Ah, me! here am I groaning just as the old Greek sighed Ai, ai! and the old Roman, Eheu! I have no doubt we should die of shame and grief at the indignities offered us by age, if it were not that we see so many others as badly or worse off than ourselves.  We always compare ourselves with our contemporaries.

[I was interrupted in my reading just here.  Before I began at the next breakfast, I read them these verses;—­I hope you will like them, and get a useful lesson from them.]

THE LAST BLOSSOM.

  Though young no more, we still would dream
    Of beauty’s dear deluding wiles;
  The leagues of life to graybeards seem
    Shorter than boyhood’s lingering miles.

  Who knows a woman’s wild caprice? 
    It played with Goethe’s silvered hair,
  And many a Holy Father’s “niece”
    Has softly smoothed the papal chair.

  When sixty bids us sigh in vain
    To melt the heart of sweet sixteen,
  We think upon those ladies twain
    Who loved so well the tough old Dean.

  We see the Patriarch’s wintry face,
    The maid of Egypt’s dusky glow,
  And dream that Youth and Age embrace,
    As April violets fill with snow.

  Tranced in her Lord’s Olympian smile
    His lotus-loving Memphian lies,—­
  The musky daughter of the Nile
    With plaited hair and almond eyes.

  Might we but share one wild caress
    Ere life’s autumnal blossoms fall,
  And Earth’s brown, clinging lips impress
    The long cold kiss that waits us all!

  My bosom heaves, remembering yet
    The morning of that blissful day
  When Rose, the flower of spring, I met,
    And gave my raptured soul away.

  Flung from her eyes of purest blue,
    A lasso, with its leaping chain
  Light as a loop of larkspurs, flew
    O’er sense and spirit, heart and brain.

  Thou com’st to cheer my waning age,
    Sweet vision, waited for so long! 
  Dove that wouldst seek the poet’s cage,
    Lured by the magic breath of song!

  She blushes!  Ah, reluctant maid,
    Love’s drapeau rouge the truth has told! 
  O’er girlhood’s yielding barricade
    Floats the great Leveller’s crimson fold!

  Come to my arms!—­love heeds not years;
    No frost the bud of passion knows.—­
  Ha! what is this my frenzy hears? 
    A voice behind me uttered,—­Rose!

  Sweet was her smile,—­but not for me;
    Alas, when woman looks too kind,
  Just turn your foolish head and see,—­
    Some youth is walking close behind!

As to giving up because the almanac or the Family-Bible says that it is about time to do it, I have no intention of doing any such thing.  I grant you that I burn less carbon than some years ago.  I see people of my standing really good for nothing, decrepit, effete, la levre inferieure deja pendante, with what little life they have left mainly concentrated in their epigastrium.  But as the disease of old age is epidemic, endemic, and sporadic, and everybody that lives long enough is sure to catch it, I am going to say, for the encouragement of such as need it, how I treat the malady in my own case.