A little way onward, they came to a miserable cottage, at the door of which was an aged woman, meanly clad, and shaking with palsy. She sat all alone, her head resting on her bosom, and as the pair approached, vainly tried to raise it up to look at them.
"Good-morrow, old lady—and all happiness to you," cried Hope, gaily, and the old woman thought it was a long time since she had heard such a cheering salutation.
"Happiness!" said she, in a voice that quivered with weakness and infirmity. "Happiness! I have not known it since I was a little girl, without care or sorrow. O, I remember those delightful days, when I thought of nothing but the present moment, nor cared for the future or the past. When I laughed and played and sung, from morning till night, and envied no one, or wished to be any other than I was. But those happy times are past, never to return. O, if I could only once more return to the days of my childhood!"
The old woman sunk back on her seat, and the tears flowed from her hollow eyes.
Memory again reproached her companion, but he only asked her if she recollected the little girl they had met a long time ago, who was so miserable because she was so young? Memory knew it well enough, and said not another word.
They now approached their home, and Memory was on tiptoe with the thought of once more enjoying the unequalled beauties of those scenes from which she had been so long separated. But, some how or other, it seemed they were sadly changed. Neither the grass was so green, the flowers so sweet and lovely, nor did the brooks murmur, the echoes answer, or the birds sing half so enchantingly, as she remembered them in long time past.
"Alas!" she exclaimed, "how changed is every thing! I alone am the same."
"Every thing is the same, and thou alone art changed," answered Hope. "Thou hast deceived thyself in the past just as much as I deceive others in the future."
"What is it you are disputing about?" asked an old man, whom they had not observed before, though he was standing close by them. "I have lived almost four-score and ten years, and my experience may perhaps enable me to decide between you."
They told him the occasion of their disagreement, and related the history of their journey round the earth. The old man smiled, and for a few moments sat buried in thought. He then said to them: