only begins administering it at about
the time of the "grand climacteric," the ninth septennial period, the
sixty-third year. More and more freely she gives it, as the years go
on, to her grey-haired children, until, if they last long enough, every
faculty is benumbed, and they drop off quietly into sleep under its
benign influence.

Do you say that old age is unfeeling? It has not vital energy enough to
supply the waste of the more exhausting emotions. Old Men's Tears, which
furnished the mournful title to Joshua Scottow's Lamentations, do not
suggest the deepest grief conceivable. A little breath of wind brings
down the raindrops which have gathered on the leaves of the tremulous
poplars. A very slight suggestion brings the tears from Marlborough's
eyes, but they are soon over, and he is smiling again as an allusion
carries him back to the days of Blenheim and Malplaquet. Envy not the
old man the tranquillity of his existence, nor yet blame him if it
sometimes looks like apathy. Time, the inexorable, does not threaten him
with the scythe so often as with the sand-bag. He does not cut, but
he stuns and stupefies. One's fellow-mortals can afford to be as
considerate and tender with him as Time and Nature.

There was not much boasting among us of our present or our past, as we
sat together in the little room at the great hotel. A certain amount
of self-deception is quite possible at threescore years and ten, but at
three score years and twenty Nature has shown most of those who live to
that age that she is earnest, and means to dismantle and have done with
them in a very little while. As for boasting of our past, the laudator
temporis acti makes but a poor figure in our time. Old people used to
talk of their youth as if there were giants in those days. We knew some
tall men when we were young, but we can see a man taller than any one
among them at the nearest dime museum. We had handsome women among us,
of high local reputation, but nowadays we have professional beauties
who challenge the world to criticise them as boldly as Phryne ever
challenged her Athenian admirers. We had fast horses,--did not "Old
Blue" trot a mile in three minutes? True, but there is a three-year-old
colt just put on the track who has done it in a little more than two
thirds of that time. It seems as if the material world had been made
over again since we were boys. It is but a short time since we were
counting up the miracles we had lived to wit