Moreover , as the smoke climbs up the precipice , it brings with it a savory smell from a pan of fried fish and a black kettle of chowder , and reminds me that my dinner was nothing but bread and water and a tuft of samphire and an apple . Methinks the party might find room for another guest at that flat rock which serves them for a table ; and if spoons be scarce , I could pick up a clam-shell on the beach . They see me now ; and -- the blessing of a hungry man upon him ! -- one of them sends up a hospitable shout : `` Halloo , Sir Solitary ! Come down and sup with us ! '' The ladies wave their handkerchiefs . Can I decline ? No ; and be it owned , after all my solitary joys , that this is the sweetest moment of a day by the seashore . EDWARD FANE 'S ROSEBUD . There is hardly a more difficult exercise of fancy than , while gazing at a figure of melancholy age , to recreate its youth , and without entirely obliterating the identity of form and features to restore those graces which Time has snatched away . Some old people -- especially women -- so age-worn and woeful are they , seem never to have been young and gay . It is easier to conceive that such gloomy phantoms were sent into the world as withered and decrepit as we behold them now , with sympathies only for pain and grief , to watch at death-beds and weep at funerals . Even the sable garments of their widowhood appear essential to their existence ; all their attributes combine to render them darksome shadows creeping strangely amid the sunshine of human life . Yet it is no unprofitable task to take one of these doleful creatures and set Fancy resolutely at work to brighten the dim eye , and darken the silvery locks , and paint the ashen cheek with rose-color , and repair the shrunken and crazy form , till a dewy maiden shall be seen in the old matron 's elbow-chair . The miracle being wrought , then let the years roll back again , each sadder than the last , and the whole weight of age and sorrow settle down upon the youthful figure . Wrinkles and furrows , the handwriting of Time , may thus be deciphered and found to contain deep lessons of thought and feeling . Such profit might be derived by a skilful observer from my much-respected friend the Widow Toothaker , a nurse of great repute who has breathed the atmosphere of sick-chambers and dying-breaths these forty years . See ! she sits cowering over her lonesome hearth with her gown and upper petticoat drawn upward , gathering thriftily into her person the whole warmth of the fire which now at nightfall begins to dissipate the autumnal chill of her chamber . The blaze quivers capriciously in front , alternately glimmering into the deepest chasms of her wrinkled visage , and then permitting a ghostly dimness to mar the outlines of her venerable figure .
And Nurse XXXXX holds a teaspoon in her right hand with which to stir up the contents of a tumbler in her left , whence steams a vapory fragrance abhorred of temperance societies .
Methinks Time Toothaker chasms clam-shell dying-breaths elbow-chair phantoms spoons years