I recollect no happier portion of my life , than this , my calm old age . It is like the sunny and sheltered slope of a valley , where , late in the autumn , the grass is greener than in August , and intermixed with golden dandelions , that have not been seen till now , since the first warmth of the year . But with me , the verdure and the flowers are not frostbitten in the midst of winter . A playfulness has revisited my mind ; a sympathy with the young and gay ; an unpainful interest in the business of others ; a light and wandering curiosity ; arising , perhaps , from the sense that my toil on earth is ended , and the brief hour till bedtime may be spent in play . Still , I have fancied that there is a depth of feeling and reflection , under this superficial levity , peculiar to one who has lived long , and is soon to die . Show me anything that would make an infant smile , and you shall behold a gleam of mirth over the hoary ruin of my visage . I can spend a pleasant hour in the sun , watching the sports of the village children , on the edge of the surf ; now they chase the retreating wave far down over the wet sand ; now it steals softly up to kiss their naked feet ; now it comes onward with threatening front , and roars after the laughing crew , as they scamper beyond its reach . Why should not an old man be merry too , when the great sea is at play with those little children ? I delight , also , to follow in the wake of a pleasure-party of young men and girls , strolling along the beach after an early supper at the Point . Here , with hand kerchiefs at nose , they bend over a heap of eel-grass , entangled in which is a dead skate , so oddly accoutred with two legs and a long tail , that they mistake him for a drowned animal . A few steps farther , the ladies scream , and the gentlemen make ready to protect them against a young shark of the dogfish kind , rolling with a life-like motion in the tide that has thrown him up . Next , they are smit with wonder at the black shells of a wagon-load of live lobsters , packed in rock-weed for the country market . And when they reach the fleet of dories , just hauled ashore after the day 's fishing , how do I laugh in my sleeve , and sometimes roar outright , at the simplicity of these young folks and the sly humor of the fishermen ! In winter , when our village is thrown into a bustle by the arrival of perhaps a score of country dealers , bargaining for frozen fish , to be transported hundreds of miles , and eaten fresh in Vermont or Canada , I am a pleased but idle spectator in the throng . For I launch my boat no more . When the shore was solitary , I have found a pleasure that seemed even to exalt my mind , in observing the sports or contentions of two gulls , as they wheeled and hovered about each other , with hoarse screams , one moment flapping on the foam of the wave , and then soaring aloft , till their white bosoms melted into the upper sunshine . In the calm of the summer sunset , I drag my aged limbs , with a little ostentation of activity , because I am so old , up to the rocky brow of the hill . There I see the white sails of many a vessel , outward bound or homeward from afar , and the black trail of a vapor behind the eastern steamboat ; there , too , is the sun , going down , but not in gloom , and there the illimitable ocean mingling with the sky , to remind me of eternity . But sweetest of all is the hour of cheerful musing and pleasant talk , that comes between the dusk and the lighted candle , by my glowing fireside . And never , even on the first Thanksgiving night , when Susan and I sat alone with our hopes , nor the second , when a stranger had been sent to gladden us , and be the visible image of our affection , did I feel such joy as now .
All that belong to me are here ; Death has taken none , nor Disease kept them away , nor Strife divided them from their parents or each other ; with neither poverty nor riches XXXXX disturb them , nor the misery of desires beyond their lot , they have kept New England 's festival round the patriarch 's board .
In about against as beyond for into of over to