The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Struggle For Life, by Thomas Bailey Aldrich

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Title: A Struggle For Life

Author: Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Release Date: November 6, 2007 [EBook #23356]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A STRUGGLE FOR LIFE ***

Produced by David Widger

A STRUGGLE FOR LIFE.

By Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Boston And New York Houghton Mifflin Company

Copyright, 1873, 1885, and 1901

One morning as I was passing through Boston Common, which lies between
my home and my office, I met a gentleman lounging along The Mall. I
am generally preoccupied when walking, and often thread my way through
crowded streets without distinctly observing any one. But this man's
face forced itself upon me, and a singular face it was. His eyes were
faded, and his hair, which he wore long, was flecked with gray. His hair
and eyes, if I may say so, were sixty years old, the rest of him not
thirty. The youthfulness of his figure, the elasticity of his gait, and
the venerable appearance of his head were incongruities that drew more
than one pair of curious eyes towards him, He excited in me the painful
suspicion that he had got either somebody else's head or somebody else's
body. He was evidently an American, at least so far as the upper part
of him was concerned--the New England cut of countenance is
unmistakable--evidently a man who had seen something of the world, but
strangely young and old.

Before reaching the Park Street gate, I had taken up the thread of
thought which he had unconsciously broken; yet throughout the day this
old young man, with his unwrinkled brow and silvered locks, glided in
like a phantom between me and my duties.

The next morning I again encountered him on The Mall. He was resting
lazily on the green rails, watching two little sloops in distress, which
two ragged ship-owners had consigned to the mimic perils of the Pond.
The vessels lay becalmed in the middle of the ocean, displaying a
tantalizing lack of sympathy with the frantic helplessness of the owners
on shore. As the gentleman observed their dilemma, a light came into his
faded eyes, then died out leaving them d