A Learned Character.—“Give me ‘Venice Preserved,’” said a gentleman, last week, on going to a celebrated bookseller’s at the West-end. “We don’t sell preserves,” said an apprentice, newly-imported from the country; “but you will get them next door, at Mr. Brown’s, the confectioner.”
Ten To One.—Strict attention to office hours is a duty incumbent upon every public officer. We heard of a case of an American consul, in a foreign country, who was not remarkable for his attention to duty. A gentleman, calling one day, found his office shut, and a label sticking upon the door, with these words: “In from ten to one.” Having called again several times within those hours, without finding him, he wrote at the bottom of the label—“Ten to one he’s not in.”
To the Black-ey’d and Blue-ey’d Friends of Robert Merry.
It is now about a twelvemonth since our acquaintance commenced; and I hope the feeling is such between us, that there is a mutual desire to continue it. I know that the young, the happy, and the gay-hearted, are apt to think that we old fellows are sour and sad—disposed to look with an evil eye upon childhood and its sports; and more ready to preach than practise charity.
I will not pretend to deny that, now and then, a person gets cross and crabbed as he grows old, and like cider too long kept, turns to vinegar: but this is not my case, or, if it be, my ill-humor never displays itself toward the young. They are to me the buds and blossoms of life, and their presence ever brings the welcome feelings that belong to sunshine and summer.
Old age has been often compared to winter—the close of the year; the season of desolation; the period of storms and tempests; the funeral-time of the vegetable world; the time when the leaves, the fruits, and the flowers are laid in their tomb, and covered over with a winding-sheet of snow. This is a sad picture at first view; and I believe many a child is led to avoid old people from the habit of regarding them in this light—from the idea that they are shrivelled, frost-bitten, bitter, and disagreeable.
Now, I will not deny that there is some resemblance between winter and old age: an old man has not the warm blood of youth; his pulses are, perhaps, like the river, chilled and obstructed by ice; his temper is sometimes capricious and gusty, like the winds of December; and his head, bald, or covered with a few silvery hairs, is like the oak, stripped of its covering, and having its boughs powdered with snow.
All this may be true enough; but it is not good reason why the old should be deserted by the young. I remember very well, that, when I was a boy, there was a fine old walnut-tree, upon a hillside, not far from where I lived. Now, I never thought or cared about this tree, till the time when winter approached. Then, when the leaves were scattered, the nuts were all ripe, then it was that the tree became an object of interest to me. Then it was that I loved to visit it; to climb its limbs and give it a shake, and hear the fruit rattle down like hail. Never, in all my boyhood days, did I meet with anything more delightful than this!