I think that there is a passage in the thirty-first chapter of
Proverbs which says: "Her children rise up and call her blessed."
I have reached my appointed limits, leaving unsaid one-half of the
things I had wished to narrate. Reminiscences come crowding in
unbidden, and, like the flickering lights of the Will-o'-the-wisp,
they tend to lead the wayfarer far astray from the path he had
originally traced out for himself. "Jack-o'-lanthorn" is
proverbially a fickle guide to follow, and should I have succumbed
to his lure, I can only proffer my excuses, and plead in
extenuation that sixty years is such a long road to re-travel that
an occasional deviation into a by-path by elderly feet may perhaps
be forgiven.
Charles Kingsley, in the "Water-Babies", has put some very
touching lines into the mouth of the old school-dame in Vendale,
lines which come home with pathetic force to persons of my time of
life.
"When all the world is young, lad,
And all the trees are green;
And every goose a swan, lad,
And every lass a queen;
Then hey for boot and horse, lad,
And round the world away;
Young blood must have its course, lad
And every dog his day.
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