n those days was considered the flower
of a man's life,--namely, the eighth century thereof. Lamech's
untimely decease was a severe blow to his doting father, who,
forgetting all his son's boyish indiscretions, remembered now only
Lamech's good and lovable traits and deeds. It is reasonable to
suppose, however, that the old gentleman was somewhat beguiled from his
grief by the lively dispositions and playful antics of Lamech's
grandsons, Noah's sons, and his own great-grandsons,--Shem, Ham, and
Japheth,--who at this time had attained to the frolicsome ages of
ninety-five, ninety-two, and ninety-one, respectively. These boys
inherited from their father a violent penchant for aquatics, and
scarcely a day passed that they did not paddle around the bayous and
sloughs of the Euphrates in their gopher-wood canoes.

"Gran'pa," Noah used to say, "the conduct of those boys causes me
constant vexation. I have no time to follow them around, and I am
haunted continually by the fear that they will be drowned, or that the
crocodiles will get them if they don't watch out!"

But Methuselah would smiling answer: "Possess thy soul in patience and
thy bowels in peace; for verily is it not written 'boys will be boys!'"

Now Shem, Ham, and Japheth were very fond of their great-grandpa, and
to their credit be it said that next to paddling over the water
privileges of the Euphrates they liked nothing better than to sit in
the old gentleman's lap, and to hear him talk about old times.
Marvellous tales he told them, too; for his career of nine and a half
centuries had been well stocked with incident, as one would naturally
suppose. Howbeit, the admiration which these callow youths had for
Methuselah was not shared by a large majority of the people then on
earth. On the contrary, we blush to admit it, Methuselah was held in
very trifling esteem by his frivolous fellow-citizens, who habitually
referred to him as an "old 'wayback," "a barnacle," an "old fogy," a
"mossback," or a "garrulous dotard," and with singular irreverence they
took delight in twitting him upon his senility and in pestering him
with divers new-fangled notions altogether distasteful, not to say
shocking, to a gentleman of his years.

It was perhaps, however, at the old settlers' picnics, which even then
were of annual occurrence, that Methuselah most enjoyed himself; for on
these occasions he was given the place of prominence and he was
deferred to in everything, sin