CHAPTER I

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF METHUSELAH

Edited by

JOHN KENDRICK BANGS

Illustrated in Color by F. G. Cooper

[Illustration: Methuselah's stationery]

New York

B. W. Dodge & Company

1909

Copyright, 1908, by

B. W. Dodge & Company

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

CHAPTER

I I AM BORN AND NAMED

II EARLY INFLUENCES

III SOME REMINISCENCES OF ADAM

IV GRANDMOTHER EVE

V SOME NOTES ON CAIN AND ABEL

VI HE CONFESSES TO BEING A POET

VII THE INTERNATIONAL MARINE AND ZOO FLOTATION COMPANY

VIII ON THE EXTINCTION OF THE MASTODON

IX AS TO WOMEN

FOREWORD

Having recently passed into what my great-grandson Shem calls my

Anecdotage, it has occurred to me that perhaps some of the

recollections of a more or less extended existence upon this

globular[1] mass of dust and water that we are pleased to call the

earth, may prove of interest to posterity, and I have accordingly, at

the earnest solicitation of my grandson, Noah, and his sons, Shem,

Ham and Japhet, consented to put them into permanent literary form. In

view of the facts that at this writing, ink and paper and pens have

not as yet been invented, and that we have no capable stenographers

among our village folk, and that because of my advanced years I should

find great difficulty in producing my manuscript on a type-writing

machine with my gouty fingers--for, of the luscious fluid of the grape

have I been a ready, though never over-abundant, consumer--even if I

were familiar with the keyboard of such an instrument, or, if indeed,

there were any such instrument to facilitate the work--in view of

these facts, I say, I have been compelled to make use of the literary

methods of the Egyptians, and with hammer and chisel, to gouge out my

"Few Remarks" upon such slabs of stone as I can find upon my native

heath.

[Footnote 1: It is quite interesting, in the light of the contentions

of history as to man's earliest realization that the earth is round,

to find Methuselah speaking in this fashion. It would seem from this

that the real facts had dawned upon the Patriarch's mind even at this

early period, and one is therefore disposed to regard as less

apocryphal the anecdote recorded in Volume III, Chapter 38, of "The

Life and Voyages of Noah," wherein Adam, after being ejected from the

Garden of Eden, asked by Cain if he believes the world to be round

like an orange, replies:

"_I used to think so, my son, but under prevailing conditions I am

forced into a more or less definite suspicion that it is elliptical,

like a lemon._"--EDITOR.]

[Illustration: Ye scribe decides not to use Egyptian writing.]

Let us hope that my story will not prove as heavy as my manuscript. It

is hardly necessary for me to assure the indulgent reader that such a

method of composition is not altogether an easy task for a man who is

shortly to celebrate his nine hundred and sixty-fifth birthday, more

especially since at no time in my life have I studied the arts of the

Stone-Cutter, or been a master in the Science of Quarrying. Nor is it

easy at my advanced age, with a back no longer sinewy, and muscles

grown flabby from lack of active exercise, for me to lift a virgin

sheet of stone from the ground to the surface of my writing-desk

without a derrick, but these are, after all, minor difficulties, and I

shall let no such insignificant obstacles stand between me and the

great purpose I have in mind. I shall persist in the face of all in

the writing of this Autobiography if for no worthier object than to

provide occupation for my leisure hours which, in these patriarchal

days to which I have attained, sometimes hang heavy on my hands. I

know not why it should so transpire, but it is the fact that since I

passed my nine hundred and fiftieth birthday I have had little liking

for the pleasures which modern society most affects. To be sure, old

and feeble as I am, and despite the uncertain quality of my knees, I

still enjoy the excitement of the Virginia Reel, and can still hold my

own with men several centuries younger than myself in the clog, but I

leave such diversions as bridge, draw-poker and pinochle to more

frivolous minds--though I will say that when my great-grandchildren,

Shem, Ham and Japhet, the sons of my grandson Noah, come to my house

on the few holidays, their somewhat over-sober parent allows them from

their labors in the ship-yard, I take great delight in sitting upon

the ground with them and renewing my acquaintance with those games of

my youth, marbles, and mumbledy-peg, the which I learned from my

great-uncle-seven-times-removed, Cain, in the days when with my

grandfather, Jared, I used to go to see our first ancestor, Adam, at

the old farm just outside of Edensburg where, with his beautiful wife

Eve, that Grand Old Man was living in honored retirement.

