's the use of
your bringing up such disagreeable reminiscences? The old lady died in
Egypt in 73. They made her up into a mummy, and I reckon they put a
pyramid on her to hold her down. That's enough; that satisfies me."

"Is your memory generally good?"

"Well, about fair; that's all. I know I used to get Petrarch mixed up
in my mind with St. Peter, and I've several times alluded to Plutarch
as the god of the infernal regions. I'm often hazy about people. The
queerest thing! You know that once, in conversation with Benjamin
Franklin, I confounded Mark Antony with Saint Anthony, and actually
alluded to the saint's oration over the dead body of Caesar. Positive
fact. I'll tell you how I often keep the run of things: I say of a
certain event, 'That happened during the century that I was bilious,'
or, 'It occurred in the century when I had rheumatism.' That's the way
I fix the time. I did commence to keep a diary back in 134, but I ran
up a stack of manuscript three or four hundred feet high, and then I
gave it up. Couldn't lug it round with me, you know."

"I suppose you have known a great many celebrated people?"

"Plenty of 'em--plenty of 'em, sir. By the way, did anybody ever tell
you that you looked like Mohammed? Well, sir, you do. Astonishing
likeness! Now, _there_ was an old scalawag for you. A perfect fraud! I
lent that man a pair of boots in 598, and he never returned them; said
I'd get my reward hereafter. I've regretted those boots for nearly
thirteen hundred years."

"Did it ever occur to you to lecture?"

"Oh yes; I've turned it over in my mind. But I guess I won't. You see,
my son, I'm so crammed full of information that if I began a discourse
I could hardly stop under a couple of years; and that's too long for a
lecture, you know. Then they might _encore_ it; and so I hardly think
I'd better go in. No, I'll just trudge along in the old fashion."

"Have you any views about the questions of the day? Are you in favor
of soft money or hard?"

"Young man, the advice to you of a man who has studied the world for
nearly two thousand years is to take any kind you can get. That's
solid wisdom."

Then, as the old man babbled on, he descended from the fence,
shouldered his umbrella, and together the two started for the ferry.
He said he wanted to buy a new suit of clothes. That he had on he had
bought in 1807 in Germany, and it was beginning to get threadbare. So
the reporter led him over the river, put him