The Autobiography of Methuselah | Page 5

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