The Palatka daily news. (Palatka, Fla.) 1884-1888, 1885-08-09
Concerning Old Age.

N. Y. sun.
The sceptical views Of such critics
as the late Sir G. c.. Lewis and Mr.. w. J.
Thoms, as TO the possibility and proba-
bility of ce, .tenarians, have been pretty
thoroughly discredited by vital statistics.
Leaving out Of consideration the old ia
nous specimens of longevity and all
doubtful modern instances of men and
women living to be a hundred years old
or more, there remain enough of cente-
narians the date of whose birth is record
ed, and the fact of whose living a CEN
tury or more is beyond dispute. Indeed,
such cases seem to bo growing more and
more common, and attract no great at
tention. Yet there are few spectacles
more profoundly interesting than that of
life prstracted beyond the ordinary
limit of old age. To have survived all
or almnst all of ones generation, is in it
self proof of some sort of superiority of
tissue or habit or 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 pessi-
mism 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
better to higher form of existence; and
inability to perform its duties or inca
pacity for its enjoyments may lead weak
unfortunate natures to throw it blindly
away; but to men of thoroughly sane or
ganization and energies evenly developed.
life 10 something to be loved for itself,
and all means and instances of it's pro-
iongation 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
circumstance as to expand and not con-
tract their sympathies, it must be as de-
srable, as interesting, as well worth liv-
ing at eighty or ninety as at twenty five.
Nor need the strength of even fvescore
years be labor and sorrow if the faculties
be, as they sometimes are, unimpaired.
1t is sometimes said that the men who
really live wear out early, and that peo
pie live to be old by creeping sluggishly
along, burning life's candle to the socket
by niggardly husbandry Ct its light. But
aside from the fact that the names of
some of the greatest thinkers and schol-
ars of the past are to be found in the lists
Of the octogenarians and nonagenatians,
is it not true that it is this intellectual
sluggishness, this want of fexibility to
meet the changing conditions which the
change of years brings, this want of in
interest in contemporary life, that pre-
vents 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 re-
mains young and 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 devoid of its
peace and dignity; but what time of
mans years is more splendid and i'm
posing than the tranquil old age of a
life which has widened as it heightened,
the majestic age of Plato, Michael An
gelo, and Gothic?
The ordinary life of man seems de-
prived and defrauded, compared with
these lives to which wisdom and length
of days We're given. The full century
Of existence which Sir Moses Montefi-
ore filled with beneficient activities is
not too long to live. Indeed, instead
of regarding lives so long as something
abnormal and extraordinary, they ought
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, squalid, and pitiable,
as the Greeks were always bewail
ing it to be. Men want to live long, but
hate old age. The grand secular life
which ended at Ramsgate the other day,
should serve to teach the thoughtless
and the foolish how noble and desira-
BILE 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, a well-conditioned
old age seems only continuing and
ripper youth.
Siege Guns of Wire.
London Telegraph.
Siege guns built of wire are the newest