New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1871-03-11
A COOD ITHER.

A GOOD LIVER.
A writer in BIack,oods Magazine some years
ago wasted a good deal Of ingenuity and re-
search to prove that there was no authent
Gated instance of any one having ever passed
the age of one hundred years. He laid
especial stress upon the fact that the reported
cases were usually among q class Of
people who had no data in regard to
their early years, and with this argument
and a general charge of imposture in other
instances, he dismissed the subject. But
we have seen of late several unquestionable
cases of longevity surprising n century of
years. The recent death of Deacon John
Phillips, who when one hundred and four
walked to the polls in Massachusetts to vote
for Lincoln, will be yet remembered; and on
Thursday, Gen. Watts De Peyster entertained
at breakfast party of friends who were
gathered to celebrate the northumberland
fifth birthday of Captain Lahrbush.
1t is probable that no man who ever
lived has held in his memory so vast sweep
of history as this venerable soldier. 1t is lit
tie to say that his life embraces all our past,
for he was born ten years before our revolt
eliminated in the Declaration of Independ-
Poland consolidated the Kingdom of Prussia,
and completed the creative work of
the Fredericks. He was forty years
of age when before his eyes, on the
battlefield of Jena, the great Emperor de-
stroyed the military power of the kingdom
and reduced to nothing the army organization
which had excited for years the ignorant adj
miration of Europe. He saw the dramatic
meeting of Napoleon and Alexander on the
raft at Tilsit, where the Emperors made peace
in the ready fashion of those times and few
years later he formed portion of the guard
that kept watch in st. Helena over the dis
crowned and exiled cOnqueror of the world.
In the vast scope of his memory the changes
of realms and dynasties must appear like the
dissolving views of q magic lantern. Belgium
and Italy have arisen into being since he grew
old. He has seen new dynasties enter and
possess the thrones of Sweden, Denmark,
Portugal, and Spain. In France the inglorious
reign of Louis the Fifteenth, the troubled life Of
Louis the Sixteenth, paying the penalty of an
cestral crimes, the immense and Tenovat-
ing CONFUSION of the Revolution, the
lurid glOries Of the Consulate and
the Empire the restoration of the unteachable
and unforgetting BOurbons, their expulsion,
and the reign of Orleans, new Republic,
born in tho streets and throttled anew by a
BOnaparte, and after a score of years third
avatar OF Liberty, whose results the world is
breathlessly awaiting-have passed in beWilder-
ing succession under his obscrvant eyes. He
may live to see more and greater changes yet.
But the Developments he has witnessed on
this side of the ocean surpass the widest
dreams of Eastern fancy. The years pass
swiftly to the aged, and who can tell the
amazing and dizzying speed which our progress
must have worn to his tranquil visiOn2 To
him tho metaphors OF our daily speech must
seem somewhat like reality. The emigration
that has poured into the wilderness must ap-
pear 30 him like an enormous living wave,
and our new cities and States must have
seemed TO spring up over night like the
gourd of the prophet. He witnessed our great
war with wholesome cheerincss, never for an
instant doubling the result. 1t would be hard
to convince man who had known the coun-
try increase tenfod in his lifetime that it was
to fall to pieces at the first serious blow
1t is a hard thing to kill nation or a man
that possesses any vitality. We have stood some
ndUlHltIlllB, anu are lDlc 10 SI;lllu SJl1 more
and all the malice of fate and circumstance
has had no effect upon Capt. Lahrbush except
to improve bis health and cheerfulness. AS
Gen. De Peyster said, he has been left for
dead on the battlefield, cast up as dead by
the ocean, smittcn down for dead by the
pestilence, pierced for a century by the
shafts of time, and yet his tough fiber does
not seem to be shaken. He drinks enough
laudanum every dny TO relieve us of our Com
mon Council, if it were properly administered
but it no more damages bis frame of iron than
30 much wine of Bordeaux. He pledged his
friends to another breakfast in 1881, and every
one seemed to think that among the doubtful
ones at that festival, it was not prudent to
count the indestructible Captain. Serus in
cGlufn redeat.