e
world before me, not a moral in the slot. Not even an insurance moral. I
can remember the first one I ever got. I can remember the landscape, the
weather, the--I can remember how everything looked. It was an old moral,
an old second-hand moral, all out of repair, and didn't fit, anyway. But
if you are careful with a thing like that, and keep it in a dry place,
and save it for processions, and Chautauquas, and World's Fairs, and so
on, and disinfect it now and then, and give it a fresh coat of whitewash
once in a while, you will be surprised to see how well she will last and
how long she will keep sweet, or at least inoffensive. When I got
that mouldy old moral, she had stopped growing, because she hadn't any
exercise; but I worked her hard, I worked her Sundays and all. Under
this cultivation she waxed in might and stature beyond belief, and
served me well and was my pride and joy for sixty-three years; then
she got to associating with insurance presidents, and lost flesh and
character, and was a sorrow to look at and no longer competent for
business. She was a great loss to me. Yet not all loss. I sold her--ah,
pathetic skeleton, as she was--I sold her to Leopold, the pirate King of
Belgium; he sold her to our Metropolitan Museum, and it was very glad to
get her, for without a rag on, she stands 57 feet long and 16 feet high,
and they think she's a brontosaur. Well, she looks it. They believe it
will take nineteen geological periods to breed her match.

Morals are of inestimable value, for every man is born crammed with sin
microbes, and the only thing that can extirpate these sin microbes
is morals. Now you take a sterilized Christian--I mean, you take
the sterilized Christian, for there's only one. Dear sir, I wish you
wouldn't look at me like that.

Threescore years and ten!

It is the Scriptural statute of limitations. After that, you owe
no active duties; for you the strenuous life is over. You are a
time-expired man, to use Kipling's military phrase: You have served your
term, well or less well, and you are mustered out. You are become an
honorary member of the republic, you are emancipated, compulsions are
not for you, nor any bugle-tail but "lights out." You pay the time-worn
duty bills if you choose, or decline if you prefer--and without
prejudice--for they are not legally collectable.

The previous-engagement plea, which in forty years has cost you so many
tinges, you cam lay aside forever; on this side