“I felt I must talk to you,” he said, speaking very rapidly.  “I have discovered you to be a man of appreciation—­a man who should hear my story.  I have felt for some years that it would soon become impossible for me to conceal my experiences from my fellow-men.  I believe mankind has now reached a stage of enlightenment—­at least, in this country—­when the person who makes strange discoveries which cannot be explained, and the person who announces facts which cannot be comprehended by the human mind, need not fear to be punished as a sorcerer, or thrust into a cell as a lunatic.  I may be mistaken in regard to this latter point, but I think I am right.  In any case, I do not wish to live much longer as I have been living.  As I must live on, with generation after generation rising up about me, I want those generations to know before they depart from this earth that I am a person who does not die.  I am tired of deceptions; I am tired of leaving the places where I have lived long and am known, and arriving in other places where I am a stranger, and where I must begin my life again.

“I do not wish to be in a hurry to make my revelations to the world at large.  I do not wish to startle people without being able to show them proof of what I say.  I wish to speak only to persons who are worthy to hear my story, and I have begun with you.  I do not want you to believe me until you are quite ready to do so.  Think over what I have said, consider it carefully, and make up your mind slowly.

“You are a young man in good health, and you will, in all probability, live long enough to assure yourself of the truth or falsity of what I have told you about my indefinite longevity.  I should be glad to relate my story to scientific men, to physicians, to students; but, as I have said, we shall wait for that.  In the meantime, you may, if you choose, write down what I have told you, or as much of it as you remember.  I have no written records of my past life.  Long, long ago I made such, but I destroyed them, for I knew not what evil they might bring upon me were they discovered.  But you may write the little I have told you, and when you feel that the time has come, you may give it to the world.  And now we must retire.  It is wicked to keep you out of your bed any longer.”

“One word,” said I.  “Do you intend now to tell your wife?”

“Yes,” he answered, “I shall tell her tomorrow.  Having reposed confidence in you, it would be treating her shamefully if I should withhold that confidence from her.  She has often said to me that I do not look a day older than when I married her.  I want her now to know that I need never look a day older; I shall counterfeit old age no more.”