BEGINNING LIFE AT FORTY. A SKETCH FROM REAL LIFE. "FIVE feet eight, broad shoulders, hazel eyes, florid complexion, good nose, white teeth, high forehead, curly dark brown hair." Had I been lost or mislaid at the age of nineteen, such a description my affectionate parents might have circulated, in the fond hope of recovering their youngest treasure. Now alas!-but I will not anticipate. I had good health and good spirits, and thought myself good-looking, and that is sufficient to insure happiness at nineteen. I was, however, a younger son,-the youngest, indeed, of five children, and it was therefore my doom to dig out my own path through the world. My father had it not in his power to do more than give me a sum sufficient to buy me the spade with which I was to dig it ;-in other words, to pay for my outfit. Away I went to earn my bread by the sweat of my brow, in a climate where European brows are peculiarly addicted to the moisture which in genteel society is rarely named. An uncle of mine had an estate in a West India island, and, it being considered prudent to send out somebody to look after it, I was offered an allowance, and at the same time a line of conduct was pointed out which could not fail, if diligently followed, to lead to competence, and indeed, to wealth, in the comparatively short period of twenty years. I acceded to the proposal with delight. The climate was unhealthy; no matter, I relied confidently on the strength of my constitution, and talked of my return at the end of twenty years, with pockets full of money, as gaily as if I had been speaking of events which were expected to take place in a twelvemonth! "How indefatigably will I toil," said I, "and how rapidly will the time pass! In twenty years I still shall be on this side forty, still in the very prime and vigour of life; young enough to enjoy wealth and all its advantages, and yet old enough to avoid the shoals and quicksands which would probably destroy me were I now unfortunately in possession of the expected treasure. How I long to be forty! would that I could overleap the intermediate years, and see myself reflected in yonder mirror, erect and robust, in the full maturity of good looks, forty years of age, with forty thousand pounds in the funds!" I will not trouble the reader with the name of the island to which I was to be voluntarily transported, nor will point out the precise path in which I was to grub my way to independence. Whether my exertions were to be mercantile or legal,-whether I was perched for twenty years on a high stool before a higher desk,-or superintending slavery (for I am speaking of the past) in the open air, in a nankeen suit of dittos, with an immense straw hat, shall be matters left to the diligent research of the curious. I at once overleap the laborious interval, and come to the period when I found myself, as had been predicted, thirtynine, and very rich. Be it most particularly remembered that my life during these twenty years had been one of anticipation. I left England for the purpose of enjoying life on my return. Enjoyment during my absence was not thought of. I had an object to gain, and every nerve was strained, every thought was devoted, to its attainment, The boy who leaves the play ground to go into school and get through a hard task, when the job is finished rushes back to the scene of his sports precisely as spirited, as capable of exercise, and as alive to enjoyment as when he left them: and I thought myself the prototype of the boy; I felt no change within me,-in the glass which had reflected me daily for twenty years, it was not probable that I should detect an alteration. No; I would go and resume my old position at home, just as if I had never quitted it! And home I went, with my bags of of enjoyment! and all money my golden dreams I had left my family residing in a country town, but dignified with the name of a watering-place; for some medical gentleman, most fortunately for the inhabitants, had discovered that the well in his garden produced water that tasted particularly nasty. Being, therefore, unavailable for culinary purposes, he declared it to be eminently medicinal, analyzed it, and clearly pointed out how much salt there was in it, and how much carbonate of soda, and other nasty things; and the end of it was that people came there in crowds of a morning to make wry faces, swallow goblets of the physical stream, and listen to the necessary accompaniment of a band of wind instruments. The only change that the lapse of twenty years had produced in my There my family native town was a considerable increase of buildings. still resided, all but my poor father: he was an invalid when I left home, and he had long since been numbered with the dead. It is high time that I should announce the members of my family. My mother when I left home was fat, fair, and probably forty,-not I have said that I was the that she owned to anything like that age. youngest of five children: my three sisters were the first born, and my brother was one year older than myself. How impatient was I during the voyage! the night, too, that I was forced to sleep at the inn at Bristol! and then the next day, what weather! how it rained and blew! No inside place in the coach; but what cared I? My heart was in its teens, and I never gave a thought to my constitution; off I went, and arrived at my mother's house late in the evening. Shall I ever forget our first meeting,-the happy