154 A QUESTION OF MENTAL 



horns still interlocked; and the narrator told me he had 

 them yet at home, fast together, as he found them, as one 

 of the curiosities to be met with in the Eackett woods. 



" I've been thinking," said Spalding, in his quiet way, as we 

 sat towards evening, looking out over the pleasant little lake, 

 watching the shadow chasing the retiring sunlight up the 

 sides of the opposite hills, *' I've been thinking how differ- 

 ently we act, and feel, and talk aye, and think, too out 

 here in these old woods, from what we do when at home and 

 surrounded by civilization. However we four may deny 

 being old, we cannot certainly claim to be young. We have 

 all reached the meridian of life, and though feeling few, if 

 any, of the infirmities of age, still, our next move will be 

 in the downhill direction. Yet, notwithstanding all this, we 

 talk and act, and think, and feel, too, like boys. I do not 

 speak this reproachfully, but as a fact which develops a 

 curious attribute of the human mind." 



" Well," replied the Doctor, " while it may be curious, it 

 is exceedingly natural. We have thrown off the restraints 

 which society imposes upon us ; we have thrown off the 

 cares which the business of life heaps upon us. We have 

 gone back for a season to the freedom, the sports, the sights, 

 the exercises which delighted our boyhood. And can it be 

 called strange that the feelings, the thoughts, and emotions 

 of our youth should come welling up from the long past, or 

 that with the return of boyish emotions, the language and 

 actions of boyhood should be indulged in again ?" 



" Yon will find," said Smith, " your old feelings of sobriety, 



