I was a little over twenty years old when I wrote "The Last Leaf." The
world was a garden to me then; it is a churchyard now. And yet those are
not bitter or scalding tears that fall from my eyes upon "mossy marbles."
The young who left my side early in my life's journey are still with me in
the unchanged freshness and beauty of youth. Those who have long kept
company with me live on after their seeming departure, were it only by the
mere force of habit; their images are all around me, as if every surface
had been a sensitive film that photographed them; their voices echo about
me as if they had been recorded on those unforgotten cylinders which bring
back to us the tones and accents that have imprinted them as the extinct
animals left their tracks on the hardened sand.
The melancholy of old age has a divine tenderness in it, which only the
sad experience of life can lend a sad soul.
The Gridiron.