“Spared! I never spared myself. I allers took the but-end of a log, and the bunt of a topsail. Nobody can say that Joe Griffin ever spared himself. Young man (Mr. Goodhue was on the wrong side of sixty), when I was of your age, I had more strength than I knew what to do with.”
“I said you had lived to a great age.”
“Yes; I’ve been here a good while. I was through the French and Indian wars. I was at the takin’ of Quebec, in ‘59, but I was too old for this last one.”
“I trust, sitting here alone so much as you do, and knowing that you are living on borrowed time, that you often think on your latter end, and endeavor to prepare for it.”
“Leetle end; leetle end of what?”
“I say, I hope you are prepared to go.”
“I don’t go anywhere; I can’t for the rheumatics, only to town meetin’, and then they put me into Isaac Murch’s wagin; before he had that, they hauled me on an ox sled.”
“I mean, I hope you are prepared to die, and meet your Maker.”
“O, die, is it? I never killed nobody (except in fair fight), and nobody ever killed me. I never abused my neighbors, or the cattle, and I think it’s everybody’s duty to live just as long as they kin. It’s an awful thing to kill yourself; when anybody has sich thoughts, they ought to put ‘em right out o’ their minds.”