Nor have I in these days, as I used to have, any especial taste for

the joys of the chase. There was a time when my slungshot was

unerring, and I could bring down a Dodo, or snipe my Harpy on the wing

with as much ease as my wife can hit our barn-door with a rolling-pin

at six feet, and for three hundred and thirty years I never let escape

me any opportunity for tracking the Dinosaur, the Pterodactyl, or that

fierce and sanguinary creature the Osteostogothemy to his lair and

there fighting him unto the death during the open season for wild game

of that particular sort. I well remember how, in my boyhood days, to

be precise, shortly after my two hundred and twenty-second birthday, I

went with my great-grandfather, Mehalaleel, over into the woods back

of Little Ararat after a great horned Ornythyrhyncus and--but that is

another story. Suffice it to say that I have at last reached a period

in my life where I am content to leave the pleasures of Nimrod to my

more nimble neighbors, and that now no winged thing, save an

occasional mosquito, or locust, need fear my approach, and that my

indulgence in the shedding of the blood of animals is confined to an

infrequent personal superintendence of the slaughter of a spring-lamb

in green-pea time, when the scent is in the julep and the bloom is on

the mint; or possibly, now and then, the removal from the pasture to

the pantry of a bit of lowing roast-beef, when I feel an inner craving

for the crackle and the steak.

Racing I have an abhorrence for, and always have had since in my early

days I attended the county-fair at North Ararat, and was there induced

by one of my neighbors to participate as a rider in a twenty-mile

steeplechase between a Discosaurus which I rode, and a Diplodocus in his

possession. I found after the race had started that the animal which had

been assigned to me as a gentleman jockey, had not been broken to the

saddle, and my experience during the next six days in staying on his

back--for he immediately took the bit between his teeth and bolted for

the woods, and was not again got under control for that time--as he

jumped over the various obstacles to his progress, from thank-you-marms

in the highways which were plentiful, to such mountains as the country

for a thousand miles about provided for his delectation, was one of the

most terrific in my life, prolonged as it has been. I had been assured

that the race was to be a "Go-As-You-Please" affair, but I had not been

seated on that horrible creature's back for two minutes before I

discovered that it was a "Go-As-He-Pleased" affair and that

"Going-As-I-Pleased," like the flowers that bloom in the Spring, had

nothing to do with the case. Had I begun in the pursuit of the pleasures

of the track in later years after the invention of wheels, whereby that

easy running vehicle, the sulky, was brought into being, and when, by

the taming of the horse, the latter became a domesticated animal with

sporting proclivities, instead of a mere prowler of the plains, I might

have found the joys of racing more to my taste, although in these later

years of my life when a truly noble pursuit has degenerated into a mere

gambling enterprise, wherein those who can ill afford it squander their

substance in riotous bookmaking, I am inclined to be grateful that my

first experience in this direction has led me to cultivate an

unconcerned aloofness from a pursuit which is ruinous to the old and

corrupting to the young.

