"Can you give any reason for it?" he asked.
Naturally, I could have given one—but I didn't. . . .
"I suppose," I said, "that it is just the result of good, clean living and a strong constitution. He's never had a day's illness in his life—except for a slight operation he once underwent. He's also an American, born and bred. I think that may account for a lot. . . ."
"H'm! . . . Very interesting man! Telling me this morning all about Abraham Lincoln's election as President and how it was the culmination of the long political struggle between the North and the South over the question of slavery. Your great-grandfather was a young man of about your age at that time. . . . Remarkable memory for details!" mused the doctor, jerkily, as if he had a preserved specimen of Gran'pa before him in a bottle of spirit. "Got a fine head, too. . . . And there's character in his face. . . . I should say he's a man who is not easily turned from anything he's set his mind to."
"He's the very devil," I admitted, "once he gets an idea into his head."
"It's men like that who make for progress, you know. . . ."
"Undoubtedly, doctor! I believe that in a few years' time grandfather's name will be a household word."
"In a few years' time! . . ." he exclaimed. "But surely at his age—ninety-six . . ."
"Oh, he's good for another thirty or forty years yet!"
The doctor looked at me with a trace of alarm in his eyes; then he said rather abruptly: