I
A STRANGER FROM SOUTH CAROLINA
Time touches all things with destroying hand; and if he seem now
and then to bestow the bloom of youth, the sap of spring, it is but a brief
mockery, to be surely and swiftly followed by the wrinkles of old age, the
dry leaves and bare branches of winter. And yet there are places where
Time seems to linger lovingly long after youth has departed, and to which
he seems loath to bring the evil day. Who has not known some eventempered
old man or woman who seemed to have drunk of the fountain of
youth? Who has not seen somewhere an old town that, having long since
ceased to grow, yet held its own without perceptible decline?