Were the present state of literature more hopeful, perhaps I should

find pleasure in reading, but I have viewed with such increasing alarm

the growth of sensationalism in the literary output of my age that I

have felt that I owed it to my posterity, which is rapidly growing in

numbers--I believe that the latest annual report of the Society of the

Sons and Daughters of Methuselah shows a membership of six hundred and

thirty-eight thousand, without counting the new arrivals since the end

of the last fiscal year, which, at a rough guess, I should place at

thirty-six thousand--I have felt, I say, that I owe it to that

posterity to set it the example of not reading, as my most effective

protest against those pernicious influences which have made the modern

literary school a menace to civilization. Surely if Noah's children

for instance, Shem, Ham and Japhet, whom I have already had occasion

to mention, were to surprise me, their venerable, and I hope venerated

ancestor, reading such stories as are now put forth by our most

successful quarrymen--stories like that unspeakable novel "Three

Decades," of which I am credibly informed eight million tons have

already been sold; and which, let me say, when I had read only seven

slabs of it I had carted away and dumped into the Red Sea; or the

innocuous but highly frivolous tales of Miss Laura Jean

Diplodocus--they would hardly accept from me as worthy of serious

attention such admonitions as I am constantly giving them on the

subject of the decadence of literature when I find them poring over

the novels of the day. Consequently even this usual solace of old age

is denied to me, and writing becomes my refuge.

I bespeak the reader's indulgence if he or she find in the ensuing

pages any serious lapses from true literary style. I write merely as I

feel, and do not pretend to be either an expert hieroglyphist or a

rhetorician of commanding quality. Perhaps I should do more wisely if

I were to accept the advice of my great-grandson Ham, who, overhearing

my remark to a caller last Sunday evening that the work I have

undertaken is one of considerable difficulty, climbed up into my lap

and in his childish way asked me why I did not hire a boswell to do it

for me. I had to tell the child that I did not know what a boswell

was, and when I questioned him on the subject more closely, I found

that it was only one of his childish fancies. If there were such a

thing as that rather euphoniously named invention of Ham's who could

relieve me of the drudgery of writing my own life, and who would do it

well, I would cheerfully relinquish that end of my enterprise to him,

but in the absence of such a thing, I am, in spite of my manifest

shortcomings, compelled to do the work myself. On behalf of my story I

can say, however, that whatever I shall put down here will be the

truth, and that what I remember notwithstanding my advanced years, I

remember perfectly. I am quite aware that in some of the tales that I

shall tell, especially those having to do with Prehistoric Animals I

have met, or Antediluvians as I believe the Scientists call them, what

I may say as to their habits--I was going to say manners, but refrain

because in all my life I have never observed that they had any--and

powers may fall upon some ears as extravagant exaggerations. To these

let me say here and now that there are exceptions to all rules, and

that if for instance, I tell the story of a Pterodactyl that after

being swallowed whole by a Discosaurus, successfully gnaws his way

through the walls of the latter's stomach to freedom, I make no claim

that all Pterodactyls could do the same, but merely that in this

particular case the Pterodactyl to which I refer did it, and that I

know that he did it because the man who saw it is a cousin of my

grandfather's first wife's step-son, and is so wedded to truth that he

is even now in jail because he would not deny a charge of

sheep-stealing, which he might easily have done were he an untruthful

man. Again when I observe that I have caught with an ordinary

fish-hook, baited with a common garden, or angle worm, on the end of a

light trout-line, a Creosaurus with a neck ninety-seven feet long, and

scales so large that you could weigh a hay-wagon on the smallest of

the lot near the end of his tail, I admit at the outset that the feat

was unusual, had never occurred before, and is never likely to occur

again, but can bring affidavits to prove that it did happen that time,

signed by reputable parties who have heard me tell about it more than

once. I make these statements here not in any sense to apologize for

anything I shall say in my book, but merely to forestall the criticism

of highly cultivated and truly scientific readers who, after a

lifelong study of the habits of these creatures may feel impelled to

question the accuracy of my statements and add to my perplexities by

so advertising my book that I shall be put to the arduous necessity of

chiseling out another edition, a labor which I have no desire to

assume.

One word more as to the language I have chosen for the presentation of

my narrative. I have chosen English as the language in which to chisel

out these random recollections of mine for a variety of reasons. Most

conspicuous of these is that at the time of this writing no one has as

yet thought to devise a French, German, Spanish or Italian language.

