We tarried longer in the dining-room this evening than usual, and the children, losing their interest in what we were saying got to playing all about us in a very boisterous way, but we said nothing, for it is the evening hour, and I think it keeps one fresh to have these things going on around us.  Indeed, we never get over being boys and girls.  The good, healthy man sixty years of age is only a boy with added experience.  A woman is only an old girl.  Summer is but an older spring.  August is May in its teens.  We shall be useful in proportion as we keep young in our feelings.  There is no use for fossils except in museums and on the shelf.  I like young old folks.

Indeed, we all keep doing over what we did in childhood.  You thought that long ago you got through with “blind-man’s-buff,” and “hide-and-seek,” and “puss in the corner,” and “tick-tack-to,” and “leap-frog,” but all our lives are passed in playing those old games over again.

You say, “What a racket those children make in the other room!  When Squire Jones’ boys come over to spend the evening with our children, it seems as if they would tear the house down.”  “Father, be patient!” the wife says; “we once played ‘blind-man’s-buff’ ourselves.”  Sure enough, father is playing it now, if he only knew it.  Much of our time in life we go about blindfolded, stumbling over mistakes, trying to catch things that we miss, while people stand round the ring and titter, and break out with half-suppressed laughter, and push us ahead, and twitch the corner of our eye-bandage.  After a while we vehemently clutch something with both hands, and announce to the world our capture; the blindfold is taken from our eyes, and, amid the shouts of the surrounding spectators, we find we have, after all, caught the wrong thing.  What is that but “blind-man’s buff” over again?

You say, “Jenny and Harry, go to bed.  It seems so silly for you to sit there making two parallel lines perpendicular, and two parallel lines horizontal, and filling up the blanks with crosses and o’s, and then crying out ‘tick-tack-to.’” My dear man, you are doing every day in business just what your children are doing in the nursery.  You find it hard to get things into a line.  You have started out for worldly success.  You get one or two things fixed but that is not what you want.  After a while you have had two fine successes.  You say, “If I can have a third success, I will come out ahead.”  But somebody is busy on the same slate, trying to hinder you getting the game.  You mark; he marks.  I think you will win.  To the first and second success which you have already gained you add the third, for which you have long been seeking.  The game is yours, and you clap your hands, and hunch your opponent in the side, and shout,

  “Tick-tack-to,
  Three in a row.”