The States and Union. [volume] (Ashland, Ohio) 1868-1872, 1869-10-06
Old Captain Lahrbush.
by JONES PARTON.

| a
4 -...i BY JONES PARTON. ,Elf
i We have in New York o living, GU
riosIty- gentleman in the hundred
and fourth year of his age, who is still
able, to walk about, has a memory not
much IMPAIRED, can read a newspaper
and writes a steady and even an ele-
CANT hand. 1 refer to Captain Lahr-
bush, who served in the English army
a great many years of his long life
1t is not merely that he is so old a
man thatshe is to be regarded as Gu
riosity. There are ON record men
who have reached the age of hun
dred and fifty, a hundred and sixty,
| and a hundred, and seventy; and 1
i have read an account of one who
Edied Mt the age of one hundred and
eighty five. years. He. was q Hunga-
rian peasant, named PetEach Czartan,
who died in 1772., When the, last
census but one was taken in England
there were thirty-fiye men and fifty
three women who were more than a
hundred years old, two of the women
being one hundred and eight. In
Russia, the number OF people who die
every year above ninety years of age
is five thousand; and should suppose
from the facts with which / am ac-
quainted, that there are now living in
| the world as many as two thousand
persons who have lived beyond a cen
tuIy.r One author, who has written
on longevity, gives list of seventeen
people who lived beyond one hundred
and fifty, and another writer has pub
lished catalogue of nearly four thou
sand names of persons who lived from
ninety-fve to one hunared and fifty
| years. ,,: -s. ,.,. .l..-. nd.
But even this great age is nothing
compared with the longevity of other
living things. Elephants live three
fcentaries, and some kinds of turtles
as long. In 1897 a very large pike
was caught in a lake of swabia, with
a brass ring fastened to it, bearing
an inscription to the effect that the
pike was put into the lake in the year
1239-two hundred and sixty-seven
years before. Some whales, it is tho't
live four hundred years; and there are
trees in the world which are supposed
to be five thousand years old. Upon
Boston Common there is tree which
from its immense magnitude, is called
the Great Elm. There arc letters in
existence, twoEhundred years old, and
which speak of this tree in the same
language, as the Great Elm. '-@
l. Tile mere fact, therefore, of Captain
Lahrbush being a hundred and three
years of age, is not SO very extraor-
dinary What makes his case so re-
| markable is, the life he has led, the
hardships he has undergone, and
above all, the fact that, for the last
forty years or more, he has taken rs
much opium every day as would kill
an ordinary mau.
He was born in London i'm 1865,
near the palace of the Archbishop of
Canterbury. George the Third had
then been but six years upon the
throne of, England; Frederick the
Great was still reigning over Prussia;
and Louis the Fifteenth was ruling
France. When he was nine days old
the Stamp Act was repealed; and
when he had lived four years, the war
of our Revolution may be said to have
begun in conflict between some En-
glish soldiers and the Sons of Liberty,
in New York, in ITO. He was ten
years of age when Jefferson wrote the
Declaration of Independence and he
remembers that when he was a young
man of eighteen, the troops which
evacuated New York inSI7S3S Sreturn-
ed to England. -. e - -''.' = 3. ~
| At twenty-three, which was in
1889, when he was cadet in an En-
glish military school, Napoleon had
just graduated from French military
school, and held the rank of a. sub
lieutenant in q corps of artillery
During all those wars between Eng
land and Nopoleon he continued to
serve in various capacities, civil and
military. He remembers being ou
the staff of Lord Castlereagh in 1906,
when that .nobleman. went as embas
sador to Prussia. He remembers hear
i ing the French troops cheer for Ma
poleon, whom, a few years before, he
had heard crying, Vioe Ia Repubhq~e.
Hefremembers taking a glass of wine
with Butcher before that impetuous
soldier had become famous. He re-
members the brilliant day in 1907, so
glowingly described by Theirs, when
Napoleon and the Emperor Alexander
met on a raft in the middle of tie riv
er Neimen, and in the sight of the
two armies embraced one another, as
a visible pledge to Europe 0f peace
between the two empires. He re-
members when there was a young
lieutenant in the British, army three
years his junior, and then called Lieu
tenant the Honorable Arthur w elles-
ley, and he remembers too that when,
in 1909, he Joined his regiment in
Spain, that individual was, the Gener-
al in command, and was known as
General Lord Wellingtong .di'al o..
i Captain Lahrbush saw hard service
4 in Spain under Wellington. until, at
one of the battles, he was so badly
wounded that he was left on. the field
7 for dead. This was in 1910, when he
was a youth of forty-four.e1l g.. ~ -.
p His constitution, during the active
years of his life, was subjected to 5ev-
cry description of strain. He inhaled
disease inn1the tropics, and was sub
iected to violence from savages. He
was ship wrecked, and cast lifeless on
the shore. His system was so much
II.