Time, they say, must the best of us capture, And travel and battle and gems and gold No more can kindle the ancient rapture, For even the youngest of hearts grows old.

Public life is regarded as the crown of a career, and to young men it is the worthiest ambition. Politics is still the greatest and the most honorable adventur…

I mind as if it were yesterday my first sight of the man. Little I knew at the time how big the moment was with destiny, or how often that face seen in the fit…

We can pay our debts to the past by putting the future in debt to ourselves.

Dance on, dance on, we see, we see Youth goes, alack, and with it glee, A boy the old man ne'er can be; Maternal thirty scarce can find The sweet sixteen long …

And oh! I shall find how, day by day, All thoughts and things look older; How the laugh of pleasure grows less gay, And the heart of friendship colder.

Thirty-the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning briefcase of enthusiasm, thinning hair.