e around some in sleeping-cars, and had
my baggage checked through; but generally I prefer to walk. I'm never
in a hurry, and I like to take my own route. I'm a mighty good walker.
I did think of getting up some kind of a pedestrian match with some
of your champion walkers, but it's no use; it'd only create an
excitement."

"How do people treat you usually?"

"Well, I can't complain. Snap me up for a tramp sometimes, or make
disagreeable remarks about me. But generally I get along well enough.
The undertakers are hardest on me. They say I exercise a depressing
influence on their business by setting a bad example to other people;
and one of 'em, over in Constantinople, he said a man who'd defrauded
about fifty-four generations of undertakers ought to be ashamed to
show his face in civilized society. But bless you, sonny, I don't mind
them. Business, you know, is business. It's perfectly natural for them
to feel that way about it; now, isn't it?"

"Will you have a cigar, after eating?"

"No; none for me. Raleigh wanted me to learn to smoke when he was in
Virginia, but I didn't care for it. You remember him, of course?
Oh no; I forgot how young you are. Pleasant man, but a little too
chimerical. I liked Columbus better. Nero was a man who'd've suited
you newspaper people. 'Most always a murder every day. And then that
fire in Rome when he fiddled; made a splendid report for the papers,
wouldn't it? Poor sort of a man, though. The only time I ever saw him
was when he was drowning his mother. Dropped the old lady over and let
her drift off as if he didn't care a cent."

"Talking of newspapers, how would you like to make an engagement as
the traveling correspondent of the _Patriot_?"

"Well, I dunno. I wouldn't mind sending you a letter now and then, but
I don't care to make any regular engagement. You see I haven't written
a great deal for about eighteen hundred years, and a man kind of gets
out of practice in that time. I write such an awful poor hand, too.
No; I guess I won't contribute regularly. I have thought sometimes
maybe I might do a little work as a book-agent, so's to pick up a few
stray dollars. But I never had a fair chance offered to me, and I
didn't care enough about it to hunt it up; and so nothing ever came
of it. I could make a good book fairly hum around this globe, though,
don't you think?"

"Were you ever married? Did you ever have a wife?"

"See here, my son, I never did you any harm, and what