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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Old Folks' Party, by Edward Bellamy
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Old Folks' Party
+       1898
+
+Author: Edward Bellamy
+
+Release Date: September 21, 2007 [EBook #22710]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE OLD FOLKS' PARTY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+THE OLD FOLKS' PARTY
+
+By Edward Bellamy
+
+1898
+
+
+"And now what shall we do next Wednesday evening?" said Jessie Hyde, in
+a business-like tone. "It is your turn, Henry, to suggest."
+
+Jessie was a practical, energetic young lady, whose blue eyes never
+relapsed into the dreaminess to which that color is subject. She
+furnished the "go" for the club. Especially she furnished the "go" for
+Henry Long, who had lots of ideas, but without her to stir him up was as
+dull as a flint without a steel.
+
+There were six in the club, and all were present to-night in Jessie's
+parlor. The evening had been given to a little music, a little dancing,
+a little card-playing, and a good deal of talking. It was near the hour
+set by the club rule for the adjournment of its reunions, and the party
+had drawn their chairs together to consult upon the weekly recurring
+question, what should be done at the next meeting by way of special
+order of amusement. The programmes were alternately reading, singing,
+dancing, whist; varied with evenings of miscellaneous sociality like
+that which had just passed. The members took turns in suggesting
+recreations. To-night it was Henry Long's turn, and to him accordingly
+the eyes of the group turned at Jessie's question.
+
+"Let's have an old folks' party," was his answer.
+
+Considering that all of the club were yet at ages when they celebrated
+their birthdays with the figure printed on the cake, the suggestion
+seemed sufficiently irrelevant.
+
+"In that case," said Frank Hays, "we shall have to stay at home."
+
+Frank was an alert little fellow, with a jaunty air, to whom, by tacit
+consent, all the openings for jokes were left, as he had a taste that
+way.
+
+"What do you mean, Henry?" inquired George Townsley, a thick-set, sedate
+young man, with an intelligent, but rather phlegmatic look.
+
+"My idea is this," said Henry, leaning back in his chair, with his hands
+clasped behind his head, and his long legs crossed before him. "Let us
+dress up to resemble what we expect to look like fifty years hence, and
+study up our demeanor to correspond with what we expect to be and feel
+like at that time, and just call on Mary next Wednesday evening to talk
+over old times, and recall what we can, if anything, of our vanished
+youth, and the days when we belonged to the social club at C------."
+
+The others seemed rather puzzled in spite of the explanation. Jessie sat
+looking at Henry in a brown study as she traced out his meaning.
+
+"You mean a sort of ghost party," said she finally; "ghosts of the
+future, instead of ghosts of the past."
+
+"That's it exactly," answered he. "Ghosts of the future are the only
+sort worth heeding. Apparitions of things past are a very unpractical
+sort of demonology, in my opinion, compared with apparitions of things
+to come."
+
+"How in the world did such an odd idea come into your head?" asked
+pretty Nellie Tyrrell, whose dancing black eyes were the most piquant
+of interrogation points, with which it was so delightful to be punctured
+that people were generally slow to gratify her curiosity.
+
+"I was beginning a journal this afternoon," said Henry, "and the idea of
+Henry Long, aetat. seventy, looking over the leaves, and wondering about
+the youth who wrote them so long ago, came up to my mind."
+
+Henry's suggestion had set them all thinking, and the vein was so
+unfamiliar that they did not at once find much to say.
+
+"I should think," finally remarked George, "that such an old folks'
+party would afford a chance for some pretty careful study, and some
+rather good acting."
+
+"Fifty years will make us all not far from seventy. What shall we look
+like then, I wonder?" musingly asked Mary Fellows.
+
+She was the demurest, dreamiest of the three girls; the most of a woman,
+and the least of a talker. She had that poise and repose of manner which
+are necessary to make silence in company graceful.
+
+"We may be sure of one thing, anyhow, and that is, that we shall not
+look and feel at all as we do now," said Frank. "I suppose," he added,
+"if, by a gift of second sight, we could see tonight, as in a glass,
+what we shall be at seventy, we should entirely fail to recognize
+ourselves, and should fall to disputing which was which."
+
+"Yes, and we shall doubtless have changed as much in disposition as in
+appearance," added Henry. "Now, for one, I 've no idea what sort of a
+fellow my old man will turn out. I don't believe people can generally
+tell much better what sort of old people will grow out of them than what
+characters their children will have. A little better, perhaps, but not
+much. Just think how different sets of faculties and tastes develop and
+decay, come into prominence and retire into the background, as the years
+pass. A trait scarcely noticeable in youth tinges the whole man in age."
