The maid of Egypt's dusky glow,

And dream that Youth and Age embrace,
As April violets fill with snow.

Tranced in her Lord's Olympian smile
His lotus-loving Memphian lies, -

The musky daughter of the Nile
With plaited hair and almond eyes.

Might we but share one wild caress
Ere life's autumnal blossoms fall,

And Earth's brown, clinging lips impress
The long cold kiss that waits us all!

My bosom heaves, remembering yet
The morning of that blissful day

When Rose, the flower of spring, I met,
And gave my raptured soul away.

Flung from her eyes of purest blue,
A lasso, with its leaping chain

Light as a loop of larkspurs, flew
O'er sense and spirit, heart and brain.

Thou com'st to cheer my waning age,
Sweet vision, waited for so long!

Dove that would seek the poet's cage
Lured by the magic breath of song!

She blushes! Ah, reluctant maid,
Love's DRAPEAU ROUGE the truth has told!

O'er girlhood's yielding barricade
Floats the great Leveller's crimson fold!

Come to my arms! - love heeds not years
No frost the bud of passion knows. -

Ha! what is this my frenzy hears?
A voice behind me uttered, - Rose!

Sweet was her smile, - but not for me;
Alas, when woman looks TOO kind,

Just turn your foolish head and see, -
Some youth is walking close behind!

As to GIVING UP because the almanac or the Family-Bible says that
it is about time to do it, I have no intention of doing any such

thing. I grant you that I burn less carbon than some years ago. I
see people of my standing really good for nothing, decrepit,

effete, LA LEVRE INFERIEURE DEJA PENDANTE, with what little life
they have left mainly concentrated in their epigastrium. But as

the disease of old age is epidemic, endemic, and sporadic, and
everybody that lives long enough is sure to catch it, I am going to

say, for the encouragement of such as need it, how I treat the
malady in my own case.

First. As I feel, that, when I have anything to do, there is less
time for it than when I was younger, I find that I give my

attention more thoroughly, and use my time more economically than
ever before; so that I can learn anything twice as easily as in my

earlier days. I am not, therefore, afraid to attack a new study.
I took up a difficult language a very few years ago with good

success, and think of mathematics and metaphysics by-and-by.
Secondly. I have opened my eyes to a good many neglected

privileges and pleasures within my reach, and requiring only a
little courage to enjoy them. You may well suppose it pleased me

to find that old Cato was thinking of learning to play the fiddle,
when I had deliberately taken it up in my old age, and satisfied

myself that I could get much comfort, if not much music, out of it.
Thirdly. I have found that some of those active exercises, which

are commonly thought to belong to young folks only, may be enjoyed
at a much later period.

A young friend has lately written an admirable article in one of
the journals, entitled, "Saints and their Bodies." Approving of

his general doctrines, and grateful for his records of personal
experience, I cannot refuse to add my own mental" target="_blank" title="a.实验的">experimental confirmation

of his eulogy of one particular form of active exercise and
amusement, namely, BOATING. For the past nine years, I have rowed

about, during a good part of the summer, on fresh or salt water.
My present fleet on the river Charles consists of three row-boats.

1. A small flat-bottomed skiff of the shape of a flat-iron, kept
mainly to lend to boys. 2. A fancy "dory" for two pairs of sculls,

in which I sometimes go out with my young folks. 3. My own
particular water-sulky, a "skeleton" or "shell" race-boat, twenty-

two feet long, with huge outriggers, which boat I pull with ten-
foot sculls, - alone, of course, as it holds but one, and tips him

out, if he doesn't mind what he is about. In this I glide around
the Back Bay, down the stream, up the Charles to Cambridge and

Watertown, up the Mystic, round the wharves, in the wake of
steamboats which leave a swell after them delightful to rock upon;

I linger under the bridges, - those "caterpillar bridges," as my
brother professor so happily called them; rub against the black

sides of old wood-schooners; cool down under the overhanging stern
of some tall Indiaman; stretch across to the Navy-Yard, where the

sentinel warns me off from the Ohio, - just as if I should hurt her
by lying in her shadow; then strike out into the harbor, where the

water gets clear and the air smells of the ocean, - till all at
once I remember, that, if a west wind blows up of a sudden, I shall

drift along past the islands, out of sight of the dear old State-
house, - plate, tumbler, knife and fork all waiting at home, but no

chair drawn up at the table, - all the dear people waiting,
waiting, waiting, while the boat is sliding, sliding, sliding into

the great desert, where there is no tree and no fountain. As I
don't want my wreck to be washed up on one of the beaches in

company with devil's-aprons, bladder-weeds, dead horse-shoes, and
bleached crab-shells, I turn about and flap my long narrow wings

for home. When the tide is running out swiftly, I have a splendid
fight to get through the bridges, but always make it a rule to

beat, - though I have been jammed up into pretty tight places at
times, and was caught once between a vessel swinging round and the

pier, until our bones (the boat's, that is) cracked as if we had
been in the jaws of Behemoth. Then back to my moorings at the foot

of the Common, off with the rowing-dress, dash under the green
translucent wave, return to the garb of civilization, walk through

my Garden, take a look at my elms on the Common, and, reaching my
habitat, in consideration of my advanced period of life, indulge in

the Elysian abandonment of a huge recumbent chair.
When I have established a pair of well-pronounced feathering-

calluses on my thumbs, when I am in training so that I can do my
fifteen miles at a stretch without coming to grief in any way, when

I can perform my mile in eight minutes or a little less, then I
feel as if I had old Time's head in chancery, and could give it to

him at my leisure.
I do not deny the attraction of walking. I have bored this ancient

city through and through in my daily travels, until I know it as an
old inhabitant of a Cheshire knows his cheese. Why, it was I who,

in the course of these rambles, discovered that remarkable avenue
called MYRTLE STREET, stretching in one long line from east of the

Reservoir to a precipitous and rudely paved cliff which looks down
on the grim abode of Science, and beyond it to the far hills; a

promenade so delicious in its repose, so cheerfullyvaried with
glimpses down the northern slope into busy Cambridge Street with

its iron river of the horse-railroad, and wheeled barges gliding
back and forward over it, - so delightfully closing at its western

extremity in sunny courts and passages where I know peace, and
beauty, and virtue, and serene old age must be perpetual tenants, -

so alluring to all who desire to take their daily stroll, in the
words of Dr. Watts, -

"Alike unknowing and unknown," -
that nothing but a sense of duty would have prompted me to reveal

the secret of its existence. I concede, therefore, that walking is
an immeasurably fine invention, of which old age ought constantly

to avail itself.
Saddle-leather is in some respects even preferable to sole-leather.

The principalobjection to it is of a financialcharacter. But you
may be sure that Bacon and Sydenham did not recommend it for