at a loss as to what to do
in the mean time. Volition is primitive motion, and where there is a will
there is a way."

THE LOST AGES.

My friends, have you read Elia? If so, follow me, walking in the shadow of
his mild presence, while I recount to you my vision of the Lost Ages. I am
neither single nor unblessed with offspring, yet, like Charles Lamb, I
have had my "dream children." Years have flown over me since I stood a
bride at the altar. My eyes are dim and failing, and my hairs are
silver-white. My real children of flesh and blood have become substantial
men and women, carving their own fortunes, and catering for their own
tastes in the matter of wives and husbands, leaving their old mother, as
nature ordereth, to the stillness and repose fitted for her years.
Understand, this is not meant to imply that the fosterer of their
babyhood, the instructor of their childhood, the guide of their youth is
forsaken or neglected by those who have sprang up to maturity beneath her
eye. No; I am blessed in my children. Living apart, I yet see them often;
their joys, their cares are mine. Not a Sabbath dawns but it finds me in
the midst of them; not a holiday or a festival of any kind is noted in the
calendar of their lives, but grand-mamma is the first to be sent for.
Still, of necessity, I pass much of my time alone; and old age is given to
reverie quite as much as youth. I can remember a time--long, long ago--when
in the twilight of a summer evening it was a luxury to sit apart, with
closed eyes; and, heedless of the talk that went on in the social circle
from which I was withdrawn, indulge in all sorts of fanciful visions. Then
my dream-people were all full-grown men and women. I do not recollect that
I ever thought about children until I possessed some of my own. Those
waking visions were very sweet--sweeter than the realities of life that
followed; but they were neither half so curious nor half so wonderful as
the dreams that sometimes haunt me now. The imagination of the old is not
less lively than that of the young: it is only less original. A youthful
fancy will create more new images; the mind of age requires materials to
build with: these supplied, the combinations it is capable of forming are
endless. And so were born my dream-children.

Has it never occurred to you, mothers and fathers, to wonder what has
become of your children's lost ages? Look at your little boy of five years
old. Is he at all, in a