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."