his old dog crouched at his feet in the genial sun. The autumn wind played with the old man's venerable hairs; above him, on the wall, purpling in the sunlight, hung the full clusters of the grape, ripening and maturing yet more. The two were just alike; the wind stirred the vine-leaves and they fell; stirred the old man's hair, and it whitened yet more. Both were waiting for the spirit in them to be fully ripe. The young man looks forward; the old man looks back. How long the shadows lie in the setting sun; the steeple a mile long reaching across the plain, as the sun stretches out the hills in grotesque dimensions! So are the events of life in the old man's consciousness. LESSON CXLI.. LOCHIEL'S WARNING. BY THOMAS CAMPBELL. Wizard. LOCHIEL! Lochiel! beware of the day Lochiel. Go preach to the coward, thou death-telling seer! This mantle, to cover the phantom of fright! Wizard. Ha! laugh'st thou, Lochiel, my vision to scorn? From his home in the dark-rolling clouds of the North? But down let him stoop from his havoc on high; Heaven's fire is around thee, to blast and to burn; For the blackness of ashes shall mark where it stood, Lochiel. False wizard, avaunt! I have marshal'd my clan ; Wizard. Lochiel! Lochiel! beware of the day! Now in darkness and billows he sweeps from my sight; But where is the iron-bound prisoner,-where? The war-drum is muffled, and black is the bier; › Where his heart shall be thrown ere it ceases to beat, Lochiel. Down, soothless insulter! I trust not the tale; For never shall Albin a destiny meet So black with dishonor, so foul with retreat. Though my perishing ranks should be strew'd in their gore, Lochiel, untainted by flight or by chains, While the kindling of life in his bosom remains, Shall victor exult, or in death be laid low, 1. NOON, by the north clock! Noon, by the east! High noon, too, by these hot sunbeams, which fall, scarcely aslope, upon my head, and almost make the water bubble and smoke in the trough under my nose. Truly, we public characters have a tough time of it! And, among all the town officers chosen at March meetings, where is he that sustains, for a single year, the burden of such manifold duties as are imposed, in perpetuity, upon the Town Pump? The title of "town treasurer" is rightfully mine, as guardian of the best treasure that the town has. The overseers of the poor ought to make me their chairman, since I provide bountifully for the pauper, without expense to him that pays taxes. 2. I am at the head of the fire-department, and one of the physicians to the board of health. As a keeper of the peace, all water-drinkers will confess me equal to the constable. I perform some of the duties of the town clerk, by promulgating public notices, when they are posted on my front. To speak within bounds, I am the chief person of the municipality, and exhibit, moreover, an admirable pattern to my brother officers, by the cool, steady, upright, downright, and impartial discharge of my business, and the constancy with which I stand to my post. Summer or winter, nobody seeks me in vain; for all day long I am seen at the busiest corner, just above the market, stretching out my arms to rich and poor alike; and at night I hold a lantern over my head, both to show where I am and keep people out of the gutters. |