LONGEVITY
LOGAN PEARSALL SMITH

"But when you are as old as I am!" I said to the young lady in pink satin.

"But I don't know how old you are," the young lady in pink answered almost archly. We were getting on quite nice.

"Oh, I'm endlessly old; my memory goes back almost for ever. I come out of the Middle Ages. I am the primitive savage we are all descended from; I believe in Devil-worship and the power of the Stars; I dance under the new Moon, naked and tattooed and holy. I am a Cave-dweller, a contemporary of Mastodons and Mammoths; I am pleistocene and eolithic, and full of the lusts and terrors of the great pre-glacial forests. But that's nothing; I am millions of years older; I am an arboreal Ape, and aged Baboon, with all its instincts; I am a pre-simian quadruped, I have great claws, eyes that see in the dark, and a long prehensile tail."

"Good gracious!" said the terrified young lady in pink satin. Then she turned away and talked in a hushed voice with her other neighbor.

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