The Arkansaw traveler., 1885-09-19
OLD AoR.
LNeH York Sun.l

| Leaving out ot consideration the old
 famous species of longevity aDd all
 doubtful modem instances of men and women living to be hundred years Old or mSre, there remains enough of cente- narians the data of whose birth is recorded. and the fact of whose living a century or more is beyond dispute. Indeed, such cases seem to be growing more and more common. and attract no great attention. Yet there are few spectacles more pro- foundly interesting than that of a life protracted beyond the ordinary limits of old age, To have survived all or almost all of ones generation, is itself a proof of some sort of superiority of tissue or habit environment. It 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 pessi- nlism and disgust with life they will, they cannot help loving life and clinging to it. Religious enthusiasm may regard it as but passage the sooner crossed the bet. ter to higher form of existence and in- ability to perform its duties or incapacity for its erjoyments may lead unfortunate natures to throw it blindly away but to men of thoroush shly sane organization and energies evenly developed, life is some thing to be loved for itself, and all means and instances of it's prolongation are worthy to be studied. Men whom life dlsgusts or bores are deprived of the fac ulty of judging it properly. Life is not for them, but for those who know how to n nA RSNf .hn so fortunate in mind and circumstances as to expand and not contract their sym pathies, 1t must be desirable, as interest ing, as we'll worth living at eighty or ninety as at twenty. i've. Nor need the strength of even five score years be labor and sorrow ifthe faculties be, as some times they are, unimpaired.
 It IS sometimes said that the men who really live wear out early, and that peo- 'ple live to be old by creeping sluggishly along, burning life's candle to the socket by niggardly 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 lists of the octogenarians and nonagenarians, is 1t not tzue that it is this intellectual slug gishness, this want of fexibility to meet the changing conditions which the change of years brings; this want of ip- terest in contemporary life, that prevents many men from attaining to fortunate old l ager So long as man keeps his facul- | ties employed and interested, SO long as he is alert to all the movements of the world about him, so long he remains yoang, and 50 much the greater are his nk age. That torpid and dark old age wherein the physical powers have feebly survived the decay of the intellectual is but death devoid of its peace and dig nity but what time of mans years is more splendid and imposing than the tranquil old age of life which has wid- ened as it heightened, the majestic age of Plato, Michael Angelo and Gothe?
 The ordinary life of man seems to be deprived and defrauded, compared with these lives to which wisdom and length ot days were given. The fail century of existence which Sir Moses Montefoire filled with benefcent activities is not too long to live. Indeed, instead of regard ing lives so long as something abnor al and extrao, dinary, they ought perhaps to be regarded as coming 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 as but the lees of life, unlovable, squ lid and pitiable, as the Greeks were always bewailing it to be. Men want to live long, but hate old age. The grand secu- lar life which ended at Ramsgate the other day, would serve to teach the thoughtless and the foolish how noble and desirable 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 He. brew philanthropist, g well conditioned old age seems only continuing and riper youth.
 ' he best is vet to be;
 The last of life, for which the first was made.