THE ELIXIR OF YOUTH
BY ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE
Author of “The Bread-Line,” “Elizabeth,” “Mark Twain: A Biography,” etc.
THEN, it being no use to try, Carringford let the hand holding the book drop into his lap and from his lap to his side. His eyes stared grimly into the fire, which was dropping to embers.
“I suppose I’m getting old,” he said; “that’s the reason. The books are as good as ever they were—the old ones, at any rate. Only they don’t interest me any more. It’s because I don’t believe in them as I did. I see through them all. I begin taking them to pieces as soon as I begin to read, and of course romance and glamour won’t stand dissection. Yes, it’s because I’m getting old; that’s it. Those things go with youth. Why, I remember when I would give up a dinner for a new book, when a fresh magazine gave me a positive thrill. I lost that somewhere, somehow; I wonder why. It is a ghastly loss. If I had to live my life over, I would at least try not to destroy my faith in books. It seems to me now just about the one thing worth keeping for old age.”
The book slipped from the hand hanging at his side. The embers broke, and, falling together, sent up a tongue of renewed flame. Carringford’s mind was slipping into by-paths.
“If one only might live his life over!” he muttered. “If one might be young again!”
He was not thinking of books now. A procession of ifs had come filing out of the past—a sequence of opportunities where, with the privilege of choice, he had chosen the wrong, the irrevocable thing.
“If one only might try again!” he whispered. “If one only might! Good God!” Something like a soft footfall on the rug caused him to turn suddenly. “I beg your pardon,” he said, rising, “I did not hear you. I was dreaming, I suppose.”