It sort of draws it all together, and you see it as a whole, its
sunshine and its shadow, its laughter and its tears, its work and
its play, its past and its present. But not its future. The Good
Man has mercifully hidden that from us.
It does a body good to get such a talk once in a while.
And there are the young fellows and the girls. This young gentleman
in the rimless eye-glasses, who is now beginning to "go out among
'em" the last time you saw him was in meeting when Elder Drown was
preaching, and my gentleman stood up in the seat and shouted shrilly:
"'T ain't at all, man. 'T ain't at all!" And this sweet
girl-graduate - the last time you saw her was just after Becky Daly,
in the vain effort to "peacify" the squalling young one, had given
her a fresh egg to play with. I kind o' like the looks of the younger
generation of girls. But I don't know about the young fellows. They
look to me like a trifling lot. Nothing like what they were in our
young days. I don't see but what us old codgers had better hold on
a while longer to the County Clerk's office, and the Sheriff's
office, and the Probate judgeship, and the presidency of the National
Bank. It wouldn't be safe to trust the destinies of the country in
the hands of such heedless young whiffets. Engaged to be married!
Oh, get out! What? Those babies?
I kept awake most of the time the man was lecturing on: "The
Republic: Will it Endure?" but I don't remember that he said
anything in it about the crops.
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