one for years; but he always said the only reason he kept it was because all the swells carried them when he was a boy and he'd got the habit and couldn't quit.
His eyesight wasn't so good, either, when he got along past seventy-five. Naturally dad and me and the rest of the family expected it in a man of his years; but he wouldn't admit it for a minute, not grandpop. We had to be careful as the dickens because if we showed we thought he wasn't as spry as he used to be, he'd lay about him with that heavy cane of his and anybody or anything that got in the way was sure to get hurt.
Take for instance Roy, that's my younger boy, he used to play a trick on his great-grand pop that always got a smile out of dad or me because it showed up the way grandpop was still trying to fool us. Roy would saunter along the porch where grandpop was usually sitting; first he'd say hello to the old man and then he'd lean against a post with his hands in his pockets and stare down the road. Well sir, he wouldn't never do that for long before grandpop would speak up at him and say, "What are you looking at, boy?" And Roy would keep staring and yell so grandpop could hear: "Oh, I'm watching a frisky mare down the road a piece." Grandpop would look himself and then after a bit Roy would spring it on him easy like so's he wouldn't get suspicious. "Grandfer," Roy, would say, "can you see the horse all right?" And grandpop would straighten up and answer, "Why certainly, boy; it's a bay."
Of course there wasn't no horse there at all. I made the young one quit doing it after a while because a boy has got to learn to respect his elders; not that Roy meant any harm. And then there was grandpop's hearing; you had to shout at him the last ten years of his life, but you had to pretend that you wasn't. And whether he heard you or not, he always give some kind of an answer.
That brings me to what I was getting at: his memory. Naturally it wasn't quite so good after he was getting on toward eighty. Not that I mean to say he was like a school boy who can't never remember his three R's. Grandpop had a lot of things packed in his head right up until the day he died. But speaking from my own observation, memory is a peculiar thing; when we get on in years we seem to remember best the things that are most important and forget the little ones that don't count. And here, the way I see it, is the funny part: the important things we remember aren't the ones we thought was important when we were young. We get a new valuation sort of, on life and living. What we thought was so particular important when we were young don't seem to amount to a darn when we get older and we clean forget them; and it's just the other way about with the other things; people and places and ideas that we thought we had forgotten all about, stir up in our memories when we get as old as grandpop was, and turn out to be the most important things after all.
Leastways that's the way it appears to me, though I don't claim to be a philosopher. And it's the way my son Roy felt about grandpop's favorite story. He figured he was leaving the most important part of it out, and I did too until what dad said that day got me to thinking.
Of course one thing grandpop al-
