TWO QUARRELSOME OLD MEN.
I saw such an unpleasing sight to-day! Two old, gray-headed men, their lips white with passion, clenching their fists in each other’s faces, and calling each other all the disagreeable names they could think of; while the bystanders looked on, laughed, took sides, and encouraged them to fight, for their own amusement. I could not laugh. I felt more like crying. These old men, with one foot in the grave, who seemed to have outlived everything but their own bad passions—it was a pitiable spectacle! Ah! said I, to myself, as I walked away, I am afraid there are two mothers somewhere (may be they are not alive now), who have been sadly to blame; or those respectable-looking old men would not be here, degrading themselves by a brawling street fight. I think, when they were little boys, that “I will!” and “I won’t!” must have been intimate friends of theirs (and very bad company they are, too). I think these fighting old gentlemen were allowed, when they were boys, to come and go when and where they liked, and to lie abed till ten o’clock in the morning, till breakfast was all cold, and then stamp and kick till they got a hot one. I think, when they neglected to get their lessons, and were, very properly, reproved for it, at school, that their mamma thought it was dreadful bad treatment, and took them away; and I think that, when she sent them to another school, they often played truant; and then told the teacher that they had been sick. I think they were stuffed with pies, and cake, and candy, and I think they called upon poor, tired servant girls to brush and black their shoes, when they should have learned to do it themselves. I think, when their sisters asked them to go of any little errand, they roughly replied, “Do it yourself!” I think, when their mothers said, “John (or Thomas) go to the grocer’s for me, that’s a good boy!” that they replied, “How much’ll you give me if I go?” and then, I think, when their mother gave them a three-cent piece, that they pouted, and said that they wouldn’t go, without they could have sixpence. That is the way such gray-haired old men as I saw fighting in the street to-day, are made.