Youth is the only season for enjoyment, and the first twenty-five years of one's life are worth all the rest of the longest life of man, even though those five- and-twenty be spent in penury and contempt, and the rest in the possession of wealth, honours, respectability, ay, and many of them in strength and health, such as will enable one to ride forty miles before dinner, and over one's pint of port--for the best gentleman in the land should not drink a bottle--carry on one's argument, with gravity and decorum, with any commercial gentleman who, responsive to one's challenge, takes the part of common sense and humanity against "protection" and the lord of land.
Ah! there is nothing like youth--not that after-life is valueless.

Even in extreme old age one may get on very well, provided we will but accept of the bounties of God.

I met the other day an old man, who asked me to drink.

"I am not thirsty," said I, "and will not drink with you." "Yes, you will," said the old man, "for I am this day one hundred years old; and you will never again have an opportunity of drinking the health of a man on his hundredth birthday." So I broke my word, and drank.

"Yours is a wonderful age," said I.