“That’s it. Grocery people like it, but you couldn’t. You see you wasn’t used to it. Well, I wasn’t used to being young, and I couldn’t seem to take any interest in it. I was strong, and handsome, and had curly hair,—yes, and wings, too!—gay wings like a butterfly. I went to picnics and dances and parties with the fellows, and tried to carry on and talk nonsense with the girls, but it wasn’t any use; I couldn’t take to it—fact is, it was an awful bore. What I wanted was early to bed and early to rise, and something to _do_; and when my work was done, I wanted to sit quiet, and smoke and think—not tear around with a parcel of giddy young kids. You can’t think what I suffered whilst I was young.” “How long was you young?” “Only two weeks. That was plenty for me. Laws, I was so lonesome! You see, I was full of the knowledge and experience of seventy-two years; the deepest subject those young folks could strike was only _a-b-c_ to me. And to hear them argue—oh, my! it would have been funny, if it hadn’t been so pitiful. Well, I was so hungry for the ways and the sober talk I was used to, that I tried to ring in with the old people, but they wouldn’t have it. They considered me a conceited young upstart, and gave me the cold shoulder. Two weeks was a-plenty for me. I was glad to get back my bald head again, and my pipe, and my old drowsy reflections in the shade of a rock or a tree.” “Well,” says I, “do you mean to say you’re going to stand still at seventy-two, forever?” “I don’t know, and I ain’t particular. But I ain’t going to drop back to twenty-five any more—I know that, mighty well. I know a sight more than I did twenty-seven years ago, and I enjoy learning, all the time, but I don’t seem to get any older. That is, bodily—my mind gets older, and stronger, and better seasoned, and more satisfactory.” Says I, “If a man comes here at ninety, don’t he ever set himself back?” “Of course he does. He sets himself back to fourteen; tries it a couple of hours, and feels like a fool; sets himself forward to twenty; it ain’t much improvement; tries thirty, fifty, eighty, and finally ninety—finds he is more at home and comfortable at the same old figure he is used to than any other way. Or, if his mind begun to fail him on earth at eighty, that’s where he finally sticks up here. He sticks at the place where his mind was last at its best, for there’s where his enjoyment is best, and his ways most set and established.” “Does a chap of twenty-five stay always twenty-five, and look it?”