“He is yearning for the chance of reading Gibbon”
The Cry of the Elders
[With steady but increasing pace the world is approaching a point at which the cleverness of the young will amount to a social problem. Already things are getting uncomfortable for persons of age and sobriety, whose notion of happiness is to ruminate a few solid and simple ideas in freedom from disturbance.—Macmillan’s Magazine.]
O my Children, do you hear your elders sighing?
Do you wonder that senility should find
Your encyclopædic knowledge somewhat trying
To the ordinary mind?
In the heyday of a former generation,