record.

We can almost fancy how the physicians, who had disagreed about his case
all the way through, came and insisted on a post-mortem examination to
prove which was right and what was really the matter with him. We can
imagine how people went by shaking their heads and regretting that
Methuselah should have tampered with tobacco when he knew that it
affected his heart.

But he is gone. He lived to see his own promissory notes rise, flourish,
acquire interest, pine away at last and finally outlaw. He acquired a
large farm in the very heart of the county-seat, and refused to move or
to plot, and called it Methuselah's addition. He came out in spring
regularly for nine hundred years after he got too old to work out his
poll-tax on the road, and put in his time telling the rising generation
how to make a good road. Meantime other old people, who were almost one
hundred years of age, moved away and went West where they would attract
attention and command respect. There was actually no pleasure in getting
old around where Methuselah was, and being ordered about and scolded and
kept in the background by him.

[Illustration]

So when at last he died, people sighed and said: "Well, it was better
for him to die before he got childish. It was best that he should die
at a time when he knew it all. We can't help thinking what an
acquisition Methuselah will be on the evergreen shore when he gets
there, with all his ripe experience and his habits of early rising."

And the next morning after the funeral Methuselah's family did not get
out of bed till nearly 9 o'clock.

A Black Hills Episode

A little, warty, dried-up sort
O' lookin' chap 'at hadn't ort
A ben a-usin' round no bar,
With gents like us a-drinkin' thar!

And that idee occurred to me
The livin' minit 'at I see
The little cuss elbowin' in
To humor his besettin' sin.

There 're nothin' small in me at all,
But when I heer the rooster call
For shugar and a spoon, I says:
"Jest got in from the States, I guess."

He never 'peared as if he heerd,
But stood thar, wipin' uv his beard,
And smilin' to hisself as if
I'd been a-givin' him a stiff.

And I-says-I, a edgin' by
The bantam, and a-gazin' high
Above his plug--says I: "I knowed
A little feller onc't 'at blowed
Around like you, and tuck his drinks
With shugar in--and _his_ folks thinks