I had literally
become aware of the fact that I was travelling not only over land but
over time. In the far horizon of the imagination I looked to the snowy
landscapes of winter, and they lay across the road, hiding it, so that
it seemed I should go no further.
Old age, old age; I was an old, bearded, heavy-going, wrinkled tramp,
leaning on a stout stick; my grey hairs blew about my old red ears in
wisps. I stopped all passers-by upon the road, and chuckled over old
jokes or detained them with garrulity.
But no, not old; nor will the tramp ever be old, for he has in his
bosom that by virtue of which, even in old age, he remains a boy.
There is in him, like the spring buds among the withered leaves of
autumn, one never-dying fountain of youth. He is the boy who never
grows old.
Father Time, when he comes and takes some of us along his ways into
middle-age, will have to pull. Time is a dotard, an aged parent; some
boys that are very strong and young are almost too much for him; when
he comes to take them from the garden of boyhood they kick and
punch; when Time tries to coax them, pointing out the advantages of
middle-age, they turn their heads from him and refuse to listen. If at
last they are taken away by main force, it is with their backs to the
future, and their faces all angry, twisted, agonised, looking back at
the garden in which they want to stay.
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