+
+"What striking dramatic effects are lost because the drama of life is
+spun out so long instead of having the ends brought together," observed
+George. "The spectators lose the force of the contrasts because they
+forget the first part of every role before the latter part is reached.
+One fails in consequence to get a realizing sense of the sublime
+inconsistencies of every lifetime."
+
+"That difficulty is what we propose, in a small way, to remedy next
+Wednesday night," replied Henry.
+
+Mary professed some scruples. It was so queer, she thought it must be
+wrong. It was like tempting Providence to take for granted issues in his
+hands, and masquerade with uncreated things like their own yet unborn
+selves. But Frank reminded her that the same objection would apply to
+any arrangement as to what they should do next week.
+
+"Well, but," offered Jessie, "is it quite respectful to make sport of
+old folks, even if they are ourselves?"
+
+"My conscience is clear on that point," said Frank. "It's the only way
+we can get even with them for the deprecating, contemptuous way in which
+they will allude to us over their snuff and tea, as callow and flighty
+youth, if indeed they deign to remember us at all, which is n't likely."
+
+"I 'm all tangled up in my mind," said Nellie, with an air of
+perplexity, "between these old people you are talking about and
+ourselves. Which is which? It seems odd to talk of them in the third
+person, and of ourselves in the first. Are n't they ourselves too?"
+
+"If they are, then certainly we are not," replied Henry. "You may take
+your choice.
+
+"The fact is," he added, as she looked still more puzzled, "there are
+half-a dozen of each one of us, or a dozen if you please, one in fact
+for each epoch of life, and each slightly or almost wholly different
+from the others. Each one of these epochs is foreign and inconceivable
+to the others, as ourselves at seventy now are to us. It's as hard to
+suppose ourselves old as to imagine swapping identities with another.
+And when we get old it will be just as hard to realize that we were
+ever young. So that the different periods of life are to all intents and
+purposes different persons, and the first person of grammar ought to
+be used only with the present tense. What we were, or shall be, or do,
+belongs strictly to the third person."
+
+"You would make sad work of grammar with that notion," said Jessie,
+smiling.
+
+"Grammar needs mending just there," replied Henry. "The three persons of
+grammar are really not enough. A fourth is needed to distinguish the
+ego of the past and future from the present ego, which is the only true
+one."
+
+"Oh, you're getting altogether too deep for me," said Jessie. "Come,
+girls, what in the world are we going to get to wear next Wednesday?"
+
+"Sure enough!" cried they with one accord, while the musing look in
+their eyes gave place to a vivacious and merry expression.
+
+"My mother is n't near as old as we 're going to be. Her things won't
+do," said Nellie.
+
+"Nor mine," echoed Jessie; "but perhaps Mary's grandmother will let us
+have some of her things."
+
+"In that case," suggested Frank, "it will be only civil to invite her to
+the party."
+
+"To be sure, why not?" agreed Jessie. "It is to be an 'old folks'
+party, and her presence will give a reality to the thing."
+
+"I don't believe she 'll come," said George. "You see being old is dead
+earnest to her, and she won't see the joke."
+
+But Mary said she would ask her anyway, and so that was settled.
+
+"My father is much too large in the waist for his clothes to be of any
+service to me," said George lugubriously.
+
+But Frank reminded him that this was a hint as to his get-up, and that
+he must stuff with pillows that the proverb might be fulfilled, "Like
+father like son."
+
+And then they were rather taken aback by Henry's obvious suggestion that
+there was no telling what the fashion in dress would be in a. d. 1925,
+"even if," he added, "the scientists leave us any A. D. by that time,"
+though Frank remarked here that a. d. would answer just as well as _Anno
+Darwinis_, if worst came to worst. But it was decided that there was no
+use trying after prophetical accuracy in dress, since it was out of
+the question, and even if attainable would not suggest age to their own
+minds as would the elderly weeds which they were accustomed to see.
+
+"It's rather odd, is n't it," said Jessie gravely, "that it did n't
+occur to anybody that in all probability not over one or two of us at
+most will be alive fifty years hence."
+
+"Let's draw lots for the two victims, and the rest of us will appear as
+ghosts," suggested Frank grimly.
+
+"Poor two," sighed Nellie. "I 'm sorry for them. How lonely they will
+be. I'm glad I have n't got a very good constitution."
+
+But Henry remarked that Jessie might have gone further and said just as
+truly that none of them would survive fifty years, or even ten.
