He can't hear well. He won't go. Eventually, he relents, and gets in the taxicab with Richey, riding the few blocks along the creek to the alumni lounge. In the middle of George Lucas' lecture, now dwelling on extremely heady issues of the arguments against the positivists, the heads in the room turn. Hartshorne is there, in a wheelchair, wearing his hat and a wide smile.
People smile back.
He is rolled to the front of the room. Lucas keeps lecturing. The snoring man in the third row perks up. The small crowd stand and applauds for Hartshorne, and he waves, modestly, for them to sit down, but he long ago acknowledged his place in a pantheon of thinkers. He enjoys it, but, he adds, he is running down, and his time is almost gone.