younger, I fancy, than you were at thirty-five.
It is a strange reflection that at forty-five, when we are just entering upon
the most enjoyable period of life, you already began to think of growing old and
to look backward. With you it was the forenoon, with us it is the afternoon,
which is the brighter half of life.«
    After this I remember that our talk branched into the subject of popular
sports and recreations at the present time as compared with those of the
nineteenth century.
    »In one respect,« said Dr. Leete, »there is a marked difference. The
professional sportsmen, which were such a curious feature of your day, we have
nothing answering to, nor are the prizes for which our athletes contend money
prizes, as with you. Our contests are always for glory only. The generous
rivalry existing between the various guilds, and the loyalty of each worker to
his own, afford a constant stimulation to all sorts of games and matches by sea
and land, in which the young men take scarcely more interest than the honorary
guildsmen who have served their time. The guild yacht races off Marblehead take
place next week, and you will be able to judge for yourself of the popular
enthusiasm which such events nowadays call out as compared with your day. The
demand for panem et circenses preferred by the Roman populace is recognized
nowadays as a wholly reasonable one. If bread is the first necessity of life,
recreation is a close second, and the nation caters for both. Americans of the
nineteenth century were as unfortunate in lacking an adequate provision for the
one sort of need as for the other. Even if the people of that period had enjoyed
larger leisure, they would, I fancy, have often been at a loss how to pass it
agreeably. We are never in that predicament.«
 

                                  Chapter XIX

In the course of an early morning constitutional I visited Charlestown. Among
the changes, too numerous to attempt to indicate, which mark the lapse of a
century in that quarter, I particularly noted the total disappearance of the old
state prison.
    »That went before my day, but I remember hearing about it,« said Dr. Leete,
when I alluded to the fact at the breakfast table. »We have no jails nowadays.
All cases of atavism are treated in the hospitals.«
    »Of atavism!« I exclaimed, staring.
    »Why, yes,« replied Dr. Leete. »The idea of dealing punitively with those
unfortunates was given up at least fifty years ago, and I think more.«