of the town, having watched with a lively interest, for years
back, Uncle Capen's progress to his hundredth birthday, expected now
some electrical effect, analogous to an apotheosis.

In the front pews were the chief mourners, filled with the sweet
intoxication of pre-eminence.

The opening exercises were finished, a hymn was sung,--

"Life is a span,"

and Father Cobb arose to make his introductory remarks.

He began with some reminiscences of the first time he saw Uncle Capen,
some thirty years before, and spoke of having viewed him even then as
an aged man, and of having remarked to him that he was walking down the
valley of life with one foot in the grave. He called attention to Uncle
Capen's virtues, and pointed out their connection with his longevity.
He had not smoked for some forty years; therefore, if the youth who were
present desired to attain his age, let them not smoke. He had been a
total abstainer, moreover, from his seventieth year; let them, if they
would rival his longevity, follow his example. The good man closed with
a feeling allusion to the relatives, in the front pew, mourning like the
disciples of John the Baptist after his "beheadment" Another hymn was
sung,--

"A vapor brief and swiftly gone."

Then there was deep silence as the minister rose and gave out his text:
"_I have been young, and now I am old_."

"At the time of the grand review in Washington," he said, "that mighty
pageant that fittingly closed the drama of the war, I was a spectator,
crippled then by a gun-shot wound, and unable to march. From an upper
window I saw that host file by, about to record its greatest triumph by
melting quietly into the general citizenship,--a mighty, resistless army
about to fade and leave no trace, except here and there a one-armed man,
or a blue flannel jacket behind a plough. Often now, when I close my
eyes, that picture rises: that gallant host, those tattered flags; and
I hear the shouts that rose when my brigade, with their flaming scarfs,
went trooping by. Little as I may have done, as a humble member of that
army, no earthly treasure could buy from me the thought of my fellowship
with it, or even the memory of that great review.

"But that display was mere tinsel show compared with the great pageant
that has moved before those few men who have lived through the whole
length of the past hundred years.

"Before me lies the form of a man who, though he has passed his days
with