First.  As I feel, that, when I have anything to do, there is less time for it than when I was younger, I find that I give my attention more thoroughly, and use my time more economically than ever before; so that I can learn anything twice as easily as in my earlier days.  I am not, therefore, afraid to attack a new study.  I took up a difficult language a very few years ago with good success, and think of mathematics and metaphysics by-and-by.

Secondly.  I have opened my eyes to a good many neglected privileges and pleasures within my reach, and requiring only a little courage to enjoy them.  You may well suppose it pleased me to find that old Cato was thinking of learning to play the fiddle, when I had deliberately taken it up in my old age, and satisfied myself that I could get much comfort, if not much music, out of it.

Thirdly.  I have found that some of those active exercises, which are commonly thought to belong to young folks only, may be enjoyed at a much later period.

A young friend has lately written an admirable article in one of the journals, entitled, “Saints and their Bodies.”  Approving of his general doctrines, and grateful for his records of personal experience, I cannot refuse to add my own experimental confirmation of his eulogy of one particular form of active exercise and amusement, namely, boating.  For the past nine years, I have rowed about, during a good part of the summer, on fresh or salt water.  My present fleet on the river Charles consists of three rowboats. 1.  A small flat-bottomed skiff of the shape of a flat-iron, kept mainly to lend to boys. 2.  A fancy “dory” for two pairs of sculls, in which I sometimes go out with my young folks. 3.  My own particular water-sulky, a “skeleton” or “shell” race-boat, twenty-two feet long, with huge outriggers, which boat I pull with ten-foot sculls,—­alone, of course, as it holds but one, and tips him out, if he doesn’t mind what he is about.  In this I glide around the Back Bay, down the stream, up the Charles to Cambridge and Watertown, up the Mystic, round the wharves, in the wake of steamboats, which have a swell after them delightful to rock upon; I linger under the bridges,—­those “caterpillar bridges,” as my brother Professor so happily called them; rub against the black sides of old wood-schooners; cool down under the overhanging stern of some tall India-man; stretch across to the Navy-Yard, where the sentinel warns me off from the Ohio,—­just as if I should hurt her by lying in her shadow; then strike out into the harbor, where the water gets clear and the air smells of the ocean,—­till all at once I remember, that, if a west wind blows up of a sudden, I shall drift along past the islands, out of sight of the dear old State-house,—­plate, tumbler, knife and fork all waiting at home, but no chair drawn up at the table,—­all the dear people waiting, waiting, waiting, while the boat is sliding, sliding, sliding into the great desert, where