The River Falls journal. (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1857-1861, 1858-11-17
GROWING OID.

pocket, and everything has gone right
with him, ever since he can rememlcr,-
while he sits in his arm chair he may
easily fancy himself young-indee,f quits
young-but it will not all do; ho is old
in spite of his heart, and his arm chair
and his fancies.
II is a pain full process, that beginning
to find out what all the world has known
for ever so lougf->that one is growing
old. How it shocks him some day, as
he is walking in the garden, to hear the
gardener talk to the cook about "the old
man, and the old man nobody in life
but his own alolcscent self. Old man!
And he steps as spry as cat, and be dis
charges the unfortunate gardener,
Then again, 1.-THE grasshoppcr is bur-
zen" for little things trouble him rs
they Lever did years ago, but then Inc
thinks little things have got their growth
since those old times. But this doesn't
quite satisfy him, and he muses. over it
Al he wonders why his shadow extends
SO far to the eastward.
Some day he meets strrncer in the
street, he is booted like trooper, and
bearded like a pard; he looks him square
in the eye. He is glad to see him; Won
ders if he don't remember him; declares
that he is little Bill Stokes that was. that
he made Eastwood whistles for, when no
Kept in the old red school house at Booos,
corners; and there he is right before him,
man to man. There is no use in DENYING
It; he can not prove an alibi, and he falls
INTO aabrown study as he thinks of it.
3. Then again, there is something tue
matter with his back, but he always calls
1T 'crick,' when all the while it is the
river Time that is playing the mischief.
tie knows it will not do for him to sit
near an open window as he used to do.
butt has latterly been n favorte idea with
HIM that the Summers grow briefer, and
tho winters colder. md what work they
make now with the baking; such crusts of
granite to them. Not such did his old
mother bring out from the old oven on
the long handled shovel, on those LONG,
gone Saturdays when he f.ncied ginger
bread the daily fare of angels.
BY and by he begins to experience
some difficulty in reading his old newspa-
per-somcthing with an L OR an Tx vol.
IN the corno" of it, that he never reincm-
bcrs he has taken since it was ks and
IN l; but then he charges it up on tho
typ and pronounces an anathema upon
nonpareil and minion, when it is nothing
but BREWER. .a ..... q. ..s-s...:-.
He fancies too, that the girls have
changed, when the change is nearer homo
for the man is growing old, and those
same maidens are wondering the while. if
he ever had a sweetheart, or could posi-
bly, Mt any time, have been young enough
to love.
So this painful process of discovery pro-
crosses, until apr;soner, he keeps the old
armchair, and tho old clock dial grows,
lin, and the old clock bell sounds n great
way off, aud he dozes in the open door,,
md loves to look Mt the setting suns, and
shares the childrcn's toys and talks him
self to sleep. 1t is a summer evening;
Yellow light falls upon the threshold and
.lang the floor, and invests the old mans
orm with an old glory. He sits in tho
lwelling of his SON, son his head reelincs
lpon his breast. Light steps steal softly
Iround him, but he hears them not. A
ct of little fingers are playing with bis
hin white Eair, but he does not heed it.
Two generations call to him; the second
8 strong and manly;it is "fathcr' they
liter; the third is child-Iike and gentle;
is ''grand- father they say, but he re-
urns no answer to either
"The sun has set, " somebody says; "the
lock has just run down." cries another;
the old man is asleep" whispers third;
nd sure enough he is, for the old man is
cad.