meeting that I had so long anticipated! No, never! Was it happy ? how could it be otherwise? in My mother received me as mothers ever receive a child,-all tears and affection. But, oh! what a change! The fatness and the fairness face my so entirely gone;-the old woman sat by my side, looking up through a pair of spectacles. And what was my first thought? It was this,-that my dear mother was grown old and infirm, that her life was rapidly on the wane, and that during her best days, the enjoyments of which I might have shared and promoted, I had been far away in a distant land. I am aware that I must very imperfectly describe the feeling that chilled me; I saw a change that I had not anticipated, and for which I was unprepared, and I cried like an infant. My brother had married the year after I quitted England, but he still resided in the same town, and, had he been aware of my arrival, would certainly have met me at my mother's, but I was sure to see my former playfellow the next morning. One of my sisters (the eldest) was a widow, the other two still unmarried, and they now all resided with my mother. "They will come to you immediately," said my mother; "but you were not expected so soon, and you know, George, that ladies of. a certain age cannot bear to be caught en dishabille." "A certain age!" said I. "Oh, yes: Matilda is five years older than I." And presently down came Matilda, the widow, a lady of forty-five, who, by dint of overmuch rouge, overmuch black front, and eyebrows artificially arched and blackened, had contrived to make herself appear fifty at the very least. It was not the Matilda I had left twenty years before; there was not the slightest resemblance; face, figure, manuer, voice, all utterly unlike my sister" Matty." I saw it,-I felt it. The mecting gave me not the slightest pleasure; on the contrary, it was more painful than I can describe, particularly when I perceived that she never would have recognized me. rather But I have not done yet. Presently appeared the elder of the two old maids, aged forty-five; she had never been the least good looking, and had therefore, I suppose, relinquished all matrimonial views earlier than many women, and was now what my mother hinted at as serious," and what the widow had openly declared to be " very metho distical." She was as neat as possible, as mild as milk, and I thought as cold as an icicle. She was soon followed by the youngest spinster (of forty-three), who was always called by the other two "child." She had been pretty-very much so I thought, when I left home-and she now, I suppose, might be said to have "traces" of beauty; but not a glimpse of my own gay sister Mary! She wore what, to my mind, on a woman's head, is the greatest of abominations-a wig. A male wig is to my fancy a bad business; it never makes anybody look younger or better than he would look without it; it deceives nobody, and yet everybody who wears one flatters himself that not one in a hundred discovers his secret. When a man above forty is pointed out as good-looking, he is invariably the man without the wig; but a female wig is a hundred times worse! a wig with a long tail, which is twisted up to act youth! a wig with a flower stuck in it! It is like a garland on a tombstone, for a wig, after all, is but a memorial of departed youth! and such a wig was my sister Mary's, with a bit of lily of the valley hitched under one of the curls. I longed to snatch it off, and throw it into the fire, but thought perhaps that might not be taken in good part, and I desisted. I felt miserably out of spirits, woefully disappointed, and I could not tell one of the family the cause of my depression. I felt relieved when it was time to take my candle and go to bed, and, after so long a journey in the open air, I soon fell fast asleep. The next morning I awoke by no means a giant refreshed; my wetting of the previous day had given me a lumbago and pains in all my limbs, and when I entered the breakfast-room, with my back bent, and one leg following the other with considerable difficulty, I saw clearly that my mother and sisters looked at me with compassion, and considered me a premature Methusalem. There was, however, an old gentleman standing by the fire to keep me in countenance, and by his side a remarkably fine young man, who, on turning round at my entrance, displayed the very face of my dear elder brother, just as I had left him twenty years before. I shuffled up to the lad without an instant's hesitation, and, calling him by his name, caught him in my arms; to my surprise the young man laughed goodhumouredly, but as it appeared rather with a feeling of awkwardness, and, without by any means reciprocating my endearments, walked away to the window. The elderly gentleman, however, endeavoured to make amends; he shook me most paternally by the hand, and apologized for my nephew's coldness. My nephew! yes, he was born two years after I left England! and there was my brother, who, having now been married near twenty years, and possessing moreover a numerous family, had left off being a young man, and might, as the phrase goes, be "taken for any age. Some men leave off being young much earlier than others; a great deal depends upon the constant habit of making up to go into society. By making up, I by no means infer the use of cosmetics, dyes, &c. ; but merely the very innocent endeavour to make oneself "look one's best.” When once this habit is given up, whether