The boy sat quite still as if pondering over some question, and then, concluding that full information had not been given, called loudly to the conductor, then at the other end of the car:  “And mother’s thirty-one!”

The late John Bigelow, the patriarch of diplomats and authors, and the no less distinguished physician and author, Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, were together, several years ago, at West Point.  Dr. Bigelow was then ninety-two, and Dr. Mitchell eighty.

The conversation turned to the subject of age.  “I attribute my many years,” said Dr. Bigelow, “to the fact that I have been most abstemious.  I have eaten sparingly, and have not used tobacco, and have taken little exercise.”

“It is just the reverse in my case,” explained Dr. Mitchell.  “I have eaten just as much as I wished, if I could get it; I have always used tobacco, immoderately at times; and I have always taken a great deal of exercise.”

With that, Ninety-Two-Years shook his head at Eighty-Years and said, “Well, you will never live to be an old man!”—­Sarah Bache Hodge.

A wise man never puts away childish things.—­Sidney Dark.

  To the old, long life and treasure;
  To the young, all health and pleasure.

  —­Ben Jonson.

Youth is a blunder; Manhood a struggle; Old Age a regret.—­Disraeli.

We do not count a man’s years, until he has nothing else to count.—­Emerson.

To be seventy years young is sometimes far more cheerful and hopeful than to be forty years old.—­O.W.  Holmes.

AGENTS

“John, whatever induced you to buy a house in this forsaken region?”

“One of the best men in the business.”—­Life.

AGRICULTURE

A farmer, according to this definition, is a man who makes his money on the farm and spends it in town.  An agriculturist is a man who makes his money in town and spends it on the farm.

In certain parts of the west, where without irrigation the cultivators of the land would be in a bad way indeed, the light rains that during the growing season fall from time to time, are appreciated to a degree that is unknown in the east.

Last summer a fruit grower who owns fifty acres of orchards was rejoicing in one of these precipitations of moisture, when his hired man came into the house.

“Why don’t you stay in out of the rain?” asked the fruit-man.

“I don’t mind a little dew like this,” said the man.  “I can work along just the same.”

“Oh, I’m not talking about that,” exclaimed the fruit-man.  “The next time it rains, you can come into the house.  I want that water on the land.”

  They used to have a farming rule
  Of forty acres and a mule. 
  Results were won by later men
  With forty square feet and a hen. 
  And nowadays success we see
  With forty inches and a bee.