"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'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 Cæsar. Positive
fact. I'll tell you how I often keep the run of things: I say of a