door or the windows.

We talked together in this way some time. Then Old Age said
again,--Come, let us walk down the street together,--and offered me
a cane, an eyeglass, a tippet, and a pair of over-shoes.--No, much
obliged to you, said I. I don't want those things, and I had a
little rather talk with you here, privately, in my study. So I
dressed myself up in a jaunty way and walked out alone;--got a
fall, caught a cold, was laid up with a lumbago, and had time to
think over this whole matter.

Explicit Allegoria Senectutis.

We have settled when old age begins. Like all Nature's processes,
it is gentle and gradual in its approaches, strewed with illusions,
and all its little griefs soothed by natural sedatives. But the
iron hand is not less irresistible because it wears the velvet
glove. The button-wood throws off its bark in large flakes, which
one may find lying at its foot, pushed out, and at last pushed off,
by that tranquil movement from beneath, which is too slow to be
seen, but too powerful to be arrested. One finds them always, but
one rarely sees them fall. So it is our youth drops from us,
--scales off, sapless and lifeless, and lays bare the tender and
immature fresh growth of old age. Looked at collectively, the
changes of old age appear as a series of personal insults and
indignities, terminating at last in death, which Sir Thomas Browne
has called "the very disgrace and ignominy of our nature."

My lady's cheek can boast no more
The cranberry white and pink it wore;
And where her shining locks divide,
The parting line is all too wide--

No, no,--this will never do. Talk about men, if you will, but
spare the poor women.

We have a brief description of seven stages of life by a remarkably
good observer. It is very presumptuous to attempt to add to it,
yet I have been struck with the fact that life admits of a natural
analysis into no less than fifteen distinct periods. Taking the
five primary divisions, infancy, childhood, youth, manhood, old
age, each of these has its own three periods of immaturity,
complete development, and decline. I recognize on OLD baby at
once,--with its "pipe and mug," (a stick of candy and a
porringer,)--so does everybody; and an old child shedding its
milk-teeth is only a little prototype of the old man shedding his
permanent ones. Fifty or thereabouts is only the childhood, as it
were, of old age; the graybeard youngster must be weaned from his