march of man; they have more or less solved the irking problem; they
have battled through the equinox of life; in good and evil they have
held their course; and now, without open shame, they near the crown and
harbour. It may be we have been struck with one of fortune's darts; we
can scarce be civil, so cruelly is our spirit tossed. Yet long before we
were so much as thought upon, the like calamity befell the old man or
woman that now, with pleasant humour, rallies us upon our inattention,
sitting composed in the holy evening of man's life, in the clear shining
after rain. We grow ashamed of our distresses, new and hot and coarse
like villainous roadside brandy; we see life in aerial perspective,
under the heavens of faith; and out of the worst, in the mere presence
of contented elders, look forward and take patience. Fear shrinks before
them "like a thing reproved," not the flitting and ineffectual fear of
death, but the instant, dwelling terror of the responsibilities and
revenges of life. Their speech, indeed, is timid; they report lions in
the path; they counsel a meticulous footing; but their serene marred
faces are more eloquent and tell another story. Where they have gone, we
will go also, not very greatly fearing; what they have endured unbroken,
we also, God helping us, will make a shift to bear.

Not only is the presence of the aged in itself remedial, but their minds
are stored with antidotes, wisdom's simples, plain considerations
overlooked by youth. They have matter to communicate, be they never so
stupid. Their talk is not merely literature, it is great literature;
classic in virtue of the speaker's detachment, studded, like a book of
travel, with things we should not otherwise have learnt. In virtue, I
have said, of the speaker's detachment,--and this is why, of two old
men, the one who is not your father speaks to you with the more sensible
authority; for in the paternal relation the oldest have lively interests
and remain still young. Thus I have known two young men great friends;
each swore by the other's father; the father of each swore by the other
lad; and yet each pair, of parent and child, were perpetually by the
ears. This is typical: it reads like the germ of some kindly comedy.

The old appear in conversation in two characters: the critically silent
and the garrulous anecdotic. The last is perhaps what we look for; it is
perhaps the more instructive. An old gentleman, well on in years, sits
h