+
+"We may, some of us, escape the pang of dying as long as that," said he,
+"but that is but a trifle, and not a necessary incident of death. The
+essence of mortality is change, and we shall be changed. Ten years will
+see us very different persons. What though an old dotard calling himself
+Henry Long is stumping around fifty years hence, what is that to me? I
+shall have been dead a half century by that time."
+
+"The old gentleman you speak so lightly of will probably think more
+tenderly of you than you do of him," said Jessie.
+
+"I don't believe it," answered Henry. "In fact, if we were entirely true
+to nature next Wednesday, it would spoil the fun, for we probably should
+not, if actually of the age we pretend, think of our youth once a year,
+much less meet to talk it over."
+
+"Oh, I don't think so," protested Nellie. "I 'm sure all the story-books
+and poetry say that old folks are much given to reviewing their youth in
+a pensive, regretful sort of way."
+
+"That's all very pretty, but it 's all gammon in my opinion," responded
+Henry. "The poets are young people who know nothing of how old folks
+feel, and argue only from their theory of the romantic fitness of
+things. I believe that reminiscence takes up a very small part of old
+persons' time. It would furnish them little excitement, for they have
+lost the feelings by which their memories would have to be interpreted
+to become vivid. Remembering is dull business at best. I notice that
+most persons, even of eventful lives, prefer a good novel to the
+pleasures of recollection. It is really easier to sympathize with the
+people in a novel or drama than with our past selves. We lose a
+great source of recreation just because we can't recall the past more
+vividly."
+
+"How shockingly Henry contradicts to-night," was the only reply Nellie
+deigned to this long speech.
+
+"What shall we call each other next Wednesday?" asked Mary. "By our
+first names, as now?"
+
+"Not if we are going to be prophetically accurate," said Henry. "Fifty
+years hence, in all probability, we shall, most of us, have altogether
+forgotten our present intimacies and formed others, quite inconceivable
+now. I can imagine Frank over there, scratching his bald head with his
+spectacle tips, and trying to recall me. 'Hen. Long, Hen. Long,--let
+me think; name sounds familiar, and yet I can't quite place him. Did n't
+I know him at C------, or was it at college? Bless me, how forgetful I
+'m growing!'"
+
+They all laughed at Henry's bit of acting. Perhaps it was only sparkles
+of mirth, but it might have been glances of tender confidence that shot
+between certain pairs of eyes betokening something that feared not
+time. This is in no sort a love story, but such things can't be wholly
+prevented.
+
+The girls, however, protested that this talk about growing so utterly
+away from each other was too dismal for anything, and they would n't
+believe it anyhow. The old-fashioned notions about eternal constancy
+were ever so much nicer. It gave them the cold shivers to hear Henry's
+ante-mortem dissection of their friendship, and that young man was
+finally forced to admit that the members of the club would probably
+prove exceptions to the general rule in such matters. It was agreed,
+therefore, that they should appear to know each other at the old folks'
+party.
+
+"All you girls must, of course, be called 'Mrs.' instead of 'Miss,'"
+suggested Frank, "though you will have to keep your own names, that
+is, unless you prefer to disclose any designs you may have upon other
+people's; "for which piece of impertinence Nellie, who sat next him,
+boxed his ears,--for the reader must know that these young people were
+on a footing of entire familiarity and long intimacy.
+
+"Do you know what time it is?" asked Mary, who, by virtue of the sweet
+sedateness of her disposition, was rather the monitress of the company.
+
+"It's twelve o'clock, an hour after the club's curfew."
+
+"Well," remarked Henry, rousing from the fit of abstraction in which he
+had been pursuing the subject of their previous discussion, "it was to
+be expected we should get a little mixed as to chronology over such talk
+as this."
+
+"With our watches set fifty years ahead, there 'll be no danger of
+overstaying our time next Wednesday, anyhow," added Frank.
+
+Soon the girls presented themselves in readiness for outdoors, and, in a
+pleasant gust of good-bys and parting jests, the party broke up.
+
+"Good-by for fifty years," Jessie called after them from the stoop, as
+the merry couples walked away in the moonlight.
+
+The following week was one of numerous consultations among the girls.
+Grandmother Fellows's wardrobe was pretty thoroughly rummaged under that
+good-natured old lady's superintendence, and many were the queer effects
+of old garments upon young figures which surprised the steady-going
+mirror in her quiet chamber.
+
+"I 'm afraid I can never depend on it again," said Mrs. Fellows.'
