The record-union., 1899-08-25
Man and His Years.

mo man is older than he feels" has
been said by some one who had pref
ty fair knowledge of the relation of
man to his years, and Doctor Holmes
presented the same idea in slightly
different form when, some one men
tioning man as eighty years old,
the wise and witty Doctor corrected
him by saying eighty years young"
And why not? Most men-enough,
in fact, to constitute a general truth
are what their minds and their hearts
make them, and from these spiritual
parts of man the usual effect of the
years may be successfully warded until
the physical frame goes to pieces as
did the wonderful one-horse shay.
The fact is. no man need ever be old,
as the word is generally understood in
its application to mans age. He may
and must acquire years, but years do
not mean old age.
The course of human life have been
divided into three periods of duration,
| comprising twenty-five years each, the
first being the ascent, or youth, from
one to twenty five years; the second,
the level, or manhood, from~tWenty-
five to fifty; and the third, the descent,
/
years being added to the Biblical esti-
mate Of three-Score and ten years as
the allotted period A better division.
however, would make the first from one
to thirty years, the second from thirty
to seventy-fve, and the third from
| seventy to ninety. This newer ar
rangement may be based upon the TACT
that while the average length of life in
the seventeenth century was computed
at thirteen years, it increased IN the
eighteenth to twenty years, and in the
nineteenth to thirty-six years In addl-
| ton, a further argument is offered Tor
| the extension of time in the generally
accepted law of the animal kingdom
| that life is five times the period OF
growth, which, being twenty-one years
in man. puts the limit of his years at
one hundred and five.
| The newspapers noted in June last the
! instance of an Indiana man, one hun
dred and three years of age, securing
a divorce from his fourth wife, he hav-
/ ing outlived three others; and earlier
! in the year the papers contained ex-
! tended stories of the marriage in Penn
/ sylvania of a man of one hundred and
| four and a woman of one hundred and
| two.
In every department of human en-
deavor we find men, past the seventy
year mark, who are active as their
younger competitors, and usually Keen
er and more dangerous rivals than
they were at fifty. A bank president
past ninety may be cited in 4Connect1-
cut, a railroad man in New Jersey near
| ing the century mark; here a minister
of the Gospel ignoring his Bible by
working long years after his three
score and ten are up; there a physician
| forgetting the years in his work OF al
| leviating suffering; everywhere, men OF
many years, steady handed, steady
headed, quick to think, quick to act,
and wise to wait; men of many years,
but by no means old men. The men
of past eighty who are still in the har-
ness are legion, latitude nor longitude
! affecting their vitality. Men past sew
/ enty are Governors, Cabinet Ministers,
ambassadors and congressman, and
] seventy is not held to be old at all for
a candidate for the Presidency of the
United States if he be otherwise avalla-
BILE. Beyond the sea not less are the
men of years not old men, and we have
the notable examples of Gladstone and
| Bismarck the two men of their time,
filled with as many years as with hon
ors and active to the last.
Possibly the Biblical standard or linn
it is at fault, by translation or other