Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1885-11-05
OLD AGE.
SOME THOUGHTS CONCERNING THE POSSI-
BILITY AND PROBABILITY OF CENTENA-



Leaving out of consideration the old ia
nous species of longevity and all doubtful
modern instances Of men and women liv-
ing to be hundred years old or more, there
remain enough of centenarians, the date of
Of whose birth is recorded, and the fact of
whose living q century or more is beyond
dispute. Indeed, such cases seem to be
growing more and more common, and at
tract no great attention. Yet there are few
spectacles more profoundly interesting than
that Of a life protracted beyond the ordina-
ry limit of old age. TO have survived all,
or almost all of ones generation, is itself
proof of some sort Of superiority OF tissue
or habit environment. 1t is to have held
out longest in the hopeless fight of all things
living against death, and perhaps to have
shown that most men die before their time.
Let men affect what pretence OF pessim-
ism and disgust with life they will, they
cannot help loving life and clinging to
as but passage the sooner crossed the
better to a higher form of existence; and
liabilities to perform its duties or in
capacity for its enjoyments may lead un-
fortunate natures to throw it blindly away;
but to men of thoroughly sane organization
and energies evenly developed, life is some
thing to be loved for itself, and all means
and instances Of its prolongation are worthy
to be studied Men whom life disgusts or
bores are deprived of the faculty Of judging
it properly. Life is not for them, but for
those who know how to use it; and to those
who know and are so fortunate in mind
and circumstances as to expand and not
contract their sympathies, it must be as de-
sirable, as interesting, as we'll worth liv-
ing at eighty oraninety as at twenty-five.
Nor need the strength Of even five-score
years be labor and sorrow if the faculties be,
as sometimes they are, unimpared.
1t is sometimes said that the men who re-
ally live wear out early, and that people
live to be old by creeping sluggishly along,
burning lifes candle to the socket by mig
gardly husbandry of its light. But aside
from the fact that the names of some Of the
greatest thinkers and scholars Of the past
are to- be found in the list of the Octogenari-
ans and nonagenarians, is it not true that it
is this intellectual sluggishness, this want of
fiexibility to meet the changing conditions
which the change of years brings, this
want of interest in contemporary life, that
prevents many men from attaining to for
tunate old age: So long as man keeps
his faculties employed and interested, so
long as he is alert to all the movements of
the world about him, so long he remains
young, and so much the greater are his
chances of coming to what is called old age.
That torpid and dark old age wherein the
physical powers have feebly survived the
decay of the intellectual is but death de-
void of its peace and dignity; but what
time of mans years is more splendid and
imposing than the tranquil old age of
life which has Widened as it has lengthen-
ed, the majestic age of Plato, Michael An
gelo and Goethe?
The ordinary life of man seems to be de-
prived and defrauded, compared with those
lives to which wisdom and length of days
were given. The full century of existence
which Sir Moses MOntefoire filled with be-
nefcent activities is not too long to live.
Indeed, instead of regarding lives so long as
something abnormal and extraordinary,
they ought, perhaps to be regarded as COM
ing nearer to the full measure and best rule
of existence, while the lives of most men
are shortened and cut off before their real
maturity. Old age has been and is too
much regarded but the lees Of life, unlova-
BILE, squalid and pitable, as the Greeks
were always beWailing it to be. Men want
to live long, but hate old age. The grand
secular life which ended at Ramsgate the
other day, would serve to teach the thought
| less and the foolish how noble and desira-
able is an old age of activity and wisdom.
Men at the longest do not get so much of
life that they can afford to neglect even the
smallest part of it. And in view of such
| lives as that of the Hebrew philanthropist,
well conditioned old age seems only con-
tinuing and ripper youth.
1.-THE best is vet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made"
-NeW York SIN.