McCook weekly tribune. (McCook, Neb.) 188?-1886, 1884-09-18
LONGEVITY AND LABOR.
Work Preserves the Health, Idteness WeaE-
ems 1T.

Work. Preserves the Health, Idteness Weah;-
Philadelphia Bulletin.
Ericsson, the veteran inventor, was
eighty-one years old yesterday. He is
in excellent health, and works, it is
said, sixteen hours day, thus proving
an exception to the general rule that
old men are incapable of great exer-
ton. But perhaps this general rule,
like many others that are received
without question, is fallacy. Perhaps
it might be fairly asserted that busy
men live longer than idle men; that
work is, after all, the true elixir of life
Many noteworthy instances where lon
gevity comedies with remarkable men
tai activity will easily occur to the
reader.
Was not Sophocles more than ninety
when, to prove that he was not in his
dotage-as his heirs claimed, in order
to get his money-he wrote one of his
greatest tragedies? Did not Humboldt
do more work at four score than many
bright men at forty? Goethe, as every
one knows, died with pen in hand at
the age of eighty-two. Won Ranke, the
foremost of living historians, has just
published another volume of his Uni
versal History; he will be eighty-nine
years old next December. Carlyle and
Emerson lost none of their vigor until
they reached three score years and ten.
And, to-day, who imagines that Oliver
Wendell Holmes, already on the verge
of seventy-five, is old? Longfellow did
some of his best work shortly before his
death, at seventy-five, and Whittier is
now two years older than that. The
vast energies, whose sum in many di-
rections are known as Victor Hugo,
snow no signs of decrepitude, although
it is more than eighty-two years since
Victor Hugo was born. Historians, it
may be remarked, have usually been
Ion g-lived.
Voltaire died at S4. Thierry and
Michelet at rs; Mignet and Guizot at
81. George Bancroft is now 81, and
George Tichnor lived to be so. In pub
lie life we have had several recent eN-
amples of great men whose power for
craftsmanship did not dimish through
age. Gladstone is nearly Is, and Pal
merston was prime minister at the time
of his death, two days before he had
completed his eighty-first year. Ben
jamin Franklin, in the last century,
lived to be 81.
These instances suffice to show that
there are constitutions which not only
can bear, but which actually need the
stimulus of hard work up to a very adj
vanced period. Of course, on the
other hand, might be cited the remark
able men who died young, but even
from their experience the fact might
be brought out, not that they were
killed by overwork, but by irrational
work. Usually, as in the case of
Keats, early death is the result of
chronic disease. Shelley, who is al
ways mentioned among those whose
lives stretched but a span, was drown
ed accidentally, and there is good rea-
son to believe that but for this he
would have lived to old age, because
he was physically strong.
Raphael, Mozart, Byron, Burns and
Schubert succumbod just at an age
when most men reach their prime, but
it must not be forgotten that the last
three undermined their health by ex-
cesses. Shakespeare, Napoleon, Cesar
and Beethoven, recognized as the I'M
rivalled giants in their respective de-
partments, died between fifty and six
tv. But on the other hand, Michael
Angelo, than whom no man ever ex-
pended more energy on his vast achiev-
ments, lived to be ninety, and Titan
was ninety-two. 1t is evident, there
fore, that while no strict law can be
established, there is relation be-
tween longevity and labor. Work pre-
serves the health, while idleness tends
to weaken it.