The age-herald., 1898-03-23
A Man Who Just Keeps Living
Kansas City Star

FTOm tle nduSdS 1lly otdi.
 A few days ago an energetic newspaper reporter unearthed a man in South Chicago who presents proof to show that he is 115 years old When the industrious represen- tative of the press arrived on the premises the daughter of the centenarian-aged W- had just completed pair of socks for her father. She stated that they were intend ed for birthday present, and she appeared to contemplate her work with genuine sat isfaction.
 When asked for an explanation of his re- markable longevity, the patriarch replied: q have done nothing much in my life ex- cept to live. I never took any particular care of myself. In my younger days, If wanted drink of whisky I took it. IT I wanted a cigar or a pipe l smoked it. have simply lived I haven't been sick for fifty years until last week, when l had an attack of the grip. Did l call doctor! Not I. I got two quarts of whisky and some rock candy, and when that was gone the grip was, too.
 This Chicago centenarian has lived Tn the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and he has no doubt that he will witness the advent of the twentieth century. He fails to see why he should not, since he feels quite well as he did fifty years ago. He refers to his 90-year-old daughter as a young woman, and Is troubled because she is not as ''stout" as she ought to be. He is afraid that if she. takes the measles or the whooping cough 1t will go hard with 
 her.
 The chief significance of this case is that MT Adameck, who first saw the light ll5 years ago, has simply kept on living. He has paid not the slightest heed to any one of the 100 or more rules that have been prescribed for prolonging human life. He has walked in perfect security amid all Of the peris which have been revealed through modern scientific investigation, and has been preserved from the pestilence that walketh in darkness and from the in- lection that wasteth at monday. A thous- and have fallen at his side, and 10000 at his right hand, but the destroyer has not come nigh him.
 Here is a life that has been ordered on the plan that the object of existence is to enjoy it while it lasts, and not to devise means for prolonging 1t beyond the limit of comfort and pleasure. Having always taken what he desired to drink, it Is fair to presume that Mr-Adameck has been equally indulgent to himself touching things to eat. His fancy, of course, ante dated by nearly a century the use of steril- ized milk. But he was not cut down in his babyhood by the insidlous germs which turk in the first food of our common hu- manity When the spark of reason began to illuminate his brain, the sage of South Chicago chose for his nourishment such things as commended themselves to his palate, turning deaf ear alike to the vege- tarians and to the school which finds In carniverous diet remedy for physical in- firmities. It is morally certain that Father Adameck never kept in his house such a thing as thermometer to regulate the temperature. It is doubtful whether he ever exercised minute to enlarge his chest expansion. The probabilities are that he has eaten pie once a day for the best part of hundred years, at least when he was not taking treatment of rock and rye for the grip.
 There is one thing about these people who just keen on living, without paying any att tention to the laws of hygfene-they get more enjoyment out of living than ever falls to the lot of the man and woman who is always lodging microbes and following a certain regimen, and they are likely to last a good deal longer.
 Here's to the man who has done nothing except to live, and may his hadow never grow less.