es, while Methuselah continued to stand out amid the
general wreck of men and nations.

Even as the young, strong mower going forth with his mower for to mow
spareth the tall and drab hornet's nest and passeth by on the other
side, so Time, with his Waterbury hour-glass and his overworked
hay-knife over his shoulder, and his long Mormon whiskers, and his high
sleek dome of thought with its gray lambrequin of hair around the base
of it, mowed all around Methuselah and then passed on.

Methuselah decorated the graves of those who perished in a dozen
different wars. He did not enlist himself, for over nine hundred years
of his life he was exempt. He would go to the enlisting places and offer
his services, and the officer would tell him to go home and encourage
his grandchildren to go. Then Methuselah would sit around Noah's front
steps, and smoke and criticise the conduct of the war, also the conduct
of the enemy.

It is said of Methuselah that he never was the same man after his son
Lamech died. He was greatly attached to Lamech, and, when he woke up one
night to find his son purple in the face with membraneous croup, he
could hardly realize that he might lose him. The idea of losing a boy
who had just rounded the glorious morn of his 777th year had never
occurred to him. But death loves a shining mark, and he garnered little
Lammie and left Methuselah to mourn for a couple of centuries.

Methuselah finally got so that he couldn't sleep any later than 4
o'clock in the morning, and he didn't see how any one else could. The
older he got, and the less valuable his time became, the earlier he
would rise, so that he could get an early start. As the centuries filed
slowly by, and Methuselah got to where all he had to do was to shuffle
into his loose-fitting clothes and rest his gums on the top of a large
slick-headed cane and mutter up the chimney, and then groan and
extricate himself from his clothes again and retire, he rose earlier and
earlier in the morning, and muttered more and more about the young folks
sleeping away the best of the day, and he said he had no doubt that
sleeping and snoring till breakfast time helped to carry off Lam. But
one day old Father Time came along with a new scythe, and he drew the
whetstone across it a few times, and rolled the sleeves of his
red-flannel undergarment up over his warty elbows, and Mr. Methuselah
passed on to that undiscovered country, with a ripe experience and a
long clean