scorn
old authority. We let Titian and Keats go drown themselves. We are
skeptical in religion, and before our unrelenting iron throne
immortality and all things of faith plead in vain. Although I can show
still only a shabby inventory, certainly I would not exchange myself
for that other self in the twenties. I have acquired in these last few
years a less narrow sympathy and a belief that some of my colder
reasons may be wrong. Nor would I barter certain knacks of
thoughts--serious and humorous--for the renewed ability to leap across
a five-foot bar. I am less fearful of the world and its accidents. I
have less embarrassment before people. I am less moody. I tack and
veer less among my betters for some meaner profit. Surely I am growing
younger.

I seem to remember reading a story in which a scientist devised a
means of reversing the direction of the earth. Perhaps an explosion of
gases backfired against the east. Perhaps he built a monstrous lever
and contrived the moon to be his fulcrum. Anyway, here at last was the
earth spinning backward in its course--the spring preceding
winter--the sun rising in the west--one o'clock going before
twelve--soup trailing after nuts--the seed-time following upon the
harvest. And so it began to appear--so ran the story--that human life,
too, was reversed. Persons came into the world as withered grandames
and as old gentlemen with gold-headed canes, and then receded like
crabs backward into their maturity, then into their adolescence and
babyhood. To return from a protracted voyage was to find your younger
friends sunk into pinafores. But the story was really too ridiculous.

But in these last few years no doubt I do grow younger. The great
camera of the Master rolls its moving pictures backward. Perhaps I am
only thirty-eight now that the direction is reversed.

[Illustration]

I wonder what you thought, my dear X----, when we met recently at
dinner. We had not seen one another very often in these last few
years. Our paths have led apart and we have not been even at shouting
distance across the fields. It is needless to remind you, I hope, that
I once paid you marked attention. It began when we were boy and girl.
Our friends talked, you will recall. You were then less than a year
younger than myself, although no doubt you have since lost distance.
What a long time I spent upon my tie and collar--a stiff high collar
that almost touched my ears! Some other turn of fortune's
wheel