And the neighbors come and laugh and gossip, and so

do I;

I find myself often laughing at things that have long gone by.

To be sure the preacher says our sins should make us

sad;

But mine is a time of peace, and there is grace to be

had;

And God, not man, is the Judge of us all when life shall

cease;

And in this Book, little Annie, the message is one of

peace.

And age is a time of peace, so it be free from pain; And happy has been my life, but I would not live it again.

I seem to be tired a little, that's all, and long for rest; Only at your age, Annie, I could have wept with the

best.

So Willy has gone, my beauty, my eldest born, my

flower;

But how can I weep for Willy? he has but gone for an

hour,

Gone for a minute, my son, from this room into the

next;

I too shall go in a minute. What time have I to be

vext?

THE ANCIENT MAN.

TRANSLATED BY L. O. FROM THE GERMAN OF JEAN PAUL RICHTER'S MEMOIR OF FIBEL, AUTHOR OF THE BIENENRODA SPELJ ING-BOOK.

"He is insensibly subdued

To settled quict. He is one by whom

All effort seems forgotten; one to whom

Long patience hath such mild composure given,

That patience now doth seem a thing of which

He hath no need. He is by Nature led
To peace so perfect, that the young behold
With envy what the old man hardly feels."

WORDSWORTH.

HE stream of Fibel's history having vanished under ground, like a second river Rhone, I was obliged to explore where story or stream again burst forth, and for this purpose I questioned every one. I was told that no one could better inform me than an exceedingly aged man, more than a hundred and twenty-five years old, who lived a few miles from the village of Bienenroda, and who, having been young at the same time with Fibel, must

know all about him. The prospect of shaking hands with the very oldest man living on the face of the earth enraptured me. I said to myself that a most novel and peculiar sensation must be excited by having a whole past century before you, bodily present, compact and alive, in the century now passing; by holding, hand to hand, a man of the age of the antediluvians, over whose head so many entire generations of young mornings and old evenings have fled, and before whom one stands, in fact, as neither young nor old; to listen to a human spirit, outlandish, behind the time, almost mysteriously awful; sole survivor of the thousand gray, cold sleepers, coevals of his own remote, hoary age; standing as sentinel before the ancient dead, looking coldly and strangely on life's silly novelties; finding in the present no cooling for his inborn spirit-thirst, no more enchanting yesterdays or to-morrows, but only the day-before-yesterday of youth, and the day-after-to-morrow of death. It may consequently be imagined that so very old a man would speak only of his farthest past, of his early day-dawn, which, of course, in the long evening of his protracted day, must now be blending with his midnight. On the other hand, that one like myself would not feel particularly younger before such a millionnaire of hours, as the Bienenroda Patriarch must be; and that his presence must make one feel more conscious of death than of immortality. A very aged man is a more pow

is, the farther we look back to the succession of young persons who have mouldered in it; sometimes a maiden is concealed in an ancient grave; but an ancient dwindled body hides only an imprisoned spirit.

An opportunity for visiting the Patriarch was presented by a return coach-and-six, belonging to a count, on which I was admitted to a seat with the coachman. Just before arriving at Bienenroda, he pointed with his whip toward an orchard, tuneful with song, and said, "There sits the old man with his little animals around him." I sprang from the noble equipage and went toward him. I ventured to expect that the Count's six horses would give me, before the old man, the appearance of a person of rank, apart from the simplicity of my dress, whereby princes and heroes are wont to distinguish themselves from their tinselled lackeys. I was, therefore, a little surprised that the old man kept on playing with his pet hare, not even checking the barking of his poodle, as if counts were his daily bread, until, at last, he lifted his oil-cloth hat from his head. A buttoned overcoat, which gave room to see his vest, a long pair of knit over-alls, which were, in fact, enormous stockings, and a neckerchief, which hung down to his bosom, made his dress look modern enough. His time-worn frame was far more peculiar. The inner part of the eye, which is black in childhood,

was quite white; his tallness, more than his years, seemed to bow him over into an arch; the outturned point of his chin gave to his speech the appearance of mumbling; yet the expression of his countenance was lively, his eyes bright, his jaws full of white teeth, and his head covered with light hair.

I began by saying: "I came here solely on your account to see a man for whom there can assuredly be little new under the sun, though he himself is something very new under it. You are now strictly in your five and twenties; a man in your best years; since after a century a new reckoning commences. For myself, I confess that after once clambering over the century terminus, or churchwall of a hundred years, I should neither know how old I was, nor whether I was myself. I should begin fresh and free, just as the world's history has often done, counting again from the year one, in the middle of a thousand years. Yet why can not a man live to be as old as is many a giant tree of India still standing? It is well to question very old people concerning the methods by which they have prolonged their lives. How you account for it, dear old sir?"

do

I was beginning to be vexed at the good man's silence, when he softly replied: "Some suppose it is because I have always been cheerful; because I have adopted the maxim, 'Never sad, ever glad'; but I ascribe it wholly to our dear Lord God; since