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III.

MICHAEL RADCLIFFE has passed a restless night; his dreams have been far from pleasant. He goes out earlier than usual to see if there are any English letters.

He has not heard from Georgie for a fortnight, and he has written three times in the interval.

"She said she should be away from home just now; no doubt that is the cause. I I complained of her silence rather impatiently, perhaps, but still I ought to get a letter today."

No, there is not one. His blue eyes have got bright and cheery again with the fresh morning air, and with hope; they cloud over at once, and his heart sinks, but, after a few minutes' thought with bent brows, he says:

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"But there's no use in being worried; he puts his hands in his pockets and goes toward the railway-works. "What a blessing it is I have something to do!"

But when the day's work is done, and evening comes again, the doubts and worries come back-not timidly as they have hitherto come, standing far off and whispering, but pressing round him with importunate, mocking faces, like some of those rustic stalls in the old church half-way down the hill. He lights his pipe and gets a book, but his eyes follow the sombre wreaths instead of resting on the page; the faces are there again, more hideous in the moving, curling vapor than when they were merely shaped out of the darkness.

Three days pass thus heavily, and there is no letter from Georgie Needham-no evening visit from Carl Schimmel.

"I will not go to him till he has heard from England," the German thinks; "I am a poor deceiver, and he suffers enough without any feeding of his doubts from without."

But every morning Carl goes to the posthouse and ascertains that no letter from England has come for the English Herr.

It is the fourth morning, and for the first time the two friends meet as Michael goes up to the post-house.

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Joy, my friend!"-the smiling fellow shakes Michael by both hands-" there is a letter from England; may good news be in it!" and then the kind-hearted fellow goes away, singing softly to himself.

Michael goes breathlessly to the posthouse and secures his treasure.

There is no one to see on the steep bit of road, and Michael kisses the letter.

"I have been mistrustful and undeserving," he thinks. He hurries toward the house, but before he reaches it he opens the letter with a bright glow of happiness in his face-not lately seen there; it falls as he reads the first words.

Before he fully masters the contents there is a mist between him and the letter; the steep road seems to go round as if he were climbing instead of coming down the hill. He stands still and puts up his hand to screen his eyes, and so he stands for several minutes; then he crushes the letter, open as it is, into his pocket, and goes down the road at a quick pace.

He shuts the low-browed entrance-door as he passes into his house-a new idea, for it

stands open all day-and then he goes into the quaint sitting-room.

He sits down near the window, and takes out the letter.

The writing is quite distinct now, and his hand does not shake as he holds the letter. It begins

"MY DEAR FRIEND: I have not written to you because I shrank from what I had to say, and yet it must be said. Ever since you went away I have been thinking seriously about our position, and it seems to me that I ought to release you from your engagement to me, and my mother quite agrees with me. We are both young enough to form other ties; why should we sacrifice each other to a silly question of honor? You think you love me now, but poverty, harassment, and debt, weaken any affection, and all three must fall to our lot if we keep to our engagement. I hope you will be reasonable. You will easily find a much better wife than I should ever have made you, who will have means to help you on in life instead of being a burden. You have no idea how fretful and discontented I should be if I were poor and worried. I suffer enough at home from seeing how much contrivance is necessary to keep up appearances. Good-by. Do not try to persuade me to change my mind. I have not decided hastily. I only wish I had had courage enough to end it all before you went away; it would have spared us both much worry. You will, perhaps, be angry with me now, but you will soon consider me

"Your true friend,

"GEORGINA NEEDHAM."

He read the letter through twice; his face flushed deeply, and he breathed hard and quickly. Then he laid it down and covered up his face.

deceived me! I can never believe in a woman "O my God!" he cried out, "how she has again."

IV.

GEORGIE NEEDHAM sits in her bedroom at Lurbiton Lodge. When she sent her letter to Michael, she only told him half the truth -she left her mother to tell him in a subsequent letter that his place was already filled by Mr. Richard Wood, "the richest man on the Stock Exchange," and she judged rightly in thinking that Michael Radcliffe would get this second letter before he had made up his mind how to answer her own.

