The Fruit-Farm and Old Age 323 



of friends were gathered about, and among them, 

 the last of the pioneers who had assembled to biuy 

 their own. It was a closing scene in the play. 

 The house was old; the trees were old; the lilacs, 

 the smoke-bush, the lily beds, the grapevine 

 wreathing the house, the faces set in retrospection, 

 — all, all were old. Youth and modernity seemed 

 an intrusion. The venerable dead had spent a 

 long life here, slowly growing old and, at last, 

 slipping away peacefully. 



Strangers now possess the land; the house, 

 abandoned, fell into decay. The spring is choked; 

 the old-fashioned flowers have vanished; the very 

 site of the old home is a cornfield. The children 

 or the grandchildren never return; all the neigh- 

 bors are strangers and even the memories of the 

 old home are forgotten. Yet for nearly fourscore 

 years it was the old home, and the pioneer who 

 transformed the wild came to the ideal old age 

 accompanied by ''honor, love, obedience, and 

 troops of friends.*' But the children abandoned 

 the old home; yes, but that is quite another story, 

 a story which the old pioneer himself did not write; 

 every man is author of his own ; he could not write 

 theirs, and they cannot write his. The son of this 

 venerable pioneer died suddenly of heart-failtire, a 

 prosperous banker, having attained the great age 

 of fifty-three; indeed, he was older than his father 

 dying at eighty-eight. The pioneer had arteries 

 which kept young. 



But every fruit-grower does not reach eight and 



