or another rested on the sustaining power of the father.
The patriarch, in ancient times, protected and sustained his dependents,
and, in return, received their entire allegiance, wielding over them the
power of life and death, and thus initiating the first form of human
government. Next came the cities where the government was formed by all
the fathers together in council, and our village and city legislators
are, to this day, called "the city fathers," although the reverence in
which so august a body was once held has departed with the silent flight
of the dignity of our modern convocations. Some one has said of

A FINE AND HONORABLE OLD MAN,

that he is in the childhood of immortality. "One's age should be
tranquil," says Dr. Arnold, "as one's childhood should be playful; hard
work at either extremity of human existence, seems to me out of place;
the morning and the evening should be alike cool and peaceful; at midday
the sun may burn, and men may labor under it." See to it, if it be
within your power, that your father has the rest due to the evening of
his days. Let him sit in the cool. Let him listen to the voices of his
night--the crickets that cry out his mortality and the nightingales that
sing of Paradise!

"GRAY HAIRS

seem to fancy," says Richter, "like the light of a soft moon silvering
over the evening of life." "Old age," says Madame Swetchine, "is not one
of the beauties of creation, but it is one of its harmonies. The law of
contrasts is one of the laws of beauty. Shadows give light its worth;
sternness enchances mildness; solemnity splendor."

EXPERIENCE.

"Old age was naturally more honored," says Joubert, "in times when
people could not know much more than what they had seen." There are
still many avenues of learning in which practical experience seems to be
paramount in value. In business its great worth is never underestimated.
You have heard of the partnership built on a contribution by one
firm-member of the money, and by the other of the experience; and of
the dissolution of that firm, leaving the one who put in the money with
all the experience, and the one who put in the experience with all the
money! The practices of law and medicine are famous for the need of age,
which they harness anew with the labors and exertions ordinarily
demanded of youth. "Tell me," says Shakerly Marmion, "what you find
better or more honorable than age. Is not wisdom entailed upon it?

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