For many years, the nieces and nephews and their children and children's children came in this way to refresh body and soul at their good uncle's; till childhood blossomed into youth, and youth began to strengthen into maturity, and maturity to fade away into age. Years gathered around the old man's head, but his vigor remained.
You need not bounce in that way, my friend musket, and you, Messrs. tea-kettle and pitcher, need not try to turn up the noses you have lost, at my using these flowery expressions. Remember that, for more than half a century, I dwelt upon a human head. It is natural that I should have gained something from it, and that I should speak somewhat as human beings speak.
I hope you will pardon my talkativeness; and, even if you think me prosy, let me go on after my own fashion, and finish my story in my own way, for I am very old, and can speak in no other way. Remember, too, I shall never speak to you again."
"Go on, go on," cried the old coat, cloak, and baize gown.
The rest made no objection, and so the wig continued. "I assure you it was a very interesting thing to me to witness the changes that were going on among the Squire's visitors. I saw that child's mother come, first as a young lady, then as a bride, then as a mother; and then she came, first with one, then with two, and then with three children; and then, each year, I saw that these children had grown bigger, and it was pleasant, as I sat so quietly upon the old Squire's head, to see them jump out of the carriage each year, run up to the old man to receive his welcome, and then scamper off into the garden and fields like so many young animals; it was pleasant to watch their gleeful faces at his hospitable board, and to hear their merry shouts; it was pleasant, on Sunday, to see them, with their father and mother, follow the old gentleman respectfully at a distance, through the avenue of elms to church, with their small, solemn faces, just now and then slightly nodding to a buttercup and snatching it up; while he, with me and his three-cornered hat on his head, and his gold-headed cane in his hand, and his light drab suit of clothes, all his dress of the same cloth, and his shoes with gold buckles, strode along, while Cato, dressed in some of the Squire's old clothes, walked close behind him like his shadow. You would have thought my master forty instead of eighty.
Year after year I witnessed this, till, as I said, the children were youths, and their parents no longer young. Then the good Squire began to be, as I am now, a little garrulous; he loved to tell old stories more than once. But who was there that would not, with patient love, listen to them for many a time?
It was affecting to observe how all his dates were from the year fifty. No matter what story he told, or when it really did happen, he always finished by adding, "and that happened in the year fifty."
All his furniture and plate were purchased in the year fifty. It was to him the beginning of the world.
"Uncle," said one of his nieces one day to him, "let me try to dress your wig; I think it wants it."
"My dear, this wig was bought in the year fifty, and looks well now. It has done me good service."