Allowing that when he first died, he died at
the age of 95, he was 151 years old when he died last, in 1864.
But his age did not keep pace with his recollections. When he died
the last time, he distinctly remembered the landing of the Pilgrims,
which took place in 1620. He must have been about twenty years
old when he witnessed that event, wherefore it is safe to assert
that the body-servant of General Washington was in the neighborhood
of two hundred and sixty or seventy years old when he departed this
life finally.
Having waited a proper length of time, to see if the subject of his
sketch had gone from us reliably and irrevocably, I now publish his
biography with confidence, and respectfully offer it to a mourning nation.
P.S.--I see by the papers that this imfamous old fraud has just
died again, in Arkansas. This makes six times that he is known
to have died, and always in a new place. The death of Washington's
body-servant has ceased to be a novelty; it's charm is gone;
the people are tired of it; let it cease. This well-meaning
but misguided negro has not put six different communities to the
expense of burying him in state, and has swindled tens of thousands
of people into following him to the grave under the delusion that
a select and peculiar distinction was being conferred upon them.
Let him stay buried for good now; and let that newspaper suffer
the severest censure that shall ever, in all the future time,
publish to the world that General Washington's favorite colored
body-servant has died again.
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