+
+She had promised to be at the party.
+
+"She looked so grave when I first asked her," Mary explained to the
+girls, "that I was sorry I spoke of it. I was afraid she thought we
+wanted her only as a sort of convenience, to help out our pantomime by
+the effect of her white hair. But in a minute she smiled in her cheery
+way, and said, as if she saw right through me: 'I suppose, my child, you
+think being old a sort of misfortune, like being hunchbacked or blind,
+and are afraid of hurting my feelings, but you need n't be. The good
+Lord has made it so that at whichever end of life we are, the other end
+looks pretty uninteresting, and if it won't hurt your feelings to have
+somebody in the party who has got through all the troubles you have yet
+before you, I should be glad to come.' That was turning the tables for
+us pretty neatly, eh, girls?"
+
+The young ladies would not have had the old lady guess it for worlds,
+but truth compels me to own that all that week they improved every
+opportunity furtively to study Mrs. Fellows's gait and manner, with a
+view to perfecting their parts.
+
+Frank and George met a couple of times in Henry's room to smoke it
+over and settle details, and Henry called on Jessie to arrange several
+concerted features of the programme, and for some other reasons for
+aught I know.
+
+As each one studied his or her part and strove in imagination to
+conceive how they would act and feel as old men and old women, they grew
+more interested, and more sensible of the mingled pathos and absurdity
+of the project, and its decided general effect of queerness. They all
+set themselves to make a study of old age in a manner that had never
+occurred to them before, and never does occur to most people at all.
+Never before had their elderly friends received so much attention at
+their hands.
+
+In the prosecution of these observations they were impressed with the
+entire lack of interest generally felt by people in the habits and
+manners of persons in other epochs of life than their own. In respect
+of age, as in so many other respects, the world lives on fiats, with
+equally little interest in or comprehension of the levels above or below
+them. And a surprising thing is that middle age is about as unable to
+recall and realize youth as to anticipate age. Experience seems to go
+for nothing in this matter.
+
+They thought they noticed, too, that old people are more alike than
+middle-aged people. There is something of the same narrowness and
+similarity in the range of their tastes and feelings that is marked in
+children. The reason they thought to be that the interests of age have
+contracted to about the same scope as those of childhood before it has
+expanded into maturity. The skein of life is drawn together to a point
+at the two ends and spread out in the middle. Middle age is the period
+of most diversity, when individuality is most pronounced. The members of
+the club observed with astonishment that, however affectionately we
+may regard old persons, we no more think of becoming like them than
+of becoming negroes. If we catch ourselves observing their senile
+peculiarities, it is in a purely disinterested manner, with a complete
+and genuine lack of any personal concern, as with a state to which we
+are coming.
+
+They could not help wondering if Henry were not right about people never
+really growing old, but just changing from one personality to another.
+They found the strange inability of one epoch to understand or
+appreciate the others, hard to reconcile with the ordinary notion of a
+persistent identity.
+
+Before the end of the week, the occupation of their minds with the
+subject of old age produced a singular effect. They began to regard
+every event and feeling from a double standpoint, as present and as
+past, as it appeared to them and as it would appear to an old person.
+
+Wednesday evening came at last, and a little before the hour of eight,
+five venerable figures, more or less shrouded, might have been seen
+making their way from different parts of the village toward the Fellows
+mansion. The families of the members of the club were necessarily in the
+secret, and watched their exit with considerable laughter from behind
+blinds. But to the rest of the villagers it has never ceased to be a
+puzzle who those elderly strangers were who appeared that evening and
+were never before or since visible. For once the Argus-eyed curiosity of
+a Yankee village, compared with which French or Austrian police are easy
+to baffle, was fairly eluded.
+
+Eight o'clock was the hour at which the old folks' party began, and the
+reader will need a fresh introduction to the company which was assembled
+at that time in Mary Fellows's parlor. Mary sat by her grandmother,
+who from time to time regarded her in a half-puzzled manner, as if it
+required an effort of her reasoning powers to reassure her that the
+effect she saw was an illusion. The girl's brown hair was gathered back
+under a lace cap, and all that appeared outside it was thickly powdered.
+She wore spectacles, and the warm tint of her cheeks had given place to
+the opaque saffron hue of age. She sat with her hands in her lap, their
+fresh color and dimpled contour concealed by black lace half-gloves. The
+fullness of her young bosom was carefully disguised by the arrangement
+of the severely simple black dress she wore, which was also in other
+respects studiously adapted to conceal, by its stiff and angular lines,
+the luxuriant contour of her figure. As she rose and advanced to welcome
+Henry and Jessie, who were the last to arrive, it was with a striking
+imitation of the tremulously precipitate step of age.
