“Why, my goodness, sonny, I’ve been hunting all over the earth for seventeen centuries for something to disagree with me.  That’s what I yearn for.  If I could only get dyspepsia once, I might hope to wear myself out.  But it’s no use.  I could lunch on a pound of nails and feel as comfortable as a baby after a bottle of milk.  That’s one of my peculiarities.  You know nothing ever hurts me.  Why, I’ve been thrown out of volcanoes—­lemme see:  well, dozens of times—­and never been singed a bit.  ’Most always, in real cold weather, I step over to Italy and roost around inside of Vesuvius; and then, maybe, there’s an eruption, and I’m heaved out a couple of hundred miles or so, but always safe and sound.  What I don’t know about volcanic eruptions, my child, isn’t worth knowing.  I went sailing around through the air when Pompeii was destroyed.  Yes, sir, I was there; saw the whole thing.  Why, I could tell you the most wonderful stories.  You wouldn’t believe.”

“How do you travel generally?”

“Oh, different ways.  I have gone around some in sleeping-cars, and had my baggage checked through; but generally I prefer to walk.  I’m never in a hurry, and I like to take my own route.  I’m a mighty good walker.  I did think of getting up some kind of a pedestrian match with some of your champion walkers, but it’s no use; it’d only create an excitement.”

“How do people treat you usually?”

“Well, I can’t complain.  Snap me up for a tramp sometimes, or make disagreeable remarks about me.  But generally I get along well enough.  The undertakers are hardest on me.  They say I exercise a depressing influence on their business by setting a bad example to other people; and one of ’em, over in Constantinople, he said a man who’d defrauded about fifty-four generations of undertakers ought to be ashamed to show his face in civilized society.  But bless you, sonny, I don’t mind them.  Business, you know, is business.  It’s perfectly natural for them to feel that way about it; now, isn’t it?”

“Will you have a cigar, after eating?”

“No; none for me.  Raleigh wanted me to learn to smoke when he was in Virginia, but I didn’t care for it.  You remember him, of course?  Oh no; I forgot how young you are.  Pleasant man, but a little too chimerical.  I liked Columbus better.  Nero was a man who’d’ve suited you newspaper people.  ’Most always a murder every day.  And then that fire in Rome when he fiddled; made a splendid report for the papers, wouldn’t it?  Poor sort of a man, though.  The only time I ever saw him was when he was drowning his mother.  Dropped the old lady over and let her drift off as if he didn’t care a cent.”

“Talking of newspapers, how would you like to make an engagement as the traveling correspondent of the Patriot?”