FullReads

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.

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–circumstance–a shaft of moonlight (we were young, my dear)–a white frock–your acquiescence–who knows?

I jilted you once or twice for other girls–nothing formal, of course–but only when you had jilted me three or four times. We once rowed upon a river at night. Did I take your hand, my dear? If I listen now I can hear the water dripping from the oar. There was darkness–and stars–and youth (yourself, white-armed, the symbol of its mystery). Yes, perhaps I am older now.

Was it not Byron who wrote?

I am ashes where once I was fire,
And the soul in my bosom is dead;
What I loved I now merely admire,
And my heart is as gray as my head.

I cannot pretend ever to have had so fierce a passion, but at least my fire still burns and with a cheery blaze. But you will not know this love of mine–unless, of course, you read this page–and even so, you can only suspect that I write of you, because, my dear, to be quite frank, I paid attention to several girls beside yourself.

Yes, they say that I have come to the top of the hill and that henceforth the view is back across my shoulder. I am counseled that with a turn of the road I had best sit with my back to the horses, for the mountains are behind. A little while and the finer purple will be showing in the west. Yet a little while, they say, and the bewildering peaks of youth will be gray and cold.

Perhaps some of the greener pleasures are mine no longer. Certainly, last night I went to the Winter Garden, but left bored after the first act; and I had left sooner except for climbing across my neighbors. I suppose there are young popinjays who seriously affirm that Ziegfeld’s Beauty Chorus is equal to the galaxy of loveliness that once pranced at Weber and Field’s when we came down from college on Saturday night. At old Coster and Bial’s there was once a marvelous beauty who swung from a trapeze above the audience and scandalously undressed herself down to the fifth encore and her stockings. And, really, are there plays now as exciting as the Prisoner of Zenda, with its great fight upon the stairs–three men dead and the tables overturned–Red Rudolph, in the end, bearing off the Princess? Heroes no longer wear cloak and sword and rescue noble ladies from castle towers.

And Welsh rabbit, that was once a passion and the high symbol of extravagance, in these days has lost its finest flavor. In vain do we shake the paprika can. Pop-beer and real beer, its manly cousin, have neither of them the old foaming tingle when you come off the water. Yes, already, I am told, I am on the long road that leads down to the quiet inn at the mountain foot. I am promised, to be sure, many wide prospects, pleasant sounds of wind and water, and friendly greetings by the way. There will be a stop here and there for refreshments, a pause at the turn where the world shows best, a tightening of the brake. Get up, Dobbin! Go ‘long! And then, tired and nodding, at last, we shall leave the upland and enter the twilight where all roads end.

A pleasant picture, is it not–a grandfather in a cap–yourself, my dear sir, hugging your cold shins in the chimney corner? Is it not a brave end to a stirring business? Life, you say, is a journey up and down a hill–aspirations unattained and a mild regret, castles at dawn, a brisk wind for the noontide, and at night, at best, the lights of a little village, the stir of water on the stones, and silence.

Is this true? Or do we not reiterate a lie? I deny old age. It is a false belief, a bad philosophy dimming the eyes of generations. Men and women may wear caps, but not because of age. In each one’s heart, if he permit, a child keeps house to the very end. If Welsh rabbit lose its flavor, is it a sign of decaying power? I have yet to know that a relish for Shakespeare declines, or the love of one’s friends, or the love of truth and beauty. Youth does not view the loftiest peaks. It is at sunset that the tallest castles rise.

My dear sir–you of seventy or beyond–if no rim of mountains stretches up before you, it is not your age that denies you but the quality of your thought. It has been said of old that as a man thinks so he is, but who of us has learned the lesson?

The journey has neither a beginning nor an end. Now is eternity. Our birth is but a signpost on the road–our going hence, another post to mark transition and our progress. The oldest stars are brief lamps upon our way. We shall travel wisely if we see peaks and castles all the day, and hold our childhood in our hearts. Then, when at last the night has come, we shall plant our second post upon a windy height where it will be first to catch the dawn.