+
+Jessie, being rather taller than the others, had affected the stoop of
+age very successfully. She wore a black dress spotted with white, and
+her whitened hair was arranged with a high comb. She was the only one
+without spectacles or eyeglasses. Henry looked older and feebler than
+any of the company. His scant hair hung in thin and long white locks,
+and his tall, slender figure had gained a still more meagre effect from
+his dress, while his shoulders were bowed in a marked stoop; his gait
+was rigid and jerky. He assisted himself with a gold-headed cane, and
+sat in his chair leaning forward upon it.
+
+George, on the other hand, had followed the hint of his father's figure
+in his make-up, and appeared as a rubicund old gentleman, large in the
+waist, bald, with an apoplectic tendency, a wheezy asthmatic voice, and
+a full white beard.
+
+Nellie wore her hair in a row of white curls on each side of her head,
+and in every detail of her dress and air affected the coquettish old
+lady to perfection, for which, of course, she looked none the younger.
+Her cheeks were rouged to go with that style.
+
+Frank was the ideal of the sprightly little old gentleman. With his
+brisk air, natty eye-glasses, cane and gloves, and other items of dress
+in the most correct taste, he was quite the old beau. His white hair was
+crispy, brushed back, and his snowy mustache had rather a rakish effect.
+
+Although the transformation in each case was complete, yet quite
+enough of the features, expression, or bearing was apparent through the
+disguise to make the members of the party entirely recognizable to each
+other, though less intimate acquaintances would perhaps have been at
+first rather puzzled. At Henry's suggestion they had been photographed
+in their costumes, in order to compare the ideal with the actual when
+they should be really old.
+
+"It is n't much trouble, and the old folks will enjoy it some day. We
+ought to consider them a little," Henry had said, meaning by "the old
+folks" their future selves.
+
+It had been agreed that, in proper deference to the probabilities, one,
+at least, of the girls ought to illustrate the fat old lady. But they
+found it impossible to agree which should sacrifice herself, for no
+one of the three could, in her histrionic enthusiasm, quite forget her
+personal appearance. Nellie flatly refused to be made up fat, and Jessie
+as flatly, while both the girls had too much reverence for the sweet
+dignity of Mary Fellows's beauty to consent to her taking the part, and
+so the idea was given up.
+
+It had been a happy thought of Mary's to get her two younger sisters,
+girls of eleven and sixteen, to be present, to enhance the venerable
+appearance of the party by the contrast of their bloom and freshness.
+
+"Are these your little granddaughters?" inquired Henry, benevolently
+inspecting them over the tops of his spectacles as he patted the elder
+of the two on the head, a liberty she would by no means have allowed
+him in his proper character, but which she now seemed puzzled whether to
+resent or not.
+
+"Yes," replied Mary, with an indulgent smile. "They wanted to see what
+an old folks' party was like, though I told them they wouldn't enjoy it
+much. I remember I thought old people rather dull when I was their age."
+
+Henry made a little conversation with the girls, asking them the list
+of fatuous questions by which adults seem fated to illustrate the gulf
+between them and childhood in the effort to bridge it.
+
+"Annie, dear, just put that ottoman at Mrs. Hyde's feet," said Mary to
+one of the little girls. "I 'm so glad you felt able to come out this
+evening, Mrs. Hyde! I understood you had not enjoyed good health this
+summer."
+
+"I have scarcely been out of my room since spring, until recently,"
+replied Jessie. "Thank you, my dear" (to the little girl); "but Dr.
+Sanford has done wonders for me. How is your health now, Mrs. Fellows?"
+
+"I have not been so well an entire summer in ten years. My daughter,
+Mrs. Tarbox, was saying the other day that she wished she had my
+strength. You know she is quite delicate," said Mary.
+
+"Speaking of Dr. Sanford," said Henry, looking at Jessie, "he is really
+a remarkable man. My son has such confidence in him that he seemed quite
+relieved when I had passed my grand climacteric and could get on his
+list. You know he takes no one under sixty-three. By the way, governor,"
+he added, turning around with some ado, so as to face George, "I heard
+he had been treating your rheumatism lately. Has he seemed to reach the
+difficulty?"
+
+"Remarkably," replied George, tenderly stroking his right knee in an
+absent manner. "Why, don't you think I walked half the way home from my
+office the other day when my carriage was late?"
