It was Bliss that told me this--but if it was true, it was the first time that he had told the truth in sixty-five years.

He was born in 1804.
III.
...

This was in 1849.

I was fourteen years old, then.

We were still living in Hannibal, Missouri, on the banks of the Mississippi, in the new "frame" house built by my father five years before.