Daily intelligencer. [volume] (Wheeling, Va. [W. Va.]) 1859-1865, 1860-08-02
Ne qnote a passagc or two:


Many of the most affecting thoughts
which can ever enter the human mind are
| concerning the lapse Of Time and the tra-
ces which lis lapse leaves upon human be-
ings. There is something that touches us
IN the bare thought of Growing Old.
know house on certain of whose walls
there hang portraits of members of the
family for many years back. 1t is not a
grand house, where to simple minds the
robes of hrocade and the suits of arm0r
fail to carry home the idea of real human
beings. 1t is the house of not wealthy
gentleman. The portraits represent peo-
! pie whose minds did not run much upOn
deep speculations or upon practical poll :
tics; but who no doubt had many thor q ITS
as to how they should succeed in getting
tue ends to meet. With such people docs
| the writer feel at home; with such prola-
bly, does the majority of his readers. l
remember there, the portrait Of frail old
lady, pln:nly on tue tArthrst confines of
life. More than tourscore years had left
their trace on the venerable head; You
could fancy you saw the aged hands shu-
king. Opposite there hung the picture Of
" blooming girl, in the fresh May of beau
ty. The blooming girl WAS the mother of
the venerable dame of tourscore. Paint
! ing catches buta glimpse of time; hut it
keeps that glimpse On the canvas the
face never grows old. AS Decker has it:
False colors last after the true bc fed. -
l have often looked at the two pictures, in
confused sort OF rcverie. If you ask
what it is that thought of in looking at
them, truly cannot tell you. The fresh
young beauty was the mother; the ngcd
| grAnd-damc WAS the child: kot. was really
all. But there are certain thoughts upon
4 tS.1S IftO 81,
time.
You remember reading how upon day
notminyyears since, certain miners, work
ing fur under ground, came upon the body
OF poor fellow who bad pcrishcd in tho
Suttocating pit forty years before. Some
chemical agent to which the body had
been Su6lcctcd-an agent prepared in the
laboratory of Naturc-hnd eflcctually ar
rested the progress of decay They
brought 1t up to tue surface; and for a
while, till it crumhlcd away through cx-
posure to the atmosphere, it lay there. the
image of Il fnc sturdy young man. No
cOnvulsion had passed over the face in
death: the features were tranquil; the hair
was black as jet. No one recognized tho
face: generation had grown up since the
day on which the miner went down his
shaft for the last time. But a tottcrine
old woman, who had hurried from her cot
tage nt hearing the news, came up; and she
knew again the face which through all
these years she had never quite forgot
! The poor miner WAS to have been her Nus-
band the day after that on which he died.
/ They were rough people, of course, who
were looking on: Il liberal education aud
refined feelings are not deemed essential
to the man whose work it is to get uD
Goals, or even tin: but there were no dry
eyes there when the grayheadcd old pill
grim cast herself upon the youthful corpse,
and poured out to its deaf ear many words
of cndearmeut unused for forty years. 1t
was Il touching contrast: the one SO old,
| the OthOr so young. They had both been
young, these long years ago but time had
| gone on with the living and stood still
with the dead.
The writer considers age in all its draw
backs and in allits advantages. He is one
evidently of the sort who have enjoye i
we'll and improved well the days of his
youth; yet, now that he has advanced in
years, thero is perceptiblc in his expert
ence a conviction that it is not good for
most people to beold, because to beold is to
be helpless, dependent and unhappy, in
most instances. There is this about it,
however, which, it seems to US, the writer
might have noted, and that is, that very
few people of nlI the human race live
either TO be happy or unhappy in old age.
Thirty three years is the great average,
md t,vo ~ ~, rtI< t;,,,oa rourd an 1your. S.