“How long was you young?”

“Only two weeks.  That was plenty for me.  Laws, I was so lonesome!  You see, I was full of the knowledge and experience of seventy-two years; the deepest subject those young folks could strike was only a-b-c to me.  And to hear them argue—­oh, my! it would have been funny, if it hadn’t been so pitiful.  Well, I was so hungry for the ways and the sober talk I was used to, that I tried to ring in with the old people, but they wouldn’t have it.  They considered me a conceited young upstart, and gave me the cold shoulder.  Two weeks was a-plenty for me.  I was glad to get back my bald head again, and my pipe, and my old drowsy reflections in the shade of a rock or a tree.”

“Well,” says I, “do you mean to say you’re going to stand still at seventy-two, forever?”

“I don’t know, and I ain’t particular.  But I ain’t going to drop back to twenty-five any more—­I know that, mighty well.  I know a sight more than I did twenty-seven years ago, and I enjoy learning, all the time, but I don’t seem to get any older.  That is, bodily—­ my mind gets older, and stronger, and better seasoned, and more satisfactory.”

Says I, “If a man comes here at ninety, don’t he ever set himself back?”

“Of course he does.  He sets himself back to fourteen; tries it a couple of hours, and feels like a fool; sets himself forward to twenty; it ain’t much improvement; tries thirty, fifty, eighty, and finally ninety—­finds he is more at home and comfortable at the same old figure he is used to than any other way.  Or, if his mind begun to fail him on earth at eighty, that’s where he finally sticks up here.  He sticks at the place where his mind was last at its best, for there’s where his enjoyment is best, and his ways most set and established.”

“Does a chap of twenty-five stay always twenty-five, and look it?”

“If he is a fool, yes.  But if he is bright, and ambitious and industrious, the knowledge he gains and the experiences he has, change his ways and thoughts and likings, and make him find his best pleasure in the company of people above that age; so he allows his body to take on that look of as many added years as he needs to make him comfortable and proper in that sort of society; he lets his body go on taking the look of age, according as he progresses, and by and by he will be bald and wrinkled outside, and wise and deep within.”

“Babies the same?”

“Babies the same.  Laws, what asses we used to be, on earth, about these things!  We said we’d be always young in heaven.  We didn’t say how young—­we didn’t think of that, perhaps—­that is, we didn’t all think alike, anyway.  When I was a boy of seven, I suppose I thought we’d all be twelve, in heaven; when I was twelve, I suppose I thought we’d all be eighteen or twenty in heaven; when I was forty, I begun to go back; I remember I hoped we’d all be about thirty years old in heaven.