used a minute or two, and as no one spoke out; I put a question to
the Counsellor.

Are you quite sure that you wish to live to be threescore and twenty
years old?

"Most certainly I do. Don't they say that Theophrastus lived to his
hundred and seventh year, and did n't he complain of the shortness of
life? At eighty a man has had just about time to get warmly settled
in his nest. Do you suppose he doesn't enjoy the quiet of that
resting-place? No more haggard responsibility to keep him awake
nights,--unless he prefers to retain his hold on offices and duties from
which he can be excused if he chooses. No more goading ambitions,--he
knows he has done his best. No more jealousies, if he were weak
enough to feel such ignoble stirrings in his more active season. An
octogenarian with a good record, and free from annoying or distressing
infirmities, ought to be the happiest of men. Everybody treats him
with deference. Everybody wants to help him. He is the ward of the
generations that have grown up since he was in the vigor of maturity.
Yes, let me live to be fourscore years, and then I will tell you whether
I should like a few more years or not."

You carry the feelings of middle age, I said, in imagination, over into
the period of senility, and then reason and dream about it as if its
whole mode of being were like that of the earlier period of life. But
how many things there are in old age which you must live into if you
would expect to have any "realizing sense" of their significance! In the
first place, you have no coevals, or next to none. At fifty, your vessel
is stanch, and you are on deck with the rest, in all weathers. At sixty,
the vessel still floats, and you are in the cabin. At seventy, you, with
a few fellow-passengers, are on a raft. At eighty, you are on a spars to
which, possibly, one, or two, or three friends of about your own age are
still clinging. After that, you must expect soon to find yourself alone,
if you are still floating, with only a life-preserver to keep your old
white-bearded chin above the water.

Kindness? Yes, pitying kindness, which is a bitter sweet in which the
amiable ingredient can hardly be said to predominate. How pleasant do
you think it is to have an arm offered to you when you are walking on
a level surface, where there is no chance to trip? How agreeable do you
suppose it is to have your well-meaning friends shout and screech at
you, as if you were deaf as an adder, instead o