You hold all the trump
cards, or if you do not you can filch them; if you play them with
anything like judgement you will find yourselves heads of happy,
united, God-fearing families, even as did my old friend Mr.
Pontifex. True, your children will probably find out all about it some
day, but not until too late to be of much service to them or
inconvenience to yourself.
Some satirists have complained of life, inasmuch as all the
pleasures belong to the fore part of it and we must see them dwindle
till we are left, it may be, with the miseries of a decrepit old age.
To me it seems that youth is like spring, an overpraised season-
delightful if it happen to be a favoured one, but in practice very
rarely favoured and more remarkable, as a general rule, for biting
east winds than genial breezes. Autumn is the mellower season, and
what we lose in flowers we more than gain in fruits. Fontenelle at the
age of ninety, being asked what was the happiest time of his life, said
he did not know that he had ever been much happier than he then was,
but that perhaps his best years had been those when he was between
fifty-five and seventy-five, and Dr. Johnson placed the pleasures of
old age far higher than those of youth.
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