that not one day had passed since I last saw him in which I did not think
of him, and consider his marvelous statements from every point of view
which my judgment was capable of commanding. I found Mr. Crowder
unchanged in appearance and manner, and his wife was the same charming
young woman I had known. But there was nothing surprising in this.
People generally do not change very much in four months; and yet, in
talking to Mr. Crowder, I could not prevent myself from earnestly
scanning his features to see if he had grown any older.

He noticed this, and laughed heartily. "It is natural enough," he said,
"that you should wish to assure yourself that there is a good foundation
to your belief in what I have told you; but you are in too great a hurry:
you must wait some years for that sort of proof, one way or the other.
But I believe that you do believe in me, and I am not in the least
disturbed by the way you look at me."

After dinner, on the first day of my visit, when we were smoking
together, I asked Mr. Crowder if he would not continue the recital of his
experiences, which were of such absorbing interest to me that sometimes I
found them occupying my mind to an extent which excluded the consideration
of everything relating to myself and the present time.

"From one point of view," he said, "that would be a bad thing for you:
but I don't look at it in that way; in fact, I hope you may become my
biographer. I will furnish you with material enough, and you can arrange
it and put it in shape; that is, if, in the course of a few years, you
consider that, in doing what I ask of you, you will be writing the true
life of a man, and not a collection of fanciful stories. So I hope you
may find that you have not lost your time when thinking so much of a man
of the past."