Russian I have no familiarity with. Chinese I do not care for. Latin

and Greek few people can read, and as for Egyptian, while it is an

excellent and fluent tongue for speaking purposes, I find myself

appalled at the prospect of writing a story of the length of mine in

the hieroglyphics which up to date form the whole extent of Egyptian

chirography. An occasional pictorial rebus in a child's magazine is a

source of pleasure and profit to both the young and the old, but the

autobiography of a man of my years told in pictures, and pictures for

the most part of squab, spring chickens, and canvas-back ducks, would,

I fear, prove arduous reading. Moreover I am but an indifferent

draughtsman, and I suspect that when the precise thought that I have

in mind can best be expressed by a portrait of a humming-bird, or a

flamingo, my readers because of my inexpert handling of my tools would

hardly be able to distinguish the creature I should limn from an

albatross, a red-head duck, or a June-Bug, which would lead to a great

deal of obscurity, and in some cases might cause me to say things that

I should not care to be held responsible for. There is left me then

only a choice between English and Esperanto, and I incline to the

former, not because I do not wish the Esperantists well, but because

in the present condition of the latter's language, it affects the eye

more like a barbed-wire fence than a medium for the expression of

ideas.

At this stage of the proceedings I can think of nothing else either to

explain or to apologize for, but in closing I beg the reader to accept

my assurance that if in the narratives that follow he finds anything

that needs either explanation or apology, I shall be glad to explain

if he will bring the matter to my attention, and herewith tender in

advance for his acceptance any apology which occasion may require.

And so to my story.

GEORGE W. METHUSELAH.

Ararat Corners, B. C. 2348.

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF METHUSELAH

CHAPTER I

I AM BORN AND NAMED

The date of my birth, occurring as it did, nine hundred and sixty-five

years ago, is so far removed from my present that my recollections of

it are not altogether clear, but Mrs. Adam, my great-grandmother seven

times removed, with whom I was always a great favorite because I

looked more like my original ancestor, her husband, than any other of

his descendants, has given me many interesting details of that

important epoch in my history. Personally I do remember that the date

was B. C. 3317, and the twenty-third of June, for the first thing to

greet my infant eyes, when I opened them for the first time, was a

huge insurance calendar hanging upon our wall whereon the date was

printed in letters almost as large as those which the travelling

circuses of Armenia use to herald the virtues of their show when at

County Fair time they visit Ararat Corners. I also recall that it was

a very stormy day when I arrived. The rain was coming down in

torrents, and I heard simultaneously with my arrival my father, Enoch,

in the adjoining room making sundry observations as to the

meteorological conditions which he probably would have spoken in a

lower tone of voice, or at least in less vigorous phraseology had he

known that I was within earshot, although I must confess that it has

always been a nice question with me whether or not when a man

expresses a wish that the rain may be dammed, he voices a desire for

its everlasting condemnation, or the mere placing in its way of an

impediment which shall prevent its further overflow. I think much

depends upon the manner, the inflection, and the tone of voice in

which the desire is expressed, and I am sorry to say that upon the

occasion to which I refer, there was more of the asperity of profanity

than the calmness of constructive suggestion in my father's manner. In

any event I did not blame him, for here was I coming along, undeniably

imminent, a tempest raging, and no doctor in sight, and consequently

no telling when my venerable sire would have to go out into the wet

and fetch one.

In those primitive days doctors were few and far between. There was

little profit in the practice of such a profession at a time when

everybody lived so long that death was looked upon as a remote

possibility, and one seldom called one in until after he had passed

his nine hundredth birthday and sometimes not even then. It may be

that this habit of putting off the call to the family physician was

the cause of our wonderful longevity, but of that I do not know, and

do not care to express an opinion on the subject, for socially I have

always found the medicine folk charming companions and I would not say

aught in this work that could by any possibility give them offense.

