Professor.—Where?
Old Age.—There, between your eyebrows,—three straight lines running up and down; all the probate courts know that token,—“Old Age, his mark.” Put your forefinger on the inner end of one eyebrow, and your middle finger on the inner end of the other eyebrow; now separate the fingers, and you will smooth out my sign manual; that’s the way you used to look before I left my card on you.
Professor.—What message do people generally send back when you first call on them?
Old Age.—Not at home. Then I leave a card and go. Next year I call; get the same answer; leave another card. So for five or six—sometimes ten—years or more. At last, if they don’t let me in, I break in through the front door or the windows.
We talked together in this way some time. Then Old Age said again,—Come, let us walk down the street together,—and offered me a cane,—an eye-glass, a tippet, and a pair of overshoes.—No, much obliged to you, said I. I don’t want those things, and I had a little rather talk with you here, privately, in my study. So I dressed myself up in a jaunty way and walked out alone;—got a fall, caught a cold, was laid up with a lumbago, and had time to think over this whole matter.
THE BRAIN.
UR brains are seventy-year clocks. The Angel of Life winds them up once for all, then closes the case, and gives the key into the hands of the Angel of the Resurrection.
Tic-tac! tic-tac! go the wheels of thought; our will cannot stop them; they cannot stop themselves; sleep cannot still them; madness only makes them go faster; death alone can break into the case, and, seizing the ever-swinging pendulum, which we call the heart, silence at last the clicking of the terrible escapement we have carried so long beneath our wrinkled foreheads.