ar, in her little
room, in which was gathered much of the old nursery furniture, the
tiny chairs of the children, the store-cupboard with the farmyard
pictures on the panel, the stuffed pet-birds--all the homely wrack of
life; and we had been recalling many of the old childish incidents
with laughter and smiles. When I rose to go, she sate still for a
minute, and her eyes filled with quiet tears, "Ah, those were happy
days!" she said. But there was no repining about it, no sense that it
was better to forget old joys--rather a quiet pleasure that so much
that was beautiful and tender was laid away in memory, and could
neither be altered nor taken away. And one does not find in old
people, whose memory of the past is clear, while their recollection of
the present grows dim, any sense of pathos, but rather of pride and
eagerness about recalling the minutest details of the vanished days.
To feel the pathos of the past, as Tennyson expressed it in that
wonderful and moving lyric, _Tears, idle tears_, is much more
characteristic of youth. There is rather in serene old age a sense of
pleasant triumph at having safely weathered the storms of fate, and
left the tragedies of life behind. The aged would not as a rule live
life over again, if they could. They are not disappointed in life.
They have had, on the whole, what they hoped and desired. As Goethe
said, in that deep and large maxim, "Of that which a man desires in
his youth, he shall have enough in his age." That is one of the most
singular things in life--at least this is my experience--how the
things which one really desired, not the things which one ought to
have desired, are showered upon one. I have been amazed and even
stupefied sometimes to consider how my own little petty, foolish,
whimsical desires have been faithfully and literally granted me. We
most of us do really translate into fact what we desire, and as a rule
we only fail to get the things which we have not desired enough. It is
true indeed that we often find that what we desired was not worth
getting; and we ought to be more afraid of our desires, not because we
shall not get them, but because we shall almost certainly have them
fulfilled. For myself I can only think with shame how closely my
present conditions do resemble my young desires, in all their petty
range, their trivial particularity. I suppose I have unconsciously
pursued them, chosen them, grasped at them; and the shame of it is
that if I had d