Youth has some advantages peculiarly its own in the general battle for fame and fortune and in capacity for enjoyment, but for discovering all that may be pleasing in whatever is nearest at hand it is left far behind by age. The school-girl does not care for dainty flavors unless they have candy for a basis; her mother, with a palate which has been in training for half a century, will get truer enjoyment out of a neighbor’s loaf of home-made cake than the girl can find in a shop-full of bonbons. A boy will ramble through an orchard in search of the tree which is fullest and has the largest fruit; his father, in late autumn, will find higher flavor, and more of it, in the late windfalls which his stick discovers among the dead leaves. Farmer Hayn was old and weary; he was alone in his rambles about the metropolis, and he kept close guard on his pocket-book; but no country youth who ever hurried to the city to squander his patrimony could have had so good a time. He saw everything that the local guide-books called attention to, and so much else which was interesting that Tramlay, whom he had occasion to see for a few minutes each day, said one morning at the breakfast-table,-- “I wish, my dear, that I could steal a week or two from business, so that you and I could poke about New York, personally conducted by that old farmer.” “Edgar!” exclaimed Mrs. Tramlay, “I sometimes fear that old age is taking sudden possession of you, you get such queer notions. The idea of New York people seeing their own city with a countryman for a guide!” “There’s nothing queer about facts, my dear,” replied Tramlay, “except that they may be right under our eyes for years without being seen. A few years ago you and I spent nearly a thousand dollars in visiting some European battle-fields. To-day that old fellow has carefully done the Revolutionary battle-fields of New York and Brooklyn, at a total expense of a quarter of a dollar: even then he had a penny left to give to a beggar.” “I never heard of a battle-field in New York or Brooklyn,” said Mrs. Tramlay. “Nor I,” her husband replied; “at least not in so long a time that I’d forgotten the localities. But that old fellow knows all about them: when I drew him out a little he made me plans of each, with pencil on the back of an envelope, and explained how we lost Long Island and New York, as well as nearly two thousand men, when men were far scarcer than they are now. Here”--the merchant drew a mass of letters from his pocket and extracted from them a scrap of paper,--“here’s the way it happened; let me explain----” “I’m not interested in those stupid old times,” said Mrs. Tramlay, with a deprecatory wave of her hand. “I’ve heard that in those days there wasn’t a house above Wall Street, no Park to drive in, and parties began before sunset.”