THE SPELL OF THE PAST 233 



traveled over, they assume a new value, a new 

 saeredness in our eyes. They are then our former 

 selves, and a peculiarly tender regard for them 

 awakens in our hearts. There is pathos in the fact 

 that so many people lose their parents before the 

 experiences of life have brought about that final 

 flavoring and ripening of the filial instinct to which 

 I refer. 



After one has lived half a century, and maybe 

 long before, his watch begins to lose time ; the years 

 come faster than he is ready for them ; while he is 

 yet occupied with the old, the new is upon him. 

 How alien and unfriendly seem the new years, 

 strangers whom we reluctantly entertain for a time but 

 with whom we seem hardly to get on speaking terms, 

 — with what uncivil haste they come rushing in ! 

 One writes down the figures on his letters or in his 

 journals, but they all seem alien ; before one has 

 become at all intimate with them, so that they come 

 to mean anything special to him, they are gone. 

 While he is yet occupied with the sixties, living 

 upon the thoughts and experiences which they 

 brought him, the seventies have come and gone and 

 the eighties have knocked at his door. 



The earlier years one took to his heart as he did 

 his early friends. How much we made of them ; 

 what varied hues and aspects they wore ; how we 

 came to know each other ; how rounded and com- 

 plete were all things ! Ah, the old friends and the 

 old years, we cannot separate them ; they had a 

 quality and an af&nity for us that we cannot find in 



