.

But what a path! Proceeding out of the darkness of morning, it struggles
through a brief day, sometimes in sunshine, and sometimes in shade, and
ends in the darkness of night. I glance along it, and the care-worn faces
of the companions of my manhood rise up, on either side, and farther back,
the speaking countenances of the friends of my youth. It is but a narrow
space, the land of Youth, and soon passed; but pleasant, and full of
images of beauty. The sun is not so bright and hot upon it as on some
other parts of the path; but we do not expect happiness in the garish
light of mid-day and reality. The mellowness of a summer evening sunset
lays on it, and thereby it becomes a faery land, a land of bliss and
dreams. How throng up, as I gaze, the forms of those early and best-loved
friends! How distinct and life-like, even at this distance, are their
characters and features! They are all there; not one name has been erased,
and not one picture dimmed, on the tablet of memory. The same warm smile
of kindling pleasure greets me; the same hands are thrown out, as if to
touch my own; and those bright eyes grow brighter as they are turned
toward me.

It is with such companions that I spend the last days of my earthly
pilgrimage; and thus, as I said before, though alone I am not solitary. Is
not such companionship sweet? When they visit me, I throw off old age, as
a garment. Smiling thoughts come gently over me, and life and happiness,
as of wont, course like the mad blood of fever through my veins. I feel
over again those old feelings, repass through those same scenes, and my
heart beats faster or grows pale in the same places and in the same manner
as it once did. The old fields and houses and roads come up too, clothed
at my command, in the snows of winter, or in the beauty of summer. Old
scenes, but still fresh and young; and I am sometimes tempted to believe
that the intervening years have been the illusion of a dream, and that I
am awakening in their midst.

All this, some will say, is the weakness of age. It seems to me to be
rather its strength. The future in life is nothing; and what is the bare
present to any one? The past, then, alone is left me. And if by living in
it I can keep my affections alive, instead of letting their fires,
according to the course of nature, or rather of custom, die down into cold
ashes, I do not call myself weak if I do as much as possible forget the
present.

I had, when I was young,