"No; none for me. Raleigh wanted me to learn to smoke when he was in Virginia, but I didn't care for it. You remember him, of course? Oh no; I forgot how young you are. Pleasant man, but a little too chimerical. I liked Columbus better. Nero was a man who'd've suited you newspaper people. 'Most always a murder every day. And then that fire in Rome when he fiddled; made a splendid report for the papers, wouldn't it? Poor sort of a man, though. The only time I ever saw him was when he was drowning his mother. Dropped the old lady over and let her drift off as if he didn't care a cent."
"Talking of newspapers, how would you like to make an engagement as the traveling correspondent of the Patriot?"
"Well, I dunno. I wouldn't mind sending you a letter now and then, but I don't care to make any regular engagement. You see I haven't written a great deal for about eighteen hundred years, and a man kind of gets out of practice in that time. I write such an awful poor hand, too. No; I guess I won't contribute regularly. I have thought sometimes maybe I might do a little work as a book-agent, so's to pick up a few stray dollars. But I never had a fair chance offered to me, and I didn't care enough about it to hunt it up; and so nothing ever came of it. I could make a good book fairly hum around this globe, though, don't you think?"
"Were you ever married? Did you ever have a wife?"
"See here, my son, I never did you any harm, and what's the use of your bringing up such disagreeable reminiscences? The old lady died in Egypt in 73. They made her up into a mummy, and I reckon they put a pyramid on her to hold her down. That's enough; that satisfies me."
"Is your memory generally good?"
"Well, about fair; that's all. I know I used to get Petrarch mixed up in my mind with St. Peter, and I've several times alluded to Plutarch as the god of the infernal regions. I'm often hazy about people. The queerest thing! You know that once, in conversation with Benjamin Franklin, I confounded Mark Antony with Saint Anthony, and actually alluded to the saint's oration over the dead body of Cæsar. Positive fact. I'll tell you how I often keep the run of things: I say of a certain event, 'That happened during the century that I was bilious,' or, 'It occurred in the century when I had rheumatism.' That's the way I fix the time. I did commence to keep a diary back in 134, but I ran up a stack of manuscript three or four hundred feet high, and then I gave it up. Couldn't lug it round with me, you know."
"I suppose you have known a great many celebrated people?"
"Plenty of 'em—plenty of 'em, sir. By the way, did anybody ever tell you that you looked like Mohammed? Well, sir, you do. Astonishing likeness! Now, there was an old scalawag for you. A perfect fraud! I lent that man a pair of boots in 598, and he never returned them; said I'd get my reward hereafter. I've regretted those boots for nearly thirteen hundred years."
"Did it ever occur to you to lecture?"