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“We may be sure of one thing, anyhow, and that is, that we shall not look and feel at all as we do now,” said Frank. “I suppose,” he added, “if, by a gift of second sight, we could see tonight, as in a glass, what we shall be at seventy, we should entirely fail to recognize ourselves, and should fall to disputing which was which.”

“Yes, and we shall doubtless have changed as much in disposition as in appearance,” added Henry. “Now, for one, I ‘ve no idea what sort of a fellow my old man will turn out. I don’t believe people can generally tell much better what sort of old people will grow out of them than what characters their children will have. A little better, perhaps, but not much. Just think how different sets of faculties and tastes develop and decay, come into prominence and retire into the background, as the years pass. A trait scarcely noticeable in youth tinges the whole man in age.”

“What striking dramatic effects are lost because the drama of life is spun out so long instead of having the ends brought together,” observed George. “The spectators lose the force of the contrasts because they forget the first part of every role before the latter part is reached. One fails in consequence to get a realizing sense of the sublime inconsistencies of every lifetime.”

“That difficulty is what we propose, in a small way, to remedy next Wednesday night,” replied Henry.

Mary professed some scruples. It was so queer, she thought it must be wrong. It was like tempting Providence to take for granted issues in his hands, and masquerade with uncreated things like their own yet unborn selves. But Frank reminded her that the same objection would apply to any arrangement as to what they should do next week.

“Well, but,” offered Jessie, “is it quite respectful to make sport of old folks, even if they are ourselves?”

“My conscience is clear on that point,” said Frank. “It’s the only way we can get even with them for the deprecating, contemptuous way in which they will allude to us over their snuff and tea, as callow and flighty youth, if indeed they deign to remember us at all, which is n’t likely.”

“I ‘m all tangled up in my mind,” said Nellie, with an air of perplexity, “between these old people you are talking about and ourselves. Which is which? It seems odd to talk of them in the third person, and of ourselves in the first. Are n’t they ourselves too?”

“If they are, then certainly we are not,” replied Henry. “You may take your choice.

“The fact is,” he added, as she looked still more puzzled, “there are half-a dozen of each one of us, or a dozen if you please, one in fact for each epoch of life, and each slightly or almost wholly different from the others. Each one of these epochs is foreign and inconceivable to the others, as ourselves at seventy now are to us. It’s as hard to suppose ourselves old as to imagine swapping identities with another. And when we get old it will be just as hard to realize that we were ever young. So that the different periods of life are to all intents and purposes different persons, and the first person of grammar ought to be used only with the present tense. What we were, or shall be, or do, belongs strictly to the third person.”

“You would make sad work of grammar with that notion,” said Jessie, smiling.

“Grammar needs mending just there,” replied Henry. “The three persons of grammar are really not enough. A fourth is needed to distinguish the ego of the past and future from the present ego, which is the only true one.”

“Oh, you’re getting altogether too deep for me,” said Jessie. “Come, girls, what in the world are we going to get to wear next Wednesday?”