it was their power of growing old. I would marry a young woman, beautiful,
charming. You need not be surprised that I was able to do this, for in all
ages woman has been in the habit of disregarding the years of man, and
I have always had a youthful spirit; I think it is Daudet who says that
the most dangerous lover is the man of fifty-three. I would live happily
with a wife; she would gradually grow to be the same age as myself; and
then she would become older and older, and I did not. As I have said,
there were women to whom I would have given immortality if I could; but
I will add that there have been times when I would have given up my own
immortality to be able to pass gently into old age with a beloved wife.

"You will want to know if I have had descendants. They exist by the
thousand; but if you ask me where they are, I must tell you that I do
not know. I now have but one child, a little girl who is asleep
up-stairs. I have gathered around me families of sons and daughters;
they have grown up, married, and my grandchildren have sat upon my knees.
Sometimes, at long intervals, I have known great-grandchildren. But when
my sons and daughters have grown gray and gone to their graves, I have
withdrawn myself from the younger people,--some of whom were not
acquainted with me, others even had never heard of me,--and then by the
next generation the old ancestor, if remembered at all, was connected
only with the distant past. And so family after family have melted into
the great mass of human beings, and are as completely lost as though they
were water thrown into the sea.

"I have always been fond of beautiful women, and as you have met Mrs.
Crowder, you know that my disposition has not changed. Sarah, the wife
of Abraham, was considered a woman of great beauty in her day, and the
fame of her charms continues; but I assure you that if she lived now her
attractions would not have given her husband so much trouble. I saw a