e old people who have aged under it, and some
who, as certain philosophers would hold, have grown younger again. The
latter may be seen just beginning, perhaps, to sit up stiff on a woman's
arm, or starting for a trial crawl over mother earth; and of them we
remark that there is another little Ryan or Quigley; while the former
stay sunning themselves so inertly, or totter about so shakily, that we
notice at once how much old Sheridan, or the Widow Joyce, has failed
since last year. These babies and grandparents often associate a good
deal with one another at the stage when the old body is still capable of
"keepin' an eye on the child," and the child still resorts to all fours
if it wants to get up its highest speed. But this companionship does not
last long in any given case. Very soon the expanding and the contracting
sphere cease to touch closely. On the one hand, the world widens into
more spacious tracts for nimbler and bolder ranging over with all manner
of remarkable things growing and living upon it, to be gathered and
captured, or at least sought and chased, among pools, and hillocks and
swampy places. On the other, it shrinks to within the limits of a few
dwindling furlongs and perches, traversed ever more feebly, until at
length even the nearest stone, on which the warm rays can be basked in,
seems to have moved too far off, and the flicker-haunted nook by the
hearth-fire becomes the end of the whole day's journey.

Thus the generations, as they succeed one another, wave-like preserve a
well-marked rhythm in their coming and going--play, work, rest--not to
be interrupted by anything less peremptory than death or disablement.
This wag-by-the-wall swings and swings its bobbed pendulum without
pause, but one swing is much like the other, and their background never
varies. Little Pat out stravading of a fine morning on the great
brown-wigged bog, and, it may be hoped, enjoying himself thoroughly, is
taking the same first steps in life as young Pat his father, now busy
cutting turf-sods, and old Pat, his grandfather, idly watching them
burn, with a pipe, if in luck, to keep alight. And the Lisconnel folk,
therefore, because the changes wrought by human agency come to them in
unimposing forms, are strongly impressed by the vast natural
vicissitudes of things which rule their destinies. The melting of season
into season, and year into year, the leaf-like withering and drifting
away of the old from among the fresh spri