Morning journal and courier., 1886-12-06
v1GoRous oLD AGE.
Words Of Interest About PromineI Connecticut men Upwards of Sc

Words Of Interest About Prominent
 Connecticut Men Upwards of Sev-
 enty.
 Yesterdays New York Sun in an interest ing article on instances ot notable vigor in old age cites the opinion of the late Dr. Beard (who married Westville lady) on the subject: s.If a man in good health and of sound constitu- tional heritage, unimpaired by bad habits, would over the seventy-year limit before he finds his
 mind or body burdened by years"
 Proceeding the Sun writer mentions some of the splendid and illustrious examples of
 we'll preserved vigorous minds in old age as
 in the case of Won Moltke, Bismarck, Les seps, Gladstone and others of like fame, and then among others in our own land men Iions the cases of men famous in our own lit
 tie State as follows:
 There was the late Judge Waldo, once Con
 gressman, once judge of the Connecticut supreme bench, with whom MT. David Dud- | ley Field had many legal bout. He went off the Connecticut bench because he was ] seventy years old, and at once took up a 1 lucrative practice, which he did not quit un- ! til nearly ninety. Then there is that re- markable man, whose ancestry, like MT. Fields, became strong men because they | lived hardy lives on New England hills, Col I onel George L. Perkins of Norwich, Conn. He is tall, digni6ed man. His cheeks are | ruddy. There are few wrinkles on his face.
 His eyes are not blurred and they light up
 with the enjoyment of fun. He steps 1 off from his house like young | soldier and walks nearly a mile | to his office, and he has served for more | than fifty years as treasurer of the Norwich | and Worcester railroad company. Last sum- pleasure trip. Yet Colonel Perkins is now in his 99th year. Birthdays don't annoy him, and he fully expects that his century | of years will find him as usual at his desk. | Good constitution, exercise, the habit of | content, fondness for fun, and the society of | young people have kept Colonel Perkins | young. He simply would not allow himself l to grow old. Colonel Perkins has a neigh | bor of 90, whom he looked upon as @ youth, and who goes regularly to his duties as town
 clerk. This is Othniel Gager, and he has been town clerk of Norwich for nearly fifty years.
 There was knocked about an ocean steamer on recent stormy passage 8 pleasant-faced man with 8 long nose, bright eye, win ming smile and sprightly step, gentleman who recently resigned the presidency of ale college because he was seventy five years old. Yet he has been jaunting about Europe this summer without weariness and has come home to take up the work of professor in Yale He is nearly seventy-six, but Presi- dent Porter would never be thought of as an old man. The splendid intellect of the Rev. Dr. Leonard W. Bacon was not dimmed
 until he was past eighty and some of the best work of his life was done in the decade | between 70 and 30. There was ex-President Woolsey, at 77, publishing works on economic subjects that are accepted authority, and | there is ex President Hopkins of Williams, well on toward 90, but addressing audiences, | as recently at Des Moines, without the slight | est evidence of the impairment of his great mental vigor.
 Vino is the veteran of the House to-daya It | is a man whose activity is so great, whose fund of good stories so inexhaustible and his glee in telling them so hearty, whose step is so quick and whose duties are so energetically performed that he is about the last man with | white hair who would be picked out as the | oldest man in the body. This is John Tur- | ner Wait, of Connecticut, and his years are almost TT, but his intellect is as keen and his body as vigorous as when he was 50. He will go back to his old home in Norwich | when his term is ended, practise law with vigor and have all the fun he can out of life. The other day the writer met vigorous
 looking man who was busily engaged in su- perintending the loading of a large vessel with produce for the New York
 market The man was as keen-eyed as 8 floor walker ard as quick as flash in his computations and ad- l justments of accounts. Yet when he had moment 5 l0lSuEo u0 LO1u AOW u0 1dA olAGJ years ago entertained Lafayette as he was on his way to New Haven over the old New York post road, and very interesting were | his descriptions of the French hero's speech and manners. This man was John Newman of Mianus, now 85 years old, and as active 3 l business man as one could wish to see, and | when his age was referred to he said that no man who was born healthy ought to l think of getting old before he was 90, and | he spoke of @ number of men he knew wha | were still in active life, though more than | eighty years of age.