Page:Letters of Life.djvu/393



. Don't you think it is time? I am sure I do. Ancient people are apt to be prolix, and young ones too, if you let them talk about themselves. Yet there's scarcely any thing more that I care to tell you about, even if you cared to hear.

So, good-bye! the hearty old Saxon word, less elegant than the French adieu, or the classic, mournfully euphonious word, farewell. But in this last letter I wish to say to you, my kind friend, how comfortably I am living. Far happier am I at seventy than at seventeen. Fashionable persons who should look at my lowly house, might not think so. That is no matter. I have lived long enough to know that showy mansions, and lofty staircases, and halls of gleaming marble, and castellated domes, do not necessarily include happiness. I have tried them all.

Here am I, in a plain wooden structure, without pretension to elegance, yet exactly adapted to my comfort,