Everything contributes to make an old man’s lot happy if the salt of life has not lost its savour. We have played the game, and now we watch others take their innings. It is good fun to watch. I tell you it is music to the eye watching the gay young world go its own way. The swagger, the _bravoure_, the buoyancy of its manners, stagger the dull parental mind. There is rhythm in its movements, there is character in its gaiety. It tops the record of the far-off days of splendour when we, their portly ancestors, were down in the arena beating up the dust of conflict, and considered ourselves the cream of modernity and the finest goods in the market. The youth of to-day has its hand on the wheel and the joy-car pads merrily, heedless of speed limits, for time has no limit and life sings a pleasant song to boys of the new régime. Life’s afterglow is the period when the past is viewed through the golden haze of memory and we live over again the days of our youth, the splendid days of hope and promise. Pleasant things and pleasant people are remembered, and disagreeable events that vexed us are forgotten. We wipe clean from the slate memories that are unwelcome. From the mellowy distance we admire the picture in its broad outlines; its uninteresting details drop out of sight. It is the vivid patches of colour upon the canvas where the eye lingers lovingly and long. It is the happy past that enchants the memory to-day. An old man glances over his shoulder adown the long pathway of receding years hungrily, and muses to himself, "Oh, to be out in the world again as I knew it fifty years ago, with the same sunny people about me; to meet them on the old familiar footing. We had capacious times together; we understood one another and loved one another with kindred hearts and flowing speech. I talk with people nowadays, but these new friends of mine are not responsive. There is a glass screen between us as we talk together; we sit near one another, but we are far apart. I catch a far-off glint in their eye which holds me at arm’s-length. Our lips are restrained, our thoughts are bottled up. It seems like sitting together in a room with blinds drawn, talking in the dark. Yes; new friends at best are but amiable strangers, for we met one another only when the flower of life had wilted and the leaf was sere and yellow on the tree. The full, unrestrained days when the sap was rising, the blossoming days of youth, were lived apart. I do not know these good people intimately, and I never can, and they can never know me. We each have a buried past which is sacred ground where the other never treads."