+
+"I wonder you dared venture it," said Jessie, with a shocked air. "What
+if you had met with some accident!"
+
+"That's what my son said," answered George. "He made me promise never
+to try such a thing again; but I like to show them occasionally that I'm
+good for something yet."
+
+He said this with a "he, he," of senile complacency, ending in an
+asthmatic cough, which caused some commotion in the company. Frank
+got up and slapped him on the back, and Mary sent Annie for a glass of
+water.
+
+George being relieved, and quiet once more restored, Henry said to
+Frank:--
+
+"By the way, doctor, I want to congratulate you on your son's last book.
+You must have helped him to the material for so truthful a picture of
+American manners in the days when we were young. I fear we have not
+improved much since then. There was a simplicity, a naturalness in
+society fifty years ago, that one looks in vain for now. There was, it
+seems to me, much less regard paid to money, and less of morbid social
+ambition. Don't you think so, Mrs. Tyrrell?"
+
+"It's just what I was saying only the other day," replied Nellie. "I'm
+sure I don't know what we 're coming to nowadays. Girls had some modesty
+when I was young," and she shook her head with its rows of white curls
+with an air of mingled reprobation and despair.
+
+"Did you attend Professor Merryweather's lecture last evening, Mrs.
+Hyde?" asked Frank, adjusting his eye-glasses and fixing Jessie with
+that intensity of look by which old persons have to make up for their
+failing eyesight. "The hall was so near your house, I did n't know but
+you would feel like venturing out."
+
+"My daughters insisted on my taking advantage of the opportunity, it is
+so seldom I go anywhere of an evening," replied Jessie, "and I was very
+much interested, though I lost a good deal owing to the carrying on of
+a young couple in front of me. When I was a girl, young folks didn't do
+their courting in public."
+
+Mary had not heard of the lecture, and Frank explained that it was one
+of the ter-semi-centennial course on American society and politics fifty
+years ago.
+
+"By the way," remarked George, "did you observe what difficulty they
+are having in finding enough survivors of the civil war to make a
+respectable squad. The papers say that not over a dozen of both armies
+can probably be secured, and some of the cases are thought doubtful at
+that."
+
+"Is it possible!" said Henry. "And yet, too, it must be so; but it
+sounds strangely to one who remembers as if it were yesterday seeing
+the grand review of the Federal armies at Washington just after the war.
+What a host of strong men was that, and now scarcely a dozen left. My
+friends, we are getting to be old people. We are almost through with
+it."
+
+Henry sat gazing into vacancy over the tops of his spectacles, while the
+old ladies wiped theirs and sniffed and sighed a little. Finally Jessie
+said:--
+
+"Those were heroic days. My little granddaughters never tire of hearing
+stories about them. They are strong partisans, too. Jessie is a fierce
+little rebel and Sam is an uncompromising Unionist, only they both agree
+in denouncing slavery."
+
+"That reminds me," said Frank, smiling, "that our little Frankie came to
+me yesterday with a black eye he got for telling Judge Benson's little
+boy that people of his complexion were once slaves. He had read it in
+his history, and appealed to me to know if it was n't true."
+
+"I 'm not a bit surprised that the little Benson boy resented the
+imputation," said George. "I really don't believe that more than half
+the people would be certain that slavery ever existed here, and I
+'m sure that it rarely occurs to those who do know it. No doubt that
+company of old slaves at the centennial--that is, if they can find
+enough survivors--will be a valuable historical reminder to many."
+
+"Dr. Hays," said Nellie, "will you settle a question between Mrs. Hyde
+and myself? Were you in C------, it was then only a village, along
+between 1870 and '80, about forty or fifty years ago?"
+
+"No--and yet, come to think--let me see--when did you say?" replied
+Frank doubtfully.
+
+"Between 1870 and '80, as nearly as we can make out, probably about the
+middle of the decade," said Nellie.
+
+"I think I was in C------ at about that time. I believe I was still
+living with my father's family."
+
+"I told you so," said Nellie to Jessie, and, turning again to Frank, she
+asked:--
+
+"Do you remember anything about a social club there?"
+
+"I do," replied Frank, with some appearance of interest. "I recall
+something of the sort quite distinctly, though I suppose I have n't
+thought of it for twenty years. How did you ever hear of it, Mrs. Hyde?"
+
+"Why, I was a member," replied she briskly, "and so was Mrs. Tyrrell. We
+were reminded of it the other day by a discovery Mrs. Tyrrell made in an
+old bureau drawer of a photograph of the members of the club in a group,
+taken probably all of fifty years ago, and yellow as you can imagine.
