Preparing To Leave For A Better Place

When a former President of the United States was eighty years of age, an old friend shook his trembling hand and said, "Good morning, and how is John Quincy Adams today?"  The retired chief executive looked at him for a moment and then replied, "He himself is quite well, sir, quite well.  But the house in which he lives at the present is becoming dilapidated.  It is tottering upon its foundation.  Time and the seasons have almost destroyed it.  Its roof is pretty well worn, its walls are much shattered, and it crumbles a little bit with every wind.  The old tenement is becoming almost uninhabitable, and I think John Quincy Adams will have to move out of it soon; but he himself is well, sir, quite well!"  

It was not long afterward that he had his second and fatal stroke.

 -Roy B. Zuck, The Speaker's Quote Book (Kregel Publications, 1997)