Staunton spectator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1849-1896, 1860-11-06
Growing Old.

If one has young heart in his left breast
pocket and everything has gone right with him
ever since he can remember, and he sits in bis
arm chair, he may easily fancy himself young
indeed, quite young-in fact, a 3uue,oils. But it
will not do. He is old in spite of his heart, and
his arm chair, and his fancies.
1t is painful process, that of beginning to
find out what the world has known ever so long,
that one is growing old. How it shocks him
some day, as he is walking in the garden, to
hear the gardener talking to the cook about the
"old man." and the old man nobody in lite but
his own adorable self. Old man And he
steps as spry as cat and discharges the unfor-
tunate gardener, and is in too much of passion
to give him character"
Then, again, ''the grasshopper is a burden"
for the little things trouble him as they never
did before, but he thinks little things have got
their growth since these old times. But this
don't quite satisfy him, and he muses. over it,
and wonders why his shadow extends so far to
the eastward.
Some day he meets stranger in the street;
he is booted like trooper and bearded like q
pard he looks him square in the eye. He is
glad to see him; wonders if he don't remember
him declares that he is little Bill Stokes that
was, that he made Eastwood whistles for him
when he s'kept" the old red school house at
Bogg's Corners; and there he. is right before
him, man to man. There is no use denying it !;
he cannot prove an alibi, and he falls ipto
brown study as he thinks of it,
Then, again, there's something the matter with
his back, but he always calls it a 'crick," when
all the time it is the river Time that is playing
the mischief. He knows that it will not do for
him to sit near an open window as he used to
do, but it has latterly been favorite idea with
him that the summers grow brief and the win
ters colder. And what work they make now
with the baking such crusts of granite to them.
Not such as did his old mother bring out from
the old oven on the long handled shovel, on
those long gone Saturdays, when he fancied GIN
gerbread the daily fare of the angels.
By and by be begins to experience some diff
Guilty in reading his old newspaper-somethiDg
with an L. or an XII. vol. in the corner OF 1t,
that he never remembers that he has taken when
it was two rs and an L. ; but then he charges it
upon the type, and pronounces an anathema up.
on nonpareil and minion when it is nothing but
BREWER.
He fancies, too, that the girls have changed,
when the change is nearer home, for the man is
growing old, and those same maidens are won
dering the while if he ever had a sweetheart, or
could possibly at any time been young enough
to love.
So this painful process of discovery progress
es, until, prisoner, be keeps the old arm chair,
and the old clock dial grows dim, and the old
clock bell sounds great way off, and he dozes
in the open door, and loves to look at the setting
sun, and shares the childrens toys, and talks
himself to sleep.
It is summer evening; yellow light falls up
on the Threshold, and along the floor, and in
vests the old mans form with an old glory. He
sits in the dwelling of his sons SON; his head
reclines upon his breast. Light steps steal soft
ly around him, but he hears them not. A set
of little fingers are playing with his thin, white
hair, but he does not heed it. Two generations
call to him the second is strong and manly it
is father they utter; the third is childlike and
gentle it is ''grandfather" they say. But he
returns no answer to either.
The sun has set,' somebody says; the clock
has just run down, cries another : 'the old man
is asleep whispers third, and sure enough he
is, for the old man is dead.