+There was one figure that resembled you, doctor, as you might have
+looked then, and I thought, too, that I recalled you as one of the
+members; but Mrs. Tyrrell could not, and so we agreed to settle the
+matter by appealing to your own recollection."
+
+"Yes, indeed," said Frank, "I now recall the club very perfectly, and it
+seems to me Governor Townsley was also in it."
+
+"Yes, I think I was a member," assented George, "though my recollections
+are rather hazy."
+
+Mary and Henry, being appealed to, failed to remember anything about the
+club, the latter suggesting that probably it flourished before he came
+to C------. Jessie was quite sure she recalled Henry, but the others
+could not do so with much positiveness.
+
+"I will ask Mrs. Long when I get home," said Henry. "She has always
+lived at C------, and is great for remembering dates. Let's see; what
+time do you think it was?"
+
+"Mrs. Tyrrell and I concluded it must have been between. 1873 and 1877,"
+said Jessie; adding slyly, "for she was married in 1877. Mrs. Tyrrell,
+did you bring that old photograph with you? It might amuse them to look
+at it."
+
+Nellie produced a small picture, and, adjusting their spectacles and
+eye-glasses, they all came forward to see it. A group of six young
+people was represented, all in the very heyday of youth. The spectators
+were silent, looking first at the picture, and then at each other.
+
+"Can it be," said Frank, "that these were ever our pictures? I hope,
+Mrs. Tyrrell, the originals had the forethought to put the names on the
+back, that we may be able to identify them."
+
+"No," said she, "we must guess as best we can. First, who is that?"
+pointing to one of the figures.
+
+"That must be Mrs. Hyde, for she is taller than the others," suggested
+Grandma Fellows.
+
+"By the same token, that must be Mrs. Tyrrell, for she is shorter," said
+Jessie; "though, but for that, I don't see how we could have told them
+apart."
+
+"How oddly they did dress in those days!" said Mary.
+
+"Who can that be?" asked Frank, pointing to the finest-looking of the
+three young men. "If that is one of us, there was more choice in our
+looks than there is now,--eh, Townsley?"
+
+"No doubt," said George, "fifty years ago somebody's eye scanned those
+features with a very keen sense of proprietorship. What a queer feeling
+it would have given those young things to have anticipated that we
+should ever puzzle over their identities in this way!"
+
+They finally agreed on the identity of Jessie, Nellie, and Frank, and
+of George also, on his assuring them that he was once of slender figure.
+This left two figures which nobody could recognize, though Jessie
+insisted that the gentleman was Henry, and Mary thought the other young
+lady was a Miss Fellows, a girl of the village, who, she explained, had
+died young many, many years ago.
+
+"Don't you remember her?" she asked them, and her voice trembled with
+a half-genuine sort of self-pity, as if, for a moment, she imagined
+herself her own ghost.
+
+"I recall her well," said Frank; "tall, grave, sweet, I remember she
+used to realize to me the abstraction of moral beauty when we were
+studying Paley together."
+
+"I don't know when I have thought so much of those days as since I
+received cards for your golden wedding, Judge," said Nellie to Henry,
+soon after. "How many of those who were present at your wedding will be
+present at your golden wedding, do you suppose?"
+
+"Not more than two or three," replied Henry, "and yet the whole village
+was at the wedding."
+
+"Thank God," he said a moment after, "that our friends scatter before
+they die. Otherwise old people like us would do nothing but attend
+funerals during the last half of our lives. Parting is sad, but I prefer
+to part from my friends while they are yet alive, that I may feel it
+less when they die. One must manage his feelings or they will get the
+better of him."
+
+"It is a singular sensation," said George, "to outlive one's generation.
+One has at times a guilty sense of having deserted his comrades. It
+seems natural enough to outlive any one contemporary, but unnatural
+to survive them as a mass,--a sort of risky thing, fraught with the
+various vague embarrassments and undefined perils threatening one who
+is out of his proper place. And yet one does n't want to die, though
+convinced he ought to, and that's the cowardly misery of it."
+
+"Yes," said Henry, "I had that feeling pretty strongly when I attended
+the last reunion of our alumni, and found not one survivor within five
+classes of me. I was isolated. Death had got into my rear and cut me
+off. I felt ashamed and thoroughly miserable."
+
+Soon after, tea was served. Frank vindicated his character as an old
+beau by a tottering alacrity in serving the ladies, while George and
+Henry, by virtue of their more evident infirmity, sat still and allowed
+themselves to be served. One or two declined tea as not agreeing with
+them at that hour.
