e
remained the last living reminiscence of a time that but for him
would have been forgotten. Deprived of the wise counsels of his
great-great-great-great-great-grandfather Adam and of the gentle
admonitions of his great-great-great-great-great-grandmother Eve,
Methuselah felt not only lonesome but even in danger of wrong-doing, so
precious to him had been the teachings of these worthy progenitors.
And what particularly disturbed Methuselah were the dreadful changes
that had taken place in society since he was a boy. Dress, speech,
customs, and morals were all different now from what they used to be.

When Methuselah was a boy,--ah, he remembered it well,--people went
hither and thither clad only in simple fig-leaf garb; and they were
content therewith.

When Methuselah was a boy, people spoke a plain, direct language,
strong in its truth, its simplicity, and its honest vigor.

When Methuselah was a boy, manners were open and unaffected, and morals
were pure and healthy.

But now all these things were changed. An evil called fashion had
filled the minds of men and women with vanity. From the sinful land of
Nod and from other pagan countries came divers tradesmen with purples
and linens and fine feathers, whereby a wicked pride was engendered,
and from these sinful countries, too, came frivolous manners that
supplanted the guileless etiquette of the past.

Moreover, traffic and intercourse with the subtle heathen had corrupted
and perverted the speech of Adam's time: crafty phrases and false
rhetorics had crept in, and the grand old Edenic idioms either were
fast being debased or had become wholly obsolete. Such new-fangled
words as "eftsoon," "albeit," "wench," "soothly," "zounds," "whenas,"
and "sithence" had stolen into common usage, making more direct and
simpler speech a jest and a byword.

Likewise had prudence given way to extravagance, abstemiousness to
intemperance, dignity to frivolity, and continence to lust; so that by
these evils was Methuselah grievously tormented, and it repented him
full sore that he had lived to see such exceeding wickedness upon
earth. But in the midst of all these follies did Methuselah maintain
an upright and godly life, and continually did he bless God for that he
had held him in the path of rectitude.

Now when Methuselah was in the 964th summer of his sojourn he was
called upon to mourn the death of his son Lamech, whom an inscrutable
Providence had cut off in what i