Bisbee daily review., 1905-12-12
MARK
 TWAIN'S
 HISTORY
Tells How He Succeeded In Reaching Ripe Old
 Age of 70

guest OI uOuOT dI banquet gwen | at Delmonico's restaurant in New
 York, given by his friends on the oc- casion of the seventieth birthday of the great humorist. There were present a large number of the distin- | guiShed literary characters of this country. President Roosevelt sent a letter of regret. The honored guest. when his time arrived to speak, de livered the following:
 The seventieth birthday! It is the
 time Of life when you arrive at a new and awful dignity; when you may throw aside the decent reserves which have oppressed you for a generation. and stand unafraid and unabasnsd upon your seven-terraced summit, and look down and teach-unrebuked
 You can tell the world how you got there. It is what they all do. You shall never get tired of telling by what delicate arts and deep moralities you climbed up to the great place And you will explain the process and dwell on the particulars with senilC rapture. 1 have been anxious to ex- plain my own system this long time, and now at last I have the right
 WENT TO BED WHEN COMPELLED
 T have achieved my seventy years in the usual way-by sticking strictly to a scheme of life which would kill any one else It sounds like an ex- aggeration, but really that is the com mon rule for attaining old age. We i have no permanent habits until we are | forty. Then they begin to harden, presently they petrify, then business 1 begins. Since forty l have been reg
 ular about going to bed and getting
 up-and that is one of the main | things. I have made it a rule to go
 to bed when there was nobody left | to> sit up with; and I have made it q
 rule to get up when I had to- This has resulted in an answering regu- ] larity of irregularity.
 STOPPED MINcE PIE.
 Tn the matter of diet-whiclI is an other main thing-I have been persist ently strict in sticking to the things
 which didn't agree with me, until one or the other of us got the best of it.. | Until lately I got the best of it my | self, but last spring 1 stopped frOlick- | ing with mince pie after midnight. | Up till then I had always believed it 1 wasn't loaded For thirty years I
 have taken coffee and bread in the
 morning. and no bite nor sup till 1 7:3O ln the evening.
 ONE CIGAR AT 4 TIME. T have made it a rule never to smoke more than one cigar at time. | I have no other restrictions as re- gards smoking. I do not know just
 when I began to smoke 1 only know l that it was in my fathers life time,
 and that I was very discreet. He
 passed away from this life in 1S47,
 when was a shade past eleven. Even
 since then I have smoked publicly
 As an example to others, and not that care for moderation myself, it has
 been my rule never to smoke when
 asleep and never to refrain when
 awake.
 AS for drinking, I have no rule
 about that When others drink like to help; otherwise I should remain dry by habit and preference. This
 dryness does not hurt me, but it could easily hurt you, because you are diff
 ferent. You let it alone.
 SWALLOWED DRUG STORE.
 Since I was seven years old have seldom taken a dose of medicine and still more seldom needed one. But lup to seven I lived exclusively on lallopathic medicines. Not that l needed them, for I don't think did; lit was economy; my father took drug
 store for debt, and it made cod liver loil cheaper than other breakfast
 foods. I was the first Standard Oil
 trust. I had it all. By the time the D drug store wa sexhausted my health
 was established, and there has never been much the matter with me since. VIOLENT" EXERCISE. q have never taken any exercise, except sleeping and resting, and l never intend to take any. Exercise is loathsOme. And it cannot be any benefit when you are tired; was al- ways tired.
 '1 have lived a severely moral life. But it would be a mistake for other people to try it, or for me to recon , mend it. Very few would succeed. You have to be a perfectly colossal stock of morals, and you cannot get them on a margin; you have to have the whole thing and put them in your II box. Morals are an acquirement-like I music, like a foreign language, like 5 piety, poker, paralysis-no man is
 born with them. I wasn't myself.