She looks pale and worn-there is none of the glow of a bride-elect on her face. This is the night before the wedding, and tokens of bridal finery are scattered about the

room.

She opens a case on her dressing-table, puts some diamond stars in her hair, and then looks at herself.

"I look like a ghost; I believe I first worried myself with fear that he would write me a letter full of reproaches; and now I am vexed because he only wrote to mammasuch a horrid little note, too!"

She takes a note out of her pocket: "I have received your letter. Will you be kind enough to tell your daughter that I received hers yesterday? I believe I follow

her wishes by leaving it unanswered. I hope she may be happy in her choice.'

"How hateful and unfriendly!" and then,. with strange inconsistency, she cries fitfully, and sobs till the full white throat quivers and throbs with anguish. She kisses the letter between her sobs, and then she twists it up, and holds it in one of the candles till there is only a little bit of scorched and blackened paper. A tap at the door, and Mrs. Needham comes in with a jewel-case in her hand.

Look here, Georgie darling!-My dear child, whatever can you be crying for?—Here is another lovely present from Richard. Put it on, my dear; it is just the thing for you."

She opens the case, and shows a magnificent pearl necklace, with pendants of brilliants.

Georgie turns away with a look of disgust; then, by a strong effort, she forces a smile, and tries on the necklace.

"What

"Beautiful!" cries her mother. exquisite taste Richard has!-Don't sit up, dear," her mother says; "you must look well to-morrow, you know.-Good-night."

Georgie locks the door when her mother leaves her. The necklace seems to gall her; she unclasps it and throws it on the bed, and then walks up and down with her hands clasped behind her. At first her face is wrung with a look of agony, but this fades through many gradations to a sad smile.

"I believe it is only my ignorance," she says, presently. "I believe marrying with every one is a mere question of habit. I shall get used to this man. Most likely if Michael and I had married I should have tired of him after a bit. Nothing in the world frets me so much as want of money, at any rate, and I shall never know that want now, and Richard-it is so hard to call him Richard!-is very kind, and when I get used to him it won't be all so-" Here she throws herself upon a chair, and puts her hands before her eyes, and tries only to think of her jewels and her dress. It seems as if she had succeeded, for both jewels and dress are faultless; yet, when the girl lays her head on her pillow, she sobs as if her heart were breaking.

"It is all too hurried "-the words come in broken gasps. "I ought to have had time to forget If I only had known Mr. Wood first !—0 mother, it is all your fault!"

Carl Schimmel did not go to see his friend again that day.

66

'If the news is good he will seek me; if not, he had better digest it alone. Bad news and a pipe are the best companions," he thinks, stolidly, but he gives a deep sigh, too.

He goes down to the works next morning. The Herr Engineer was indisposed yesterday, he hears-did not come to the works all day. The foreman comes to the Herr Schimmel, and asks if he is going to see the Herr Engineer.

"I can go ;" and Carl turns, half gladly, half unwillingly, to the quaint house at the foot of the hill.

Michael rises from his seat beside the stove. He is very pale, but there is no sign of grief on his face. It seems to Carl that his friend is hard and stern for the first time..

!

They talk on indifferent subjects for some time; but, when Carl gets up to go away, he holds Michael's hand, and gives a long, wistful, questioning look.

Such a bitter smile meets him for answer.

"My fool's paradise is over," says the Englishman. "You were right, my friendexcept that there was no caprice or change she never loved me."

V.

"I feel faint with the heat"-she tries to smile" no wonder I look white. I think it would be cooler in the other room."

She makes an effort to rise, but Mrs. Wood puts a fat hand on her arm and pushes her down into her chair again.

"Quiet, my dear," she says, good-naturedly. "Quite natural you should feel a little flurried at seeing an old sooter, but once over you'll never mind it again. Here he comes, and there are those Thompson girls NEARLY a year and a half since Georgie close behind him, and I do believe they're Needham sobbed herself to sleep. coming to see how you'll manage. You must smile, and shake hands, and be quite friendly, you know; you must, indeed."

