Non-Fiction > Books > London, 1881 - Virginibus Puerisque, and other papers

y^s Ti^iplex. 169
would ever be lured into marriage, so much
more dangerous than the wildest sea ? And
what would it be to grow old ? For, after a
certain distance, every step we take in life we
find the ice growing thinner below our feet, and
all around us and behind us we see our cqntem-
poraries going through. By the time a man
gets well into the seventies, his continued exist-
ence is a mere miracle ; and when he lays his
old bones in bed for the night, there is an over-
whelming probability that he will never see the
day. Do the old men mind it, as a matter of
fact '^ Why, no. They were never merrier ;
they have their grog at night, and tell the
raciest stories ; they hear of the death of people
about their own age, or even younger, not as if
it was a grisly warning, but with a simple child-
like pleasure at having outlived some one else ;
and when a draught might puff them out like a
guttering candle, or a bit of a stumble shatter
them like so much glass, their old hearts keep