The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1900-06-16
LIVING A CENTURY.

San Francisco admirers of the pa
triarchs have formed the Hundred Year
Club for the purpose of studying and
promoting longevity. The name does
not reveal the full ambition of the
members, for they say in their prospec
tus that the normal limit of human life
should be from 120 to $50 years.
From ignorance or neglect of the laws
of nature this age is not attained, and
'it may take three or four generations
of right-living to overcome heredity.
So the gentlemen who sell annuities
will have to go out of business at once.
1t is pretty good sort of world and
even the calamity howlers, with their
gifts of gloom, have no serious objec-
tons to staying here for some time.
For enthusiasts like the members of
the Hundred Year Club the gradual in
crease of the length of human life is
too slow. The doctrine of averages car
ries very little substantial comfort
The way to do anything in these days is
to found a society for the purpose of
doing 1t, and we have no doubt that the
foundation of this Club will have q
good influence in adding to the span
of it's members, who are to dine togeth-
er occasionally, with rather more than
severely patriarchal luxury.
They are going to collect a library
of writings on longevity and records of
it, always interesting works although
not without the doubt which has always
attached to the Methusalaic legend.
Probably it was the apochryphal char
acter of good many instances of lon
tt,1S la lat L
Thomas to emit his paradox that no.
body had ever lived to be a hundred.
The genuine cases are common if by no
means common enough, but the diff
Guilty is to form any satisfactory theory
as to the best means of longevity. One
mans meat is another mans poison
and so the researches which the Hun
dred Year Club and the branches it
proposes to form are going to make In
regard to hygiene and cooking are liza
bic to bring out somewhat motley coll
lection of material. Some people are
made of tougher fiber than others.
That is about all there is to it. 1t is
easy to dwell on the commonplaces
| about moderation, exercise and so on,
but every once in a while some dis
graceful old fellow turns up who has
eaten everything that he ought not to
have eaten, who doesn't know hygiene
from hypnotism and who never took
any exercise, but has perversely
rounded out his century to the despair
OF the earnest seekers after the secret.
Whether man lives longer by al
ways thinking about it, living accord
ing to rule and thermometer and con-
stantly denying himself to satisfy a
theory may be doubted. The cheerful
heart goes all the day, whether it be
long or short, and the philosopher can
not be weighing his rations and feeling
his pulse all the time. If the passion
for longevity makes a man uncomfort-
able 1t tends TO cut him off rather than
| extend him. Doubtless the Hundred
Year Club will seek a comfortable lon
| gevity and collect no information that
! is too hard for dinner table.
! One of the objects of the club is tc
develop the faculty of conversation and
add thereby to the agreeableness of life
and unconsciously strengthen the re-
solve to cling to 1t long. How few
says the prospectus 'are capable of car
rying on sustained conversation OF
interest" True; but how fewer are
capable of sustained shutting up.