Of the kaleidoscope of the oncoming civilization his eye caught but little.

There had again fallen upon his life a season of blight, or self-distrust, of dull dissatisfaction with the world and with living.

As in earlier years he had felt unrest and known the lack of settled purpose, so now, after having seen all things apparently set in order before him for progressive accomplishment, he had fallen back once more into that state of disbelief, of that hopeless and desperate awakening properly reserved only for old age, when the individual realizes that what he does is of itself of no consequence, and that what he is or is not stops no single star an atom in its flight, no blade of grass an iota in its growing.
Paralysis of the energies too often follows upon such self-revelations; and indeed it seemed to Franklin that he had suffered some deep and deadly benumbing of his faculties.

He could not welcome the new days.
His memory was set rather on the old days, so recent and in some way so dear.

He loved the forgotten thunder of the buffalo, but in his heart there rose no exultation at the rumble of the wheels.