Moses Grant's eyes were heavy--or eye-lids, if the reader should be a critic. He had brought a book from his daughter's book-case. He remembered the volume--it was called _A Book of a Thousand Stories_--as the one his daughter Mary read aloud one evening, when the witty turns of speech put all the company into the best of humor. But, somehow, the wit had now lost its point--the joke had lost its zest--and let him try as he would to collect his scattered thoughts, and let him set his eyes on his book never so firmly, his fancy would go on long journeys into the past, and come back again, wearied more and more with each journey, till at last it had sunk to rest, and Moses Grant's eyes were closed. The bees buzzed on, the leaves quivered as before, and the great world moved in its wonted way, yet our hero did not heed it; the world moved on just the same, O reader! as it will one day move--one long, long day--when you and I will not heed it. Suddenly Moses Grant heard his name spoken. When aroused, he saw his neighbor, Johnson, seated in the rustic chair that mated the one in which he himself sat. 'Good-day, neighbor Johnson,' said Moses Grant. 'What in the world are you doing with that great book?' 'I am taking the census.' And he began turning the leaves as if searching for a lost place, remarking, laconically: 'Sultry.' 'Yes, a very close afternoon. But is it ten years since the census was taken? It seems but as many months. Oh! well, time flies!' And he looked at the beautiful sky and at the beautiful landscape, and lingeringly at his own stately mansion, guarded by venerable trees that his own hand had transplanted from the forest--and the great truth, half-realized, yet almost as common as our daily life, that time was sweeping all things into the dead past, day by day and year by year, gave him a passing thought of how much he loved them. The name of Moses Grant was duly inscribed in the book. Then the question was asked by neighbor Johnson: 'When were you born?' 'In the year 1800--sixty years ago the day before yesterday--though I declare I forgot all about my birthday.' 'Well, how much real estate shall I set down to you?' 'I _have_ said that I owned about fifty thousand dollars in that kind of property, perhaps a little more, but not half as much as some persons estimate.' 'Well, how much personal property?' 'I guess about twenty thousand will not go far out of the way, reckoning mortgages and all.'