Then at the age of ten, the thoughtless boy, without reflecting on the past or caring for the future, jumps and skips about like a young kid on the enamelled green, contented to enjoy the present moment.
The fourth stage begins about the age of twenty, when the young man, full of vanity and pride, begins to set off his person by dress; and, like a young unbroken horse, prances and gallops about in search of a wife.
Then comes the matrimonial state, when the poor man, like a patient ass, is obliged, however reluctantly, to toil and labour for a living.
Behold him now in the parental state, when surrounded by helpless children craving his support and looking to him for bread. He is as bold, as vigilant, and as fawning, too, as the faithful dog; guarding his little flock, and snatching at everything that comes in his way, in order to provide for his offspring.
At last comes the final stage, when the decrepit old man, like the unwieldy though most sagacious elephant, becomes grave, sedate, and distrustful. He then also begins to hang down his head towards the ground, as if surveying the place where all his vast schemes must terminate, and where ambition and vanity are finally humbled to the dust.
But the Talmudist, in his turn, was forestalled by Bhartrihari, an ancient Hindú sage, one of whose three hundred apothegms has been thus rendered into English by Sir Monier Williams:
Now for a little while a child; and now
An amorous youth; then for a season turned
Into a wealthy householder; then, stripped
Of all his riches, with decrepit limbs