Looking at her now, you would fancy tears rare visitors in those handsome, darkgray eyes and that exquisitely-tinted face. There is, perhaps, a look of weariness in the eyelids which was not there a year ago, and there is a permanent haughtiness in the firmly-closed lips which used to be only an occa sional expression-but she is a finer, much handsomer woman. She is dressed faultlessly, although, in her mother-in-law's opinion, "Georgie puts on far too few ornaments by half." All in white, with diamonds in her bright hair, and the splendid pearl necklace with its pendants resting on her beautiful bosom, she looks like a pale empress beside her poppy-cheeked mother-in-law.

Mrs. Wood chatters incessantly, and at some of the loud, personal remarks that escape her, a deep flush comes on the younger woman's cheeks.

"I should say, Georgie my dear, that Sir Benjamin had a good chance of being in the Bench before the year's out. I know all about his affairs; they're quite shaky, and how he can afford to buy pictures and call them crinkum-crankums, is more than I can tell." She lowers her voice a little. "He's a regular beggar on horseback. Spend as much as you please on eating, and drinking, and pleasuring, and dress, of course, and have your 'ouse liberally and totally fitted, bat as to all these decorations, and pictures, and gimcracks, lor, they're quite unnecessary. No sensible people would do it. Why, I hear he gives a thousand pounds and more for a picture."

"I don't agree with you look what amusement and pleasure people find in them."

Georgie looked toward the well-dressed Troups chatting here and there about the pictures, and china, and innumerable objects of art or rare manufacture which store Sir Benjamin Lacy's rooms.

"I don't see it," said Mrs. Wood. "When I go out I like a good dinner or a ball. If I want curiosities to look at I can get 'em for nothing at a museum or picture-gallery, and only think how many good dinners, and fine clothes, and jewels, are locked up in these pictures and the rest.-Good gracious!" her color deepened to purple as she laid her hand on her daughter-in-law's-"I say, Georgie, here's a friend of yours coming this way; that young Radcliffe, you know." She looked sharply at her companion. ness, child, remember who you are, and Richard's wife, too. You've gone that white it's dreadful! Pinch your cheeks, do."

"Good

But Georgie, with a great effort, steadies ber swimming senses.

To Georgie's horror, Mrs. Wood begins to nod and beckon to some one in front of them.

She cannot look up. She feels in a sort of agonized dream, from which there is no escape. A slight bustle rouses her; it is her husband's loud, coarse voice as he comes up and stands beside her.

She feels she must be very careful not to give him any cause for jealousy. Richard Wood is a doting husband, but, with all his lavish fondness, he is as jealous as Bluebeard himself. She knows that if he once discovered she married him only for his money her life would be more unhappy than it is, for, with all her wealth, she is not happy.

She looks up and sees Michael Radcliffe shaking hands with her mother-in-law. "Ah, Mr. Radcliffe, how d'ye do?" she smiles; we did not know you were in Eng

land."

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"I am only just arrived. I hope you are well." Michael speaks as coldly and easily as she does, and then he bows to Georgie and passes on.

It is over; he is gone. Ah, how bandsome he is! and will he never be more to her than

this again? What is the meaning of the sharp agony that tears her heart till she feels ill and faint indeed? But not for long; her husband's voice rouses her.

"Who the devil's that fellow, Georgie? I wish you would introduce your friends to me."

"You see, my dear, it was me who spoke to him," says the good-natured mother-in-law. "I told Georgie a girl should always be friendly to an old sweetheart, for fear of what people may say."

Mr. Richard Wood mutters something about women being confounded fools, and then he asks his wife if she is not ready to go home.

"Home," Georgie says the word over to herself as she drives in her luxurious carriage to the splendid house in Palace Gardens she inhabits-home with these two daily companions of her life.

"He never loved me," she says, bitterly; the tears flow down silently, and she dares not wipe them away, for her husband sits opposite. "He could not have been so self-possessed and smiling had he ever cared for me."

