The Hillsborough Recorder

THE OLD TIME GRANDFATHER.
BY T. S. ARTHUR.

Dear old man! He was a gentleman of the old school, ripened by age and experience. I see him now, as I look back through more than forty years, with his courtly garments and courtly manners, his cheerful countenance and cheerful words, his manly bearing and elegant address. He had seen the world in most of its aspects; had served his country both as a statesman and a soldier; had braved, in his time, peril by land and peril by sea; yet, in growing older, he had grown gentler and more refined. The attrition of life had polished, instead of abrading the surface of his character and marring its beauty. At seventy, he was the model of an old man.

"Grandfather Deering" he was called by the half score of boys and girls in the third generation, from two years old and upwards, who spent many weeks of each recurring winter and summer at the old homestead, to be remembered long afterwards as the happiest times in all their lives. It was a pleasant sight to see him amid these grandchildren.

With the boys he was almost a boy again. He entered into all their sports, and encouraged them to activity that bordered sometimes on daring. He had his fishing tackle, and went with them to the river; his boat, and accompanied them on water excursions, and picnics at the islands. There was only one thing in which Grandfather Deering did not meet the wishes of his darling boys. As he advanced in years, the old man grew tender-hearted. He had been something of a sportsman in his younger days; but now the sight of a bird, instead of creating a desire to shatter its beautiful body with a leaden shower, awakened feelings of admiration.

"Don't harm the bird," he would say to his grandsons. "They have an equal right with you to life and enjoyment."

But boys have a passion for fowling-pieces, and are destructives by nature. Grandfather Deering's boys were no exceptions to this rule. They begged for guns; but the old man, so indulgent in all things else, was unyielding in this.

"No, no, no," he would answer their importunities—"not a bird shall be harmed here. I love them too well. Shame on you, boys, for being so cruel-minded! Is pleasure so rare, that you must seek it in the destruction of life? I shall have to send you all home again, I see. You are not happy at Grandfather Deering's."

And so he would conquer. The little girls, his grand-daughters, were an especial delight to the old man. He saw their mothers' childhood revived in them: and that must have restored in almost living freshness the sainted image of one these fragrant human blossoms had never seen.

Grandfather Deering was not a childish, but a manly old man. To the last he retained all the accomplishments of early and middle life. In company, his graceful attention to ladies was in marked contrast with the awkward restraints, cold reserve, or almost offensive indifference so often witnessed in those who are advanced in years. With young men, whose society he liked, he was affable, courteous, and free from dogmatism.

His mind was active and progressive; and, though old in years, he was young in thought and feeling. It pleased him to note the ardor of impulse in young men, and his aim was to direct, never to restrain it. He was always ready to excuse their errors; to sympathize with them in disappointment; to help them upwards by kind words, instead of depressing them by cold discouragements. With young ladies he was neither critical nor cynical. The new aspects of fashion never disturbed him, though he had not changed his own style of dress for more than twenty years. "How gayly, and with what familiarity, would the sweet maidens gather around the dear old man in every company where he appeared. They felt no restraint—no repulsion—but were drawn to him by an attraction of affinity. It was youth and beauty clustering about ripened age, mellow and luscious.

It is now many years since this old time grandfather passed away, and left behind him the fragrant odor of an almost perfect life. But there are hundreds yet living who will recognize him in the brief sketch we have given. Would that there were many such old time grandfathers! The world needs them.