Pages 371-436 Summary and Analysis

"Old Mr. Flood" opened with Mitchell explaining that Mr. Hugh G. Flood was ninety-three, a retired "house-wrecker," and determined that he would live until 1965, at which time he would be 115 years old. Mitchell said that Flood is "irreconcilable" to the fact that he will someday die, and that his fear that heaven and hell were equally undesirable was the reason. He drank a lot and ate little except seafood. He is a very neat man in appearance and believed that seafood is the one thing scientists haven't improved, therefore is the one desirable food. He said that people who work in the fish markets are never sick but that they don't want the general public to know this because the markets would always be crowded. He cited his good health, saying that his one cold had occurred when he...