Making speeches without preparation is no gift of mine; and I was resolved to shirk any new opportunity, but in the next and larger Sunday-school I found myself in the rear of the assemblage; so I was very willing to go on the platform a moment for the sake of getting a good look at the scholars.  On the spur of the moment I could not recall any of the old idiotic talks which visitors used to insult me with when I was a pupil there; and I was sorry for this, since it would have given me time and excuse to dawdle there and take a long and satisfying look at what I feel at liberty to say was an array of fresh young comeliness not matchable in another Sunday-school of the same size.  As I talked merely to get a chance to inspect; and as I strung out the random rubbish solely to prolong the inspection, I judged it but decent to confess these low motives, and I did so.

If the Model Boy was in either of these Sunday-schools, I did not see him.  The Model Boy of my time—­we never had but the one—­was perfect:  perfect in manners, perfect in dress, perfect in conduct, perfect in filial piety, perfect in exterior godliness; but at bottom he was a prig; and as for the contents of his skull, they could have changed place with the contents of a pie and nobody would have been the worse off for it but the pie.  This fellow’s reproachlessness was a standing reproach to every lad in the village.  He was the admiration of all the mothers, and the detestation of all their sons.  I was told what became of him, but as it was a disappointment to me, I will not enter into details.  He succeeded in life.

Chapter 55 A Vendetta and Other Things

During my three days’ stay in the town, I woke up every morning with the impression that I was a boy—­for in my dreams the faces were all young again, and looked as they had looked in the old times—­but I went to bed a hundred years old, every night—­for meantime I had been seeing those faces as they are now.

Of course I suffered some surprises, along at first, before I had become adjusted to the changed state of things.  I met young ladies who did not seem to have changed at all; but they turned out to be the daughters of the young ladies I had in mind—­sometimes their grand-daughters.  When you are told that a stranger of fifty is a grandmother, there is nothing surprising about it; but if, on the contrary, she is a person whom you knew as a little girl, it seems impossible.  You say to yourself, ’How can a little girl be a grandmother.’  It takes some little time to accept and realize the fact that while you have been growing old, your friends have not been standing still, in that matter.

I noticed that the greatest changes observable were with the women, not the men.  I saw men whom thirty years had changed but slightly; but their wives had grown old.  These were good women; it is very wearing to be good.