Carl Schimmel has come to England with his friend, and they walk home together after the conversation.

"That was the lady, I suppose?" said

Carl; "she is really very handsome; but, my friend, thou hast had an escape, she is heartless and cold as a stone. She has her rich husband, that is enough for her."

"I am sure you are right," Michael said, simply. "I have had an escape, and I look upon this evening as a great blessing, my friend. Next time I fall in love, if I ever do -which I think is very doubtful-I shall try to be sure whether I am worshiping a real woman or a creation of my own. Work shall be my idol for the future."

Nevertheless Michael Radcliffe did fall in love again; married, and was very happy. And in this way the world is deceived and deceives itself. KATHARINE S. MACQUOID.

THE LATEST ASPECTS OF

ITM

LONGEVITY.

is natural that the season of centennial celebrations which has lately opened should bring to light a good many alleged cases of extreme old age. It adds so much to the interest of commemorations of these notable historic events to have the survivors of them among us that there is a great temptation to exaggerate the length of years of persons who lived near enough to the Revolutionary period to be almost associated with its stirring scenes. As a New York illustrated journal of high respectability has lately (May 1st) given an account of a person who is modestly called "the oldest man in the Union, in all probability," and whose age is said to be about one hundred and fifteen years, there would seem to be a good chance of having our various centennial celebrations dignified by the presence of individuals old enough to remember, if not to have participated in, the opening scenes of the drama of the American Revolution. It would appear, therefore, somewhat singular that at the recent celebrations at Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill, there were no contemporaries of the participants in those contests; for it is reasonable to suppose that, if any were alive, they would have been secured for those occasions. The writer happened to ride in the procession at Concord behind a venerable soldier with a lofty and somewhat grotesque-looking plume in his chapeau, who was by some people supposed to be a relic of the Revolution, and was accordingly pestered with inquiries about the other" embattled farmers" of the period. It turned out, however, that he was only an 1812 man, a survivor of what, though no longer known as "the last war," is still a good way removed from the struggle for independence. In fact, the oldest man whom I saw in the Concord pavilion only claimed to be ninety-four, but, as he did not exhibit any documentary evidence to that effect, and his stout and hearty physique and ruddy complexion were decidedly against it, it is no wonder that, as a disciple of the skeptical Mr. Thoms, I mentally deducted ten or fifteen years from this age.

It is interesting to recall the fact that when Mr. Webster, fifty years ago, delivered his famous oration at the laying of the corner-stone of Bunker Hill Monument, about two hundred

veterans of the Revolution, of whom forty were survivors of the battle, were present with Lafayette, but even then, according to Mr. Frothingham, their emaciated frames, tottering limbs, and trembling voices, told of the ravages which Time had made upon them. Eighteen years later, when the same great orator and statesman, who had addressed them as "venerable men, you have come down to us from a former generation," delivered an oration on the completion of the monument, only thirteen veterans of Concord, Lexington, and Bunker Hill, remained to hear him, and the lapse of forty-two years has left none of them among the living!

his ideas of relationship, as well as of his
age.

own story, been a witness of all the leading
political changes in France since the days of
Louis XVI. That a participant in all these
events should have only just died seems
sufficiently strange, but the additional and
in many respects contradictory accounts of
his adventures, which were telegraphed to
the London papers, make the case still
more curious. These stories represent him
as an African explorer with Levaillant in
1785, and as subsequently having had varied
experiences in Egypt, Italy, Central and
South America, as a soldier, traveler, archæ-
ologist, and engineer. In view of these sen-
sational and contradictory dispatches, it is
interesting to find Mr. Thoms, in the Lon-
don Times of May 6th, disputing the claims
of Count Waldeck, which had been vouched
for by the Paris correspondent of that jour-
nal. It appears that the indefatigable in-
vestigator of centenarianism had often sought
to secure from Count Waldeck proof of his
alleged extreme longevity, but without suc-

Some other recent cases of alