“Perhaps that’s something else I’ll know again in heaven,” he said soberly, and waited a moment before he went on:  “Well, that was the end of our day.  I was so worn out that I fell asleep over my supper, in spite of the excitement in the house about sending for a doctor for gran’ther, who was, so one of my awe-struck sisters told me, having some kind of ‘fits,’ Mother must have put me to bed, for the next thing I remember, she was shaking me by the shoulder and saying, ’Wake up, Joey Your great-grandfather wants to speak to you.  He’s been suffering terribly all night, and the doctor think’s he’s dying.’

“I followed her into gran’ther’s room, where the family was assembled about the bed.  Gran’ther lay drawn up in a ball, groaning so dreadfully that I felt a chill like cold water at the roots of my hair; but a moment or two after I came in, all at once he gave a great sigh and relaxed, stretching out his legs and laying his arms down on the coverlid.  He looked at me and attempted a smile.

“Well, it was wuth it, warn’t it, Joey?” he said gallantly, and closed his eyes peacefully to sleep.

“Did he die?” asked the younger professor, leaning forward eagerly.

“Die?  Gran’ther Pendleton?  Not much!  He came tottering down to breakfast the next morning, as white as an old ghost, with no voice left, his legs trembling under him, but he kept the whole family an hour and a half at the table, telling them in a loud whisper all about the fair, until father said really he would have to take us to the one next year.  Afterward he sat out on the porch watching old Peg graze around the yard.  I thought he was in one of his absent-minded fits, but when I came out, he called me to him, and, setting his lips to my ear, he whispered: 

“‘An’ the seventh is a-goin’ down-hill fast, so I hear!’ He chuckled to himself over this for some time, wagging his head feebly, and then he said:  ’I tell ye, Joey, I’ve lived a long time, and I’ve larned a lot about the way folks is made.  The trouble with most of ’em is, they’re fraid-cats!  As Jeroboam Warner used to say—­he was in the same rigiment with me in 1812—­the only way to manage this business of livin’ is to give a whoop and let her rip!  If ye just about half-live, ye just the same as half-die; and if ye spend yer time half-dyin’, some day ye turn in and die all over, without rightly meanin’ to at all—­just a kind o’ bad habit ye’ve got yerself inter.’  Gran’ther fell into a meditative silence for a moment.  ‘Jeroboam, he said that the evenin’ before the battle of Lundy’s Lane, and he got killed the next day.  Some live, and some die; but folks that live all over die happy, anyhow!  Now I tell you what’s my motto, an’ what I’ve lived to be eighty-eight on—­’”

Professor Mallory stood up and, towering over the younger man, struck one hand into the other as he cried:  “This was the motto he told me:  ’Live while you live, and then die and be done with it!’”