It will not do for us to boast about our young days and what they had to show.  It is a great deal better to boast of what they could not show, and, strange as it may seem, there is a certain satisfaction in it.  In these days of electric lighting, when you have only to touch a button and your parlor or bedroom is instantly flooded with light, it is a pleasure to revert to the era of the tinder-box, the flint and steel, and the brimstone match.  It gives me an almost proud satisfaction to tell how we used, when those implements were not at hand or not employed, to light our whale-oil lamp by blowing a live coal held against the wick, often swelling our cheeks and reddening our faces until we were on the verge of apoplexy.  I love to tell of our stage-coach experiences, of our sailing-packet voyages, of the semi-barbarous destitution of all modern comforts and conveniences through which we bravely lived and came out the estimable personages you find us.

Think of it!  All my boyish shooting was done with a flint-lock gun; the percussion lock came to me as one of those new-fangled notions people had just got hold of.  We ancients can make a grand display of minus quantities in our reminiscences, and the figures look almost as well as if they had the plus sign before them.

I am afraid that old people found life rather a dull business in the time of King David and his rich old subject and friend, Barzillai, who, poor man, could not have read a wicked novel, nor enjoyed a symphony concert, if they had had those luxuries in his day.  There were no pleasant firesides, for there were no chimneys.  There were no daily newspapers for the old man to read, and he could not read them if there were, with his dimmed eyes, nor hear them read, very probably, with his dulled ears.  There was no tobacco, a soothing drug, which in its various forms is a great solace to many old men and to some old women, Carlyle and his mother used to smoke their pipes together, you remember.

Old age is infinitely more cheerful, for intelligent people at least, than it was two or three thousand years ago.  It is our duty, so far as we can, to keep it so.  There will always be enough about it that is solemn, and more than enough, alas! that is saddening.  But how much there is in our times to lighten its burdens!  If they that look out at the windows be darkened, the optician is happy to supply them with eye-glasses for use before the public, and spectacles for their hours of privacy.  If the grinders cease because they are few, they can be made many again by a third dentition, which brings no toothache in its train.  By temperance and good Habits of life, proper clothing, well-warmed, well-drained, and well-ventilated dwellings, and sufficient, not too much exercise, the old man of our time may keep his muscular strength in very good condition.  I doubt if Mr. Gladstone, who is fast nearing his eightieth birthday, would boast, in the style of Caleb,