“It’s at least one hundred and seventy-five years old.”
“It’s old enough to look better, then. Is that one of the houses that Washington slept in?”
“I guess so.”
“It must be, from the stories you have told me since I have been here. How old was Washington, anyway, when he died?”
“He was in his sixty-eighth year.”
“I think there’s some mistake about that.”
“No, sir. Those are the correct figures. He was born in 1732 and he died in 1799.”
“I’m not going to dispute you, George. I’ll take your word for it, but it always seemed to me that Washington’s age must have been a good deal greater than the histories say it was.”
“Why?”
“Because he slept in so many houses. I have figured it up and if he had spent about a quarter of an hour in every one of the houses that you say he slept in, it will figure out that he was a good deal more than sixty-seven years old. Indeed, I have begun to think that Methuselah was an infant-in-arms compared with George Washington, if ten per cent of the stories you have been telling us are true. By the way, how old was Methuselah, anyway?”