Not only were doctors rare at that period, but owing to our limited

facilities in the matter of transportation, it was exceedingly

difficult for them to get about. The doctor's gig, now so generally in

use, had not as yet been brought to that state of perfection that has

made its use in these modern times a matter of ease and comfort. We

had wheels, to be sure, but they were not spherical as they have since

become, and were made out of stone blocks weighing ten or fifteen tons

apiece, and hewn octagonally, so that a ride over the country roads in

a vehicle of that period not only involved the services of some thirty

or forty horses to pull the wagon, but an endless succession of jolts

which, however excellent they may have been in their influence on the

liver were most trying to the temper, and resulted in attacks of

sickness which those who have been to sea tell me strongly resembles

sea-sickness. So rough indeed was the operation of riding in the

wagons of my early youth that a great many of our best people who kept

either horses or domesticated elephants, still continued to drive

about in stone boats, so-called, built flat like a raft, rather than

suffer the shaking up which the new-fangled wheels entailed. Griffins

were also used by persons of adventurous nature, but were gradually

dying into disuse, and the species being no longer bred becoming

extinct, because of the great difficulty in domesticating them. It was

not a hard task to break them to the saddle, and on the ground they

were fleet and sure footed, but in the air they were extremely

unreliable. They used their wings with much power, but were not

responsive to the reins, and in flying pursued the most erratic

courses. What was worse, they were seldom able to alight after an

aerial flight on all four feet at once, having a disagreeable habit of

approaching the earth vertically, and headfirst, so that the rider,

unless he were strapped on, was usually unseated while forty or fifty

feet in the air, with the result that he either broke his neck, or at

least four or five ribs, and a leg or two, at the end of his ride.

When we remember that in addition to all this we had no telephone

service at that time, and that the umbrella had not as yet been

devised, my father's anxiety at the moment may easily be realized.

His temper was only momentary, however, for I recall that I was very

much amused at this critical moment of my career by another

observation that I overheard from the adjoining room. My grandfather,

Jared, who was with my father at the time looking out of the window

made the somewhat commonplace observation--

"It's raining cats and dogs, isn't it?"

"Cats and dogs?" retorted Enoch, scornfully. "It's raining

Diplodocuses!"

This was naturally the first bit of humor that I had ever heard, and

coming as it did simultaneously with my début as a citizen of

Enochsville, perhaps it is not to be wondered at that instead of

celebrating my birth with a squall, as do most infants, I was born

laughing. I must have cackled pretty loudly, too, for the second thing

that I remember--O, how clearly it all comes back to me as I write, or

rather chisel--was overhearing the Governor's response to the nurse's

announcement of my arrival.

"It's a boy, sir," the good woman called out as she rushed excitedly

into the other room.

"Good, Dinah," replied my father. "You have taken a great load off my

mind. I am dee-lighted. I was afraid from his opening remarks that he

was a hen!"

It was thus that the keynote of existence was struck for me, one of

mirth even in the dark of storm, and that I have since become the

oldest man that ever lived, and shall doubtless continue to the end of

time to hold the record for longevity, I attribute to nothing else

than that, thanks to my father's droll humor, I was born smiling. Nor

did the good old gentleman ever stint himself in the indulgence of

that trait. In my youth such things as comic papers were entirely

unknown, nor did the columns of the newspapers give over any portion

of their space to the printing of jokes, so that my dear old father

never dreamed of turning his wit to the advantage of his own pocket,

as do some latter-day joke-wrights who shall be nameless, lavishly

bestowing the fruits of his gift upon the members of his own family.

Of my own claims to an inheritance of humor from my sire, I shall

speak in a later chapter.

I recall that my first impressions of life were rather disappointing.

