From the
day on which I first consulted the oculist up to the present time, about
twenty-four years, I have only been three times in The World building.
Most people think I'm dead, or living in Europe in complete retirement.
Now go on and give me the morning's news. I've had practically nothing,
so you can just run over it briefly, item by item."
On another occasion he told me an amusing story of an experience he had
had out in Missouri just after the end of the Civil War. He had spent
some weeks riding from county-seat to county-seat securing registration
for a deed making title for a railroad. One evening he was nearly
drowned through his horse stumbling in the middle of a ford. When he
dragged himself up the bank on the other side, drenched to the skin and
worried by the prospect of having to catch his mount, which had started
off on a cross-country gallop, he saw an elderly farmer sitting on a
tree stump, and watching him with intense interest and perfect
seriousness.
This man put J. P. up for the night. They got along famously for a
while, but presently all was changed.
"The first thing he did," said J. P., "was to take me to the farmhouse
and hand me a tumbler three parts full of whisky. When I refused this he
looked at me as though he thought I was mad.
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