+
+The loquacious herb gave a fresh impulse to the conversation, and the
+party fell to talking in a broken, interjectory way of youthful scenes
+and experiences, each contributing some reminiscence, and the others
+chiming in and adding scraps, or perhaps confessing their inability to
+recall the occurrences.
+
+"What a refinement of cruelty it is," said Henry at last, "that makes
+even those experiences which were unpleasant or indifferent when passing
+look so mockingly beautiful when hopelessly past."
+
+"Oh, that's not the right way to look at it, Judge," broke in Grandma
+Fellows, with mild reproof. "Just think rather how dull life would be,
+looking forward or backward, if past or coming experiences seemed as
+uninteresting as they mostly are when right at hand."
+
+"Sweet memories are like moonlight," said Jessie musingly. "They make
+one melancholy, however pleasing they may be. I don't see why, any more
+than why moonlight is so sad, spite of its beauty; but so it is."
+
+The fragile tenure of the sense of personal identity is illustrated by
+the ease and completeness with which actors can put themselves in the
+place of the characters they assume, so that even their instinctive
+demeanor corresponds to the ideal, and their acting becomes nature. Such
+was the experience of the members of the club. The occupation of their
+mind during the week with the study of their assumed characters had
+produced an impression that had been deepened to an astonishing degree
+by the striking effect of the accessories of costume and manner. The
+long-continued effort to project themselves mentally into the period of
+old age was assisted in a startling manner by the illusion of the senses
+produced by the decrepit figures, the sallow and wrinkled faces, and the
+white heads of the group.
+
+Their acting had become spontaneous. They were perplexed and bewildered
+as to their identity, and in a manner carried away by the illusion their
+own efforts had created. In some of the earlier conversation of the
+evening there had been occasional jests and personalities, but the
+talk had now become entirely serious. The pathos and melancholy of the
+retrospections in which they were indulging became real. All felt that
+if it was acting now, it was but the rehearsal of a coming reality. I
+think some of them were for a little while not clearly conscious that it
+was not already reality, and that their youth was not forever vanished.
+The sense of age was weighing on them like a nightmare. In very
+self-pity voices began to tremble and bosoms heaved with suppressed
+sobs.
+
+Mary rose and stepped to the piano. It indicated how fully she had
+realized her part that, as she passed the mirror, no involuntary start
+testified to surprise at the aged figure it reflected. She played in a
+minor key an air to the words of Tennyson's matchless piece of pathos,
+--
+
+"The days that are no more," accompanying herself with a voice rich,
+strong, and sweet. By the time she had finished, the girls were all
+crying.
+
+Suddenly Henry sprang to his feet, and, with the strained, uncertain
+voice of one waking himself from a nightmare, cried:--
+
+"Thank God, thank God, it is only a dream," and tore off the wig,
+letting the brown hair fall about his forehead. Instantly all followed
+his example, and in a moment the transformation was effected. Brown,
+black, and golden hair was flying free; rosy cheeks were shining through
+the powder where handkerchiefs had been hastily applied, and the
+bent and tottering figures of a moment ago had given place to
+broad-shouldered men and full-breasted girls. Henry caught Jessie around
+the waist, Frank Nellie, and George Mary, and with one of the little
+girls at the piano, up and down the room they dashed to the merriest of
+waltzes in the maddest round that ever was danced. There was a reckless
+abandon in their glee, as if the lust of life, the glow and fire of
+youth, its glorious freedom, and its sense of boundless wealth, suddenly
+set free, after long repression, had intoxicated them with its strong
+fumes. It was such a moment as their lifetime would not bring again.
+
+It was not till, flushed and panting, laughing and exhausted, they came
+to a pause, that they thought of Grandma Fellows. She was crying, and
+yet smiling through her tears.
+
+"Oh, grandma," cried Mary, throwing her arms around her, and bursting
+into tears, "we can't take you back with us. Oh, dear."
+
+And the other girls cried over her, and kissed her in a piteous, tender
+way, feeling as if their hearts would break for the pity of it. And
+the young men were conscious of moisture about the eyes as they stood
+looking on.
+
+But Grandma Fellows smiled cheerily, and said:--
+
+"I'm a foolish old woman to cry, and you mustn't think it is because I
+want to be young again. It's only because I can't help it."
+
+Perhaps she could n't have explained it better.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Old Folks' Party, by Edward Bellamy
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