Alas! and I have not

The pleasant hour forgot,

When one pert lady said—

"Oh! I am quite

Bewildered with affright;

I see (sit quiet now!) a white hair on your head!"

Another, more benign,

Drew out that hair of mine,

And in her own dark hair

Pretended she had found

That one, and twirled it round—

Fair as she was, she never was so fair.

Walter Savage Landor.

WHAT matters it to him whose way

Lies upward with the immortal dead,

A few more hairs are turning gray,

A few more years of life are fled!

"LORD, keep my memory green."

Prof. Norton.

GR

ROWING old is like bodily existence refining away into spiritual life. True, the ripeness of the soul is hidden in the decay of the body; but so is many a ripe fruit in its husk.

William Mountford.

DEATH is another life. We bow our heads

At going out, we think, and enter straight
Another golden chamber of the king's,
Larger than this we have, and lovelier.

P. J. Bailey.

EVENING.

I.

WHEN eve empurples cliff and cave,

Thoughts of the heart, how soft ye flow;

Not softer on the western wave,

The golden lines of sunset glow.

II.

Then all by chance or fate removed,
Like spirits crowd upon the eye,
The few we liked, the one we loved,
And the whole heart is memory!

III.

And Life is like this fading hour,
Its beauty dying as we gaze;
Yet as its shadows round us lower,

Heaven pours above the brighter blaze.

IV.

When morning paints with gorgeous dye,
Our hope, our heart to earth is given;
But dark and lonely is the eye

That turns not, at its eve, to Heaven.

Croly.

CHANGE o'er the youthful frame must roll,

But love and life are of the soul!

CALL him not old, whose visionary brain

Holds o'er the past its undivided reign.
For him in vain the envious seasons roll,
Who bears eternal summer in his soul.
If yet the minstrel's song, the poet's lay,
Spring, with her birds, or children with their play,
Or maiden's smile, or heavenly dream of art
Stir the few life-drops creeping round his heart—
Turn to the record where his years are told-
Count his gray hairs, they cannot make him old!

Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, No. vii.

A

HEALTHY old fellow, that is not a fool, is the happiest creature living. At that time of life we have nothing to manage, as the phrase is; we speak the downright truth; and whether the rest of the world will give us the privilege, or not, we have so little to ask of them, that we can take it.

Richard Steele.

THE rarest of attainments is to grow old happily and

gracefully.

L. M. Child.

TEMPERANCE.

WOULDST see blithe looks, fresh cheeks beguile

WOULDST

Age? Wouldst see December smile?

Would see nests of new roses grow

In a bed of reverend snow?

Warm thoughts, free spirits flattering
Winter's self into a Spring?

In sum, wouldst see a man that can
Live to be old, and still a man?
Whose latest and most leaden hours

Fall with soft wings, stuck with soft flowers:
And when life's sweet fable ends,

Soul and body part like friends—
No quarrels, murmurs, no delay—
A kiss, a sigh, and so away?

This rare one, reader, wouldst thou see?

Hark, hither! and thyself be he.

Richard Crashaw.

AS

SI approve of a youth, that has something of the Old Man in him, so I am no less pleased with an Old Man that has something of the youth.

Cicero.

USE OF EXPERIENCE.

I HAVE learned ae thing in

folk to be ower misleared and importunate in their requests

to their Maker. It's best to be thankful and grateful for what

we receive, and gie him just his ain way o' things. He's nae likely to gang far wrang; an' gin he were, it's nae use crying a', ane for ane thing, and ane for anither, that likely to pit him right again.

THE SAFE SIDE.

HEN cease to wonder that I feel no grief

THEN

From age, which is of my delights the chief;
My hopes, if this assurance hath deceived,
(That I man's soul immortal have believed ;)
And if I err, no power shall dispossess
My thoughts of that expected happiness.
Though some minute philosophers pretend
That with our days our pains and pleasures end;
If it be so, I hold the safer side,

For none of them my error shall deride!

Sir John Denham.

OLD friends are best. King James used to call for his old

shoes; they were easiest for his feet.

John Selden.

DOST thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be

no more cakes and ale?

TWELFTH NIGHT-Act II., Scene IV.