ny and sheltered slope of a valley where late in the
autumn the grass is greener than in August, and intermixed with golden
dandelions that had not been seen till now since the first warmth of
the year. But with me the verdure and the flowers are not frost-bitten
in the midst of winter. A playfulness has revisited my mind--a
sympathy with the young and gay, an unpainful interest in the business
of others, a light and wandering curiosity--arising, perhaps, from the
sense that my toil on earth is ended and the brief hour till bedtime
may be spent in play. Still, I have fancied that there is a depth of
feeling and reflection under this superficial levity peculiar to one
who has lived long and is soon to die.

Show me anything that would make an infant smile, and you shall behold
a gleam of mirth over the hoary ruin of my visage. I can spend a
pleasant hour in the sun watching the sports of the village children
on the edge of the surf. Now they chase the retreating wave far down
over the wet sand; now it steals softly up to kiss their naked feet;
now it comes onward with threatening front, and roars after the
laughing crew as they scamper beyond its reach. Why should not an old
man be merry too, when the great sea is at play with those little
children? I delight, also, to follow in the wake of a pleasure-party
of young men and girls strolling along the beach after an early supper
at the Point. Here, with handkerchiefs at nose, they bend over a heap
of eel-grass entangled in which is a dead skate so oddly accoutred
with two legs and a long tail that they mistake him for a drowned
animal. A few steps farther the ladies scream, and the gentlemen make
ready to protect them against a young shark of the dogfish kind
rolling with a lifelike motion in the tide that has thrown him up.
Next they are smit with wonder at the black shells of a wagon-load of
live lobsters packed in rock-weed for the country-market. And when
they reach the fleet of dories just hauled ashore after the day's
fishing, how do I laugh in my sleeve, and sometimes roar outright, at
the simplicity of these young folks and the sly humor of the
fishermen! In winter, when our village is thrown into a bustle by the
arrival of perhaps a score of country dealers bargaining for frozen
fish to be transported hundreds of miles and eaten fresh in Vermont or
Canada, I am a pleased but idle spectator in the throng. For I launch
my boat no more.

When the shore was solitary