The Footprints Of Time

Wrinkles are the first tell-tales of a lost youth, and the wrinkles niake their way in a very atealthy manner. At first there comes a faint marking of one little line about the corner of the eye, and one at each öide of the mouth. Assuredly it ia the sign of approaching age, we aay complacently, looking at ourselves in the glass, oouscious of' our attraotions in the perfection of their maturity. That little iiue, indioative of the furrowed future, is no more age than the one scarlet leaf of the maple iu the ruidst of the green wood in autumn. It is the shadow of the herald if you will ; but it is not the real thing. And 80 on with all the rest. But it is not so with our friends. Tbe gap inade between the past and present by years of absence is abrupt, unexpected. You left a blooming, sleek-haired, slimwaisted girl ; you tind a faded, holloweyed, gray-haired woruan, the mother of ohildren, afiiicted with bad health and tired of life. Or you encounter a stout and florid tuatron whose bulk is a burdeu to herself and a matter not for admiraron to her friends ; whose early shyness has worn off and gives place to a free-andeasy good nature that may be genial but is vulgar; whose girlish sentimentality has gone with her blushes, and who now opeuly proclaims her devotion to champagne and lobster salad as among the few things in lift worth taking trouble for, and talks of the pleasure of the palate as superior to every other enjoyment. To be sure, paring away in your mind's eye those superfluous layers of flesh, you can niake out the nose of the past, and the lips have the same curve as hers had in the days when you would have given a month's salary for a kiss ; the eyes are the same color, but what has become of their sparkle 'i Where is that roguish twinkle that made your heart leap when it flashed upon you, piving point to a girlish sauciness that was &o innocent and Rhe thought so naughty 't Where is that dewy, downcast look that was so conscious where there was nothing to blush for 't Is it that ugly leer which tells of less tenderness of sentiment than you would like to see in a man 't You must accept this as the " survival ;" it ia all you will have of the sweetness, the bashfulness that once seemed to you the most exquisite grace on earth.