three lights--they
lived to a raven age--long long ago--and we heard tell of them in our
youth. Their glory dawned on us in a dream of life's golden prime--and
far away seems now that dawn, as if in another world beyond a million
seas! In that use of the word "old," far from us is all thought of
dotage or decay. Old are those great personages as the stars are old; a
heaven there is in which are seen shining, for ever young, all the most
ancient spiritual "orbs of Song."

In our delight, too, we love to speak of old Venus and of old Cupid--of
old Eve and of old Cleopatra--of old Helen and of old Dalilah; yea, of
old Psyche, though her aerial wings are as rainbow bright as the first
hour she waved them in the eye of the youthful Sun.

How full of endearment "old boy!"--"old girl!" "Old Christopher
North!"--"old Maga!" To our simplest sayings age seems to give a
consecration which youth reveres. And why may not our hand, withered
somewhat though it be, but yet unpalsied, point out aloft to heedless
eyes single light or constellation, or lily by herself or in groups
unsuspected along the waysides of our mortal pilgrimage?

Age like ours is even more lovable than venerable; and, thinking on
ourselves, were we a young woman, we should assuredly marry an old man.
Indeed, no man ought to marry before thirty, forty, fifty, or sixty;
and, were it not that life is so short, soon enough at threescore and
ten. At seventy you are sager than ever, though scarcely so strong. You
and life love each other as well as ever; yet 'tis unpleasant, when
sailing on Windermere or Lochlomond with your bride, to observe the Man
in the Honeymoon looking at you with a congratulatory grin of
condolence, to fear that the old villain will smile over your grave in
the Season of Kirns and Harvest Homes, when the fiddle is heard in every
farmhouse, and the bagpipes are lowing like cattle on a thousand hills.
Fain would he insure his life on the Tipperary Tables. But the enamoured
annuitant is haunted with visions of his own Funeral deploying in a long
line of chariots--one at the head of all armed with scythes--through the
city, into the wide gates of the Greyfriars. Lovely is his bride in
white, nor less so his widow in black--more so in grey, portentous of a
great change. Sad, too, to the Sage the thought of leaving his
first-born as yet unborn--or if born, haply an elfish Creature with a
precocious countenance, looking as if he had begun life with b