The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1905-07-29
THE VIRTUE OF MULLEN TEA.

tinued use of liquor operators TO pro-
long life. beyond the century mile
post, we trot into the competition
herewith Uncle G. NJ. Yoder, who is
also an old-time militia colonel, as
an illustrious exponent of a life 50
simple that it knows nothing of bit
ters" beyond the pale of buttermilk.
Says the Catawba County News:
col. G. NJ Yoder came over last
Thursday to see how we were getting
along. Asked for the news, he said
peach pies were plentiful and beans
ditto The Colonel is 70 and yet @he
works in the field right along, and
says he hasn't missed a day out or
the crop this season, except when
he came over to pay his respects to
The News. He hasn't failed to show
up at meal time in twelve month, put
we don't see why he ever goes to the
table, for he doesn't eat butter, drinks
no milk, eschews fat meat and even
the delectable and fragrant onion IN
stead of coffee, be drinks more mullen
tea than any man in the county. More
over he never spent cent Tor WINS
key in his life, never used TOBACCO,
swears not at ALL doesn't quarrel with
his fellow man. is the only living
been appointed in 1853, and has been
a magistrate for forty years. We tip
our hat to the Colonel. His record
can't be broken
Now here is Colonel Yoder at the
ripe old age of 70, who never misses a
day in the fields and eats 1,O95 meals
year, presumably of cabbage and
baltimore meat" has never drunk a
drink, gambled a dollar, chaWed a
chew. smoked smoke or cussed a
cuss in all the 2S,S35 and more days
of his life to date. And in the mean
time, he has consumed enough or
mullen tea''-whatever that may be
to float a warship. We know, how
ever, we gather it from the context,
we glory in the pride with which the
News sets it forth, that mullen is a
temperance food and, if the Colonel
would not object to being made the
subject of a wager. we would back 1t
i'm any long-life contest authenticated
by the family Bible.
And right there, we get the prick
of this contest in which rum-soaked
ante diluvians play to the galleries. In
our observation whiskey makes men
prematurely old instead of preternat-
urally aged. We have observed topers
of a season whose blase look would
have sufficed for an octogenarian. We
suspect that the man of the Washing
ton PostNis some young buck of three
score and tenL blighted with grey
hairs in his youth, who is trying TO
impose upon the public by passing Off
the crows-feet of dissipation for those
of age. All this hullabaloo about a
hundred years carries its own re-
proach as it is If it were not for
tho rush of the cities-mind you, we
do not accuse Washington of rush
"a boy of sixty odd would not create
so much enthusiasm. II is out in the
fields that you find the real centena-
rians. with the date of their birth
carefully preserved in family Bible
bound in red morocco with gilt cor
ners. These tales from the madding
throngs are mostly fakes. We doubt
if a census of New York could pro
duce more than one family Bible to
the ten thousand inhabitants. As to
the Baltimore News and its point
about the relative ages of Noah and
Methuselah, we pass it up. Those
were great old times. Indigestion was
unknown and dipsomania prophecy.
In that time men got drunk and
sought a glacier for their heads and
went on living at the rate of five
minutes to the year. We do not think
that Noahs drunk interfered with his
life. Rather that he drew up his
knees and turned his face to the wall
than to out-do his noted grandsire.
Whether that was so or not the world
has been doing it ever since. Nobody
lives now like their great grandfather.
Between cucumber salad, lobster,
Newburgs, terrapin, the cold bottle,
Caviarre and other trimmings Of the
would be rich, living is in danger any
way of becoming a lost art. When to
an indiscriminate diet is added the
paralysing consumption of liquor red
dred fold. The day is yet coming of
the twenty year old grandpa and the
faded beauty of sixteen summers
In the meantime we have our I'm
Gle Yoders. They take their vituals
boiled. They sweat them in the fields.
They live to authenticated old ages
They eschew instead of chewing to-
bacco. They wave the flag of temper
ance abroad and count their children
by the dozen and their grandchildren
by the score.
We put our trust in the man of
eighty, with family Bible, who works
in the fields and drinks the mullen
tea. Octogenarians we have and
centenarians. There is Uncle Sammy
Bryson, of Snow Bird. and Uncle Jesse
Gragg, of near Lenoir, both pushing
the century mark and both tee-totall-
ers Neither of these drinks mullen tea.
We commend them to the beverage
that they may make a record. In the
ntirna we desire to live IN geo the