call myself a happy man. On my seventieth birthday, I felt as if I were standing on a mountain height, at whose foot the ocean of eternity was audibly rushing; while behind me, life, with its deserts and flower-gardens, its sunny days and its stormy days, spread out green, wild, and beautiful. Formerly, when I read or heard of the joylessness of age, I was filled with sadness; but I now wondered that it presented so much that was agreeable. The more the world diminished and grew dark, the less I felt the loss of it; for the dawn of the next world grew ever clearer and clearer. Thus rejoicing in God, and with him, I advance into the winter of life, beyond which no spring awaits me on this planet. The twilight of my existence on earth is shining round me ; but the world floats therein in a rosy light, more beautiful than the dawn of life. Others may look back with homesickness to the lost paradise of childhood. That paradise was never mine. I wandered about, an orphan, unloved, and forsaken of all but God. I thank him for this allotment; for it taught me to build my paradise within. The solemn evening is at hand, and it is welcome. I repent not that I have lived. Others, in their autumn, can survey and count up their collected harvests. This I cannot. I have scattered seed, but whither the wind has carried it I know not. The good-will alone was mine. God's hand decided concerning the success of my labor. Many an unproductive seed I have sown; but I do not, on that account, complain either of myself or of Heaven. Fortune has lavished on me no golden treasures; but contented with what my industry has acquired, and my economy has preserved, I enjoy that noble independence at which I have always aimed; and out of the little I possess I have been some times able to afford assist ance to others who were less for- AN healthy old fellow, that is not a fool, is the happiest creature living. It is at that time of life only men enjoy their faculties with pleasure and satisfaction. It is then 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. - STEEle. THE OLD MAN DREAM S. BY OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. FOR one hour of youthful joy! Give back my twentieth spring! Off with the wrinkled spoils of age! One moment let my life-blood stream My listening angel heard the prayer, And, calmly smiling, said, "But is there nothing in thy track To bid thee fondly stay, "And is there nothing yet unsaid, Why, yes; for memory would recall I could not bear to leave them all : I'll take - my — girl — and - boys! The smiling angel dropped his pen, — 66 Why, this will never do ; The man would be a boy again, And be a father too!" The household with its noise, And wrote my dream, when morning broke, To please the gray-haired boys. A RUSSIAN LADY OF THE OLD SCHOOL.* C IVE me your hand, dear reader, and accompany me on a visit to one of my neighbors. The day is fine, the blue sky of the month of May is a beautiful object; the smooth young leaves of the white hazel-trees are as brilliant as if they had been newly washed. The large, smooth fields are covered with that fine young grass which the sheep love so much to crop; on the right and left, on the long slopes of the hills, the rye-grass is waving, and over its smooth swell glide the shadows of the little flying clouds. In the distance, the woods are resplendent with the brilliant light; the ponds glitter, and the villages are bathed in yellow rays. Innumerable larks fly about, singing and beating their wings in unison; making their appearance first in one spot, then in another, they rise lightly from the fields, and again are as quick From Life in the Interior of Russia. |