hough he evidently
considers you an entire stranger?

_Old Age_.--I make it a rule never to force myself upon a person's
recognition until I have known him at least _five years_.

_Professor_.--Do you mean to say that you have known me so long as that?

_Old Age_.--I do. I left my card on you longer ago than that, but I am
afraid you never read it; yet I see you have it with you.

_Professor_.--Where?

_Old Age_.--There, between your eyebrows,--three straight lines running
up and down; all the probate courts know that token,--"Old Age, his
mark." Put your forefinger on the inner end of one eyebrow, and your
middle finger on the inner end of the other eyebrow; now separate the
fingers, and you will smooth out my sign-manual; that's the way you used
to look before I left my card on you.

_Professor_.--What message do people generally send back when you first
call on them?

_Old Age.--Not at home_. Then I leave a card and go. Next year I call;
get the same answer; leave another card. So for five or six,--sometimes
ten years or more. At last, if they don't let me in, I break in through
the front 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 buttonwood
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