Page:'Tis Sixty Years Since.djvu/12

2 day the young man passes the threshold of the institution of more advanced education. For him, life’s responsibilities then begin. Prior to that confused, thenceforth things with him become consecutive,—a sequence. Insensibly he puts away childish things.

In those days, as I presume now, the college youth harkened to inspired voices. Sir Walter Scott belonged to a previous generation. Having held the close attention of a delighted world as the most successful story-teller of his own or any preceding period, he had passed off the stage; but only a short twenty years before. Other voices no less inspired had followed; and, living, spoke to us. Perhaps my scheme to-day is best expressed by one of these.

When just beginning to attract the attention of the English-speaking world, Alfred Tennyson gave forth his poem of “Locksley Hall,” very familiar to those of my younger days. Written years before, at the time of publication he was thirty-three. In 1886, a man of seventy-five, he composed a sequel to his earlier effort,—the utterance entitled “Locksley Hall Sixty Years After.” He then, you will remember, reviewed his young man’s dreams,—dreams of the period when he

—threescore years later contrasting in sombre verse an old man’s stern realities with the bright anticipations of youth. Such is my purpose to-day.