This he learned from their own confession;
for otherwise, there not being above two or three of that species born
in an age, they were too few to form a general observation by. When they
came to fourscore years, which is reckoned the extremity of living in
this country, they had not only all the follies and infirmities of other
old men, but many more, which arose from the dreadful prospect of never
dying. They were not only opinionative, peevish, covetous, morose, vain,
talkative, but incapable of friendship and dead to all natural
affection, which never descended below their grandchildren. Envy and
impotent desires are their prevailing passions. But those objects
against which their envy seems principally directed are the vices of the
younger sort and the deaths of the old. By reflecting on the former,
they find themselves cut off from all possibility of pleasure; and
whenever they see a funeral they lament and repine that others are gone
to a harbor of rest, to which they themselves never can hope to arrive.
They have no remembrance of any thing but what they learned and
observed in their youth and middle age, and even that is very imperfect,
And for the truth or particulars of any fact, it is safer to depend on
common tradition than upon their best recollections.
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