from ill-health or the withdrawing from society, there's an end of the matter-there's no resuming it; look in the glass, and the elderly gentleman stands before you! Here was another disappointment, and a bitter one; however, I made the best of it. I took a great fancy to my nephew, perhaps because I found in him the sole representative of the bloom which time had so ruthlessly wiped away from all the rest of the family. He seemed to take to me too, and my spirits began to rise; but accidentally, as I left the room, I heard him say to my sister, "I say, aunt, what can we do to amuse the old gentleman?" and that was a damper ! My disappointments were many, but to describe them in detail would be tedious. At balls I found that nobody expected me to dance, unless indeed there happened to be a lack of beaux, and then my goodnature" in standing up was remarked, or some pert girl said, "What! you figuring away!" I was advised by all my family to marry, by all means the very thing I wished; but I never dreamed of proposing for any woman that was not young and pretty; I did propose for one that was decidedly both, and was rejected. And had I spent the twenty best years of my life, incessantly toiling to obtain wealth, in order that I might return home to enjoy myself? and had I returned at last only to discover that the season for enjoyment had passed away? So it would appear; but I had committed one great error, and these little confessions of an elderly gentleman may prove a warning to others who are similarly situated. Let no one dream of “ beginning life at forty;" were I to start again at the age of nineteen, to play the same part, on the same stage, I should know that on that stage my scene of youth must be enacted, and there the heroine of my love-story must be wooed and won. If it be your lot to pass so many years in a foreign land, that land must be the scene of your hopes and fears-your joys and sorrows-your loves-your friendships-your associations. Toil and climate may thin the hair and tan the cheek, but the married man and the father is not expected to return unchanged he has assumed a new character; while one who, like myself, returns at the end of twenty years en garçon, to dance quadrilles and look for a wife, will find that, in his matrimonial researches, it behoves him not to be over particular. T. H. B. THE RED MAN. A CERTAIN popular French tradition would lead us to believe that the palace of the Tuileries has been for centuries past the resort of a demon, familiarly known by the name of "L'Homme Rouge," or the Red Man; who is seen wandering in all parts of the Château whenever some great misfortune menaces its regal inhabitants; but who retreats at other periods to a small niche in the Tour de l'Horloge, the central tower built by Catherine de Medicis, and especially devoted to the use of her royal astrologers. Béranger has described the royal Red Man as "Un diable habillé d'écarlate, Bossu, louche, et roux, Un serpent lui sort de cravate; Il a le pied fourchu."— But, as it happens, other red men are to be met with in Paris besides the celebrated scarlet devil of the Tuileries; who, after all, is but a sort of metropolitan Zamiel, and little better than the Feuergeist of a high Dutch melodrama. Whoever, for instance, has chanced to visit the Quai Desaix with the intention of finding the Marché aux Fleurs, or Flower-Market, on any other day than the official Wednesdays and Saturdays when it presents so charming an aspect, may have been startled by the sight of half a hundred reddish men and women, the old iron-vendors who on ordinary occasions ply their unattractive trade beneath the dwarf acacia-trees of La Vallée. Even these, however, are the mere half-castes of the calling; but should some courteous reader be smitten, like ourselves, with a taste for the by-ways rather than the highways of a great city, let him dive into one of those tortuous, fetid, narrow, ten-storied streets of the ancient cité of Paris, where Notre Dame uplifts its Gothic towers, and the hospital of the Hôtel Dieu bathes its leprous feet in the polluted waters of the Seine, which ought to have been devoted to the exclusive purpose of dispensing salubrity and purification to the capital,-there, either in the Rue de la Boucherie or Rue de la Huchette,-it matters not to give the exact locality, he will discover a retreat, something between the modern shop and ancient échoppe, the front open to the narrow street in order to display to view its rustbitten contents, viz., heaps, bunches, and trays full of old iron, of every form and mould,-old locks, old keys, old implements and instruments of every trade and calling,-exhibited to the admiration of the public with as dainty a spirit of arrangement as in the curiosity and virtù shops of the Quai Voltaire, and presided in proper person by the proprietor,-the identical and especial RED MAN. Fifty years has Balthazar followed the business. Fifty years have done their work in imparting to his face that copper-coloured complexion, -to his hair, beard, whiskers, habiliments, even down to his leathern apron, a hue of dingy red, which now appears to be engrained into his very nature. The walls, the floors, the ceiling of his dusky habitation, are red; nay, the very atmosphere he breathes is impregnated and coloured by the particles of rust thrown off from the ever-shifting materials of his trade. Between his buyings and sellings, the timeworn rods and |