CHAPTER XVII
Sixtieth Birthday
Yesterday I attained my sixtieth birthday. It is not yet old age, but the posting-stations between old age and myself grow fewer with what looks like a bewildering rapidity. The years are shorter than they used to be. What a length lay between the anniversaries of childhood and even those of young manhood! How little tedious was the road! And now how brief and tiresome has the journey from one point to another grown to seem! One turns and glances back on the traversed road, “looking over Time's crupper and over his tail,” as the elder Hood put it, and it looks like a ribboned path through a cemetery. The little child-wife and the baby lie yonder far away. Nearer, and yet afar off, the grey old father is asleep. There, between them, is the lad with whom I shared all my early joy in books. Oh! the raptured miles we walked, seeing each other home by turns, till long after midnight, each exposing to the other's view the jewels gathered in the past few days. The memorial stones are everywhere, and they grow thicker as the road winds on. And saddest of all are the places where one sees the tokens, not of lost friends but of dead ideals. Here a faith laid itself down, tired out, and went to sleep for good and all. A cypress marks the place, to my fancy, Here a hope made up its mind that it was not worth while to hope any longer, and foundered in its tracks. There is an ambition, unburied, to be sure, but as dead as Cheops. “Old wishes, ghosts of broken plans, and phantom hopes.”