ars twinkling dully in the autumnal haze. An
occasional impatient tinkle of the cow-bell down in the corral indicated
midges, only present on bland days and nights when there is in the air
no hint of frost to stiffen the thin swift mite-wings.

High summer, and he was cold! Bedlam in the next room, and he was
lonely! His sensations were getting out of hand, beyond the remedial
influences and friendly fraternal sounds of this world he had so long
tenanted. By a score of years he had exceeded his due claim upon
earth's good offices to man. He was a trespasser and an alien in this
strange present--he with his ancient interests, fogy ways of speech and
thought, obsolete images and ideals, and mind that could only regard
without attempt at comprehension the little and great innovations of the
new age.

"We c'u'd make shift well enough with the things we had whin I was a
lad," Old Dalton had often said to those who talked to him of the fine
things men were inventing--the time-savers, space-savers, work-savers;
"we c'u'd make shift well enough. We got along as well as they do now,
too, we did; and, sir, we done better work, too. All men thinks of,
these days, is gettin' through quick. Yagh, that's it, that's
it--gettin' through quick-like, an' leavin' things half done."

So is a man born and implanted in his own generation. And if by strength
he invades the next generation beyond, he does not go far before he
finds he is a stranger utterly. In the current talk of men there are new
smartnesses of speech built upon the old maternal tongue. There are new
vogues of dress, new schools of thought, new modes even of play.
Perhaps, again, new vices that the older simpler life kept dormant give
the faces of this fresh generation a look and a difference strange and
sinister.

A hundred years old! There are to be found, notably in steadily moving
rural communities, not a few who endure to ninety hardily enough; but
rare and singular are the cases where a man is to be found, except as
dust in a coffin, a century after his birth. Old Dalton had inherited
from his mother the qualities that are the basis of longevity--a nature
simple and serene, a physique perfect in all involuntary functions and
with the impulse of sane and regular usages to guide voluntary ones, an
appetite and zest for work. She had married at eighteen and had lived to
see her son reach his eightieth year, herself missing the century mark
by only a few months.

But