“I was in a down-town office building in New York, a few years ago, and when I entered the elevator a short stout gentleman with a cigar in his fingers spoke to me, saying,
“‘How do you do, Mr. Jefferson?’
“‘I am very glad to see you,’ I replied. He continued,
“‘You don’t know me, do you, Mr. Jefferson?’
“‘Well, really, you must pardon me, but your face is quite familiar but your name has escaped my memory.’
“‘My name is Grant,’ he said quietly, with a twinkle in his eye. I got out at the next floor; I was so afraid I might ask him if he had been in the war.”
But there is no accounting for absent-mindedness. Charles Wyndham, the English comedian, tells of an enthusiastic hunter, a man who thought of nothing else. One morning his wife saw him leaving the house and asked:
“Where are you going?”
“Hunting,” was the reply.
“But where is your gun?”