aid, afflicted citizens lose their
sick-headaches. I hope this _hegira_ is not as movable a feast as that one
I annually look for, when the horticulturists assure me that the rose-bugs
in our gardens disappear on the tenth of July: they stay a fortnight later
in mine. But be it as it may with the sick-headache,--'t is certain that
graver headaches and heart-aches are lulled, once for all, as we come up
with certain goals of time. The passions have answered their purpose: that
slight, but dread overweight, with which, in each instance, Nature secures
the execution of her aim, drops off. To keep man in the planet, she
impresses the terror of death. To perfect the commisariat, she implants in
each a little rapacity to get the supply, and a little over-supply, of his
wants. To insure the existence of the race, she reinforces the sexual
instinct, at the risk of disorder, grief, and pain. To secure strength,
she plants cruel hunger and thirst, which so easily overdo their office,
and invite disease. But these temporary stays and shifts for the
protection of the young animal are shed as fast as they can be replaced by
nobler resources. We live in youth amidst this rabble of passions, quite
too tender, quite too hungry and irritable. Later, the interiors of mind
and heart open, and supply grander motives. We learn the fatal
compensations that wait on every act. Then,--one mischief at a time,--this
riotous time-destroying crew disappear.

I count it another capital advantage of age, this, that a success more or
less signifies nothing. Little by little, it has amassed such a fund of
merit, that it can very well afford to go on its credit when it will. When
I chanced to meet the poet Wordsworth, then sixty-three years old, he told
me, "that he had just had a fall and lost a tooth, and, when his
companions were much concerned for the mischance, he had replied, that he
was glad it had not happened forty years before." Well, Nature takes care
that we shall not lose our organs forty years too soon. A lawyer argued a
cause yesterday in the Supreme Court, and I was struck with a certain air
of levity and defiance which vastly became him. Thirty years ago it was a
serious concern to him whether his pleading was good and effective. Now it
is of importance to his client, but of none to himself. It is long already
fixed what he can do and cannot do, and his reputation does not gain or
suffer from one or a dozen new performances. If he should,