re physically and mentally younger, I fancy, than you
were at thirty-five. It is a strange reflection that at forty-five,
when we are just entering upon the most enjoyable period of life, you
already began to think of growing old and to look backward. With you
it was the forenoon, with us it is the afternoon, which is the
brighter half of life."

After this I remember that our talk branched into the subject of
popular sports and recreations at the present time as compared with
those of the nineteenth century.

"In one respect," said Dr. Leete, "there is a marked difference. The
professional sportsmen, which were such a curious feature of your day,
we have nothing answering to, nor are the prizes for which our
athletes contend money prizes, as with you. Our contests are always
for glory only. The generous rivalry existing between the various
guilds, and the loyalty of each worker to his own, afford a constant
stimulation to all sorts of games and matches by sea and land, in
which the young men take scarcely more interest than the honorary
guildsmen who have served their time. The guild yacht races off
Marblehead take place next week, and you will be able to judge for
yourself of the popular enthusiasm which such events nowadays call out
as compared with your day. The demand for '_panem et circenses_'
preferred by the Roman populace is recognized nowadays as a wholly
reasonable one. If bread is the first necessity of life, recreation is
a close second, and the nation caters for both. Americans of the
nineteenth century were as unfortunate in lacking an adequate
provision for the one sort of need as for the other. Even if the
people of that period had enjoyed larger leisure they would, I fancy,
have often been at a loss how to pass it agreeably. We are never in
that predicament."

CHAPTER XIX.

In the course of an early morning constitutional I visited
Charlestown. Among the changes, too numerous to attempt to indicate,
which mark the lapse of a century in that quarter, I particularly
noted the total disappearance of the old state prison.

"That went before my day, but I remember hearing about it," said Dr.
Leete, when I alluded to the fact at the breakfast table. "We have no
jails nowadays. All cases of atavism are treated in the hospitals."

"Of atavism!" I exclaimed, staring.

"Why, yes," replied Dr. Leete. "The idea of dealing punitively with
those unfortunates was given up at least fifty years ago, an