I cannot say that upon my arrival I brought with me any definite

notions as to what I should find the world to be like, but I do know

that when I looked out of the window for the first time it seemed to

me that the scenery was rather commonplace, and the mountains which I

could see in the distance, were not especially remarkable for

grandeur. The rivers, too, seemed trite. That they should flow

down-hill struck me as being nothing at all remarkable, for I could

not for the life of me see how they could do otherwise, and when night

came on and my nurse, Dinah, pointed out the moon and asked me if I

did not think it was remarkable, I was so filled with impatience that

so ordinary a phenomenon should be considered unusual that I made no

reply whatsoever, smiling inwardly at the marvelous simplicity of

these people with whom destiny had decreed that I should come to

dwell. I should add, however, that I was quite contented on that first

day of my existence for the reason that all of my wants appeared to

be anticipated by my guardians, the table was good, and all through

the day I was filled with a comfortable sense of my own importance as

the first born of one of the first families of the land, and when

along about noon the skies cleared, and the rain disappeared before

the genial warmth of the sun, and the neighbors came in to look me

over, it was most agreeable to realize that I was the center of so

much interest. What added to my satisfaction was the fact that when my

great-uncle Zib came in and began to talk baby-talk to me--a jargon

that I have always abhorred--by an apparently casual movement of my

left leg I was able with seeming innocence of intention to kick him on

the end of his nose.

An amusing situation developed itself along about 4 o'clock in the

afternoon, in respect to my name. One of the neighbors asked my

father what my name was to be.

"Well," he replied with a chuckle, "we are somewhat up a tree in

respect to that. We have held several family conclaves on the subject,

and after much prayerful consideration of the matter we had finally

settled on Gladys, but--well, since we've seen him the idea has been

growing on us that he looks more like a James."

And indeed this question as to my name became a most serious one as

the days passed by, and at one time I began to fear that I should be

compelled to pass through life anonymously. There was some desire on

the part of my father, who was of a providential nature, to call me

Zib, after my great uncle of that name, for Uncle Zib had been

forehanded, and was possessed of much in the way of filthy lucre,

owning many cliff-dwellings, a large if not controlling interest in

the Armenian Realty Company, whose caves on the leading thoroughfares

of Enochsville and Edensburg commanded the highest and steadiest

rents, and was the chief stock-holder in the Ararat Corners and Red

Sea Traction Company, running an hourly service of Pterodactyls and

Creosauruses between the most populous points of the country. This

naturally made of Uncle Zib a nearer approach to a Captain of Finance

than anything else known to our time, and inasmuch as he had never

married, and was without an heir, my father thought he would

appreciate the compliment of having his first-born named for him. But

Uncle Zib's moral character was of such a nature that his name seemed

to my mother as hardly a fit association for an infant of my tender

years. He was known to be addicted to pinochle to a degree that had

caused no end of gossip at the Ararat Woman's Club, and before he had

reached the age of three hundred he had five times been successfully

sued in the courts for breach of promise. Indeed, if Uncle Zib had had

fewer material resources he would long since have been ostracised by

the best people of our section, and even as it was the few people in

our neighborhood to whom he had not lent money regarded his social

pretensions with some coolness. The fact that he had given Enochsville

a public library, and had filled its shelves with several tons of the

best reading that the Egyptian writers of the day provided, was

regarded as a partial atonement for some of his indiscretions, and the

endowment of a large stone-quarry at Ararat where children were taught

to read and write, helped materially in his rehabilitation, but on the

whole Uncle Zib was looked upon askance by the majority. On the other

hand Uncle Azag, a strong, pious man, who owed money to everybody in

town, was the one after whom my mother wished me to be named, a

proposition which my father resisted to the uttermost expense of his

powers.

"What's the use?" I heard him ask, warmly. "He'll get his name on

plenty of I. O. U.'s on his own account before he leaves this glad

little earth, without our giving him an autograph that is already on

enough over-due paper to decorate every flat in Uncle Zib's model

tenements."

The disputation continued with some acrimony for a week, until finally

my father put his foot down.

"I'm tired of referring to him as IT," he blurted out one night.

"We'll compromise, and name him after me and thee. He shall be called

Me for me, and Thou for thee, Selah!"

And so it was that from that day forth I was known as Methouselah,

since corrupted into Methuselah.