A modern philosopher even goes so far as to say that our memories in old age are always grateful to us.  Our pleasures are remembered, but our pains are forgotten; ‘if we try to recall a physical pain,’ she writes (for it is a female), ‘we find it to be impossible,’ From which I gather only this for certain, that that woman never had the gout.

The folks who come my way, indeed, seem to remember their physical ailments very distinctly, to judge by the way they talk of them; and are exceedingly apprehensive of their recurrence.  Nay, it is curious to see how some old men will resent the compliments of their juniors on their state of health or appearance.  ’Stuff and nonsense!’ cried old Sam Rogers, grimly; ’I tell you there is no such thing as a fine old man.’  In a humbler walk of life I remember to have heard a similar but more touching reply.  It was upon the great centenarian question raised by Mr. Thorns.  An old woman in a workhouse, said to be a hundred years of age, was sent for by the Board of Guardians, to decide the point by her personal testimony.  One can imagine the half-dozen portly prosperous figures, and the contrast their appearance offered to that of the bent and withered crone.  ‘Now, Betty,’ said the chairman with unctuous patronage, ’you look hale and hearty enough, yet they tell me that you are a hundred years old; is this really true?’ ‘God Almighty knows, sir,’ was her reply, ‘but I feel a thousand.’

  And there are so many people nowadays who ‘feel a thousand.’

It is for this reason that the gift of old age is unwished for, and the prospect of future life without encouragement.  It is the modern conviction that there will be some kind of work in it; and even though what we shall be set to do may be ’wrought with tumult of acclaim,’ we have had enough of work.  What follows, almost as a matter of course, is that the thought of possible extinction has lost its terrors.  Heaven and its glories may have still their charms for those who are not wearied out with toil in this life; but the slave draws for himself a far other picture of home.  His is no passionate cry to be admitted into the eternal city; he murmurs sullenly, ‘Let me rest.’

It was a favourite taunt with the sceptics of old—­those Early Fathers of infidelity, who used to occupy themselves so laboriously with scraping at the rind of the Christian Faith—­that until the Cross arose men were not afraid of Death.  But that arrow has lost its barb.  The Fear of Death, even among professing Christians, is now comparatively rare; I do not mean merely among dying men—­in whom those who have had acquaintance with deathbeds tell us they see it scarcely ever—­but with the quick and hale.  Even with very ignorant persons, the idea that things may be a great deal worse for us hereafter than even at present is not generally