s we get on comfortably, but it is the
struggle after luxuries that fills society with distress, and populates
prisons, and sends hundreds of people stark mad. Dissatisfied with a plain
house, and ordinary apparel, and respectable surroundings, they plunge
their head into enterprises and speculations from which they have to sneak
out in disgrace. Thousands of men have sacrificed honor and religion for
luxuries, and died with the freezer about their ears.

Young Catchem has one horse, but wants six. Lives in a nice house on
Thirtieth street, but wants one on Madison Square. Has one beautiful wife,
but wants four. Owns a hundred thousand dollars of Erie stock, but wants a
million. Plunges his head into schemes of all sorts, eats his way to the
bottom of the can till he cannot extricate himself, and constables, and
sheriffs, and indignant society, which would have said nothing had he been
successful, go to pounding him because he cannot get his head out.

Our poor old Carlo is dead now. We all cried when we found that he would
never frisk again at our coming, nor put up his paw against us. But he
lived long enough to preach the sermon about caution and contentment of
which I have been the stenographer.

CHAPTER V.

OLD GAMES REPEATED.

We tarried longer in the dining-room this evening than usual, and the
children, losing their interest in what we were saying got to playing all
about us in a very boisterous way, but we said nothing, for it is the
evening hour, and I think it keeps one fresh to have these things going on
around us. Indeed, we never get over being boys and girls. The good,
healthy man sixty years of age is only a boy with added experience. A woman
is only an old girl. Summer is but an older spring. August is May in its
teens. We shall be useful in proportion as we keep young in our feelings.
There is no use for fossils except in museums and on the shelf. I like
young old folks.

Indeed, we all keep doing over what we did in childhood. You thought that
long ago you got through with "blind-man's-buff," and "hide-and-seek," and
"puss in the corner," and "tick-tack-to," and "leap-frog," but all our
lives are passed in playing those old games over again.

You say, "What a racket those children make in the other room! When Squire
Jones' boys come over to spend the evening with our children, it seems as
if they would tear the house down." "Father, be patient!" the wife says;
"we once played 'blind-man