they are an ornament, and
in them we read the record of deep thought and experience.

But the wrinkles of some old people are characterless; running in all
directions, appearing as though a finely-woven cloth had left its
impress upon the face, revealing a life aimless and idle, or
distracted by a thousand cross-purposes and weaknesses.

If now youth will permit us to look a little deeper into its heart, we
will attempt to celebrate that unpublished and vestal wisdom written
there. Age does us only indirect justice,--by the value it gives to
memory. It slights and forgets its own present. This day with its
trivialities dwindles and vanishes before the teeming hours wherein it
learned and felt and suffered;--so the circles, which are the tree's
memories of its own growth, are more distinct near the centre, where
its growth began, than in the outer and later development. Give age
the past, and let us be content with our legacy, which is the future.
Still shall youth cast one retrospective glance at the experience of
its nonage, ere it assumes its prerogative, and quite forgets it.

When the first surprise at the discovery of the faculties is over,
begins the era of experience. The aspiration conducting to experiment
has revealed the power or the inability. Henceforth the youth will
know his relations to the world. But as yet men are ignorant how it
stands between them. There has been only a closet performance, a
morning rehearsal. He sees the tribute to genius, to industry, to
birth, to fortune. At first he yields reluctantly to novitiate and
culture; he yearns for action. His masters tell him that the world is
coy, must be approached cautiously, and with something substantial in
the hand. The old bird will not be caught with chaff. He does not yet
understand the process of accumulation and transmutation. The fate of
the Danaides is his, and he draws long with a bottomless bucket. But
at last his incompetency can no further be concealed. Then he either
submits to the suggestions of despair and oblivion or bravely begins
his work. The exhilaration and satisfaction which he felt at his first
performances, in this hour of renunciation, are changed to bitterness
and disgust. He remembers the old oracle: "In the Bacchic procession
many carry the thyrsus, but few are inspired." The possibility of
ultimate failure threatens him more and more while he reflects; as the
chasm which you wish to leap grows impassable, if you measu