That when we stand with tearless eye
And turn the beggar from our door,
They still approve us when we sigh,
“Ah, had I but one thousand more!”

That weakness smoothed the path of sin,
In half the slips our youth has known;
And whatsoe’er its blame has been,
That Mercy flowers on faults outgrown.

Though temples crowd the crumbled brink
O’erhanging truth’s eternal flow,
Their tablets bold with what we think,
Their echoes dumb to what we know;

That one unquestioned text we read,
All doubt beyond, all fear above,
Nor crackling pile nor cursing creed
Can burn or blot it:  God is love!

CHAPTER VII

[This particular record is noteworthy principally for containing a paper by my friend, the Professor, with a poem or two annexed or intercalated.  I would suggest to young persons that they should pass over it for the present, and read, instead of it, that story about the young man who was in love with the young lady, and in great trouble for something like nine pages, but happily married on the tenth page or thereabouts, which, I take it for granted, will be contained in the periodical where this is found, unless it differ from all other publications of the kind.  Perhaps, if such young people will lay the number aside, and take it up ten years, or a little more, from the present time, they may find something in it for their advantage.  They can’t possibly understand it all now.]

My friend, the Professor, began talking with me one day in a dreary sort of way.  I couldn’t get at the difficulty for a good while, but at last it turned out that somebody had been calling him an old man.—­He didn’t mind his students calling him the old man, he said.  That was a technical expression, and he thought that he remembered hearing it applied to himself when he was about twenty-five.  It may be considered as a familiar and sometimes endearing appellation.  An Irishwoman calls her husband “the old man,” and he returns the caressing expression by speaking of her as “the old woman.”  But now, said he, just suppose a case like one of these.  A young stranger is overheard talking of you as a very nice old gentleman.  A friendly and genial critic speaks of your green old age as illustrating the truth of some axiom you had uttered with reference to that period of life.  What I call an old man is a person with a smooth, shining crown and a fringe of scattered white hairs, seen in the streets on sunshiny days, stooping as he walks, bearing a cane, moving cautiously and slowly; telling old stories, smiling at present follies, living in a narrow world of dry habits; one that remains waking when others have dropped asleep, and keeps a little night-lamp-flame of life burning year after year, if the lamp is not upset, and there is only a careful hand held round it to prevent the puffs of wind from blowing the flame out.  That’s what I call an old man.