bundle.—­If my young friend, whose excellent article I have referred to, could only introduce the manly art of self-defence among the clergy, I am satisfied that we should have better sermons and an infinitely less quarrelsome church-militant.  A bout with the gloves would let off the ill-nature, and cure the indigestion, which, united, have embroiled their subject in a bitter controversy.  We should then often hear that a point of difference between an infallible and a heretic, instead of being vehemently discussed in a series of newspaper articles, had been settled by a friendly contest in several rounds, at the close of which the parties shook hands and appeared cordially reconciled.

But boxing you and I are too old for, I am afraid.  I was for a moment tempted, by the contagion of muscular electricity last evening, to try the gloves with the Benicia Boy, who looked in as a friend to the noble art; but remembering that he had twice my weight and half my age, besides the advantage of his training, I sat still and said nothing.

There is one other delicate point I wish to speak of with reference to old age.  I refer to the use of dioptric media which correct the diminished refracting power of the humors of the eye,—­in other words, spectacles.  I don’t use them.  All I ask is a large, fair type, a strong daylight or gas-light, and one yard of focal distance, and my eyes are as good as ever.  But if your eyes fail, I can tell you something encouraging.  There is now living in New York State an old gentleman who, perceiving his sight to fail, immediately took to exercising it on the finest print, and in this way fairly bullied Nature out of her foolish habit of taking liberties at five-and-forty, or thereabout.  And now this old gentleman performs the most extraordinary feats with his pen, showing that his eyes must be a pair of microscopes.  I should be afraid to say to you how much he writes in the compass of a half-dime,—­ whether the Psalms or the Gospels, or the Psalms and the Gospels, I won’t be positive.

But now let me tell you this.  If the time comes when you must lay down the fiddle and the bow, because your fingers are too stiff, and drop the ten-foot sculls, because your arms are too weak, and, after dallying awhile with eye-glasses, come at last to the undisguised reality of spectacles,—­if the time comes when that fire of life we spoke of has burned so low that where its flames reverberated there is only the sombre stain of regret, and where its coals glowed, only the white ashes that cover the embers of memory,—­don’t let your heart grow cold, and you may carry cheerfulness and love with you into the teens of your second century, if you can last so long.  As our friend, the Poet, once said, in some of those old-fashioned heroics of his which he keeps for his private reading,—­