swiftly and pleasantly through the playground of our childhood and youth as though it were but the antechamber to some richly furnished parlor. When we enter the longed-for parlor, we find in it labor and sorrow in plenty. We eat, sleep, dream, enjoy ourselves a little and then one day we awaken to the sad reality that we are no longer young. Some kind friend will remark: “Why, your hair is growing gray!” Another will sympathize and say: “Ah, we are not as young as we used to be.” He uses the polite plural, but we know he has a very definite singular in mind. And then comes the day when the roomy arm-chair is inviting, and the favorite ballad which once whispered gladness, now only recalls times long, long past. Then it is that the chatter of youth is a forgotten language; that the faces of women show only the rouge on cheek and lip and not the glorious eye; when an invitation to the dance compels us to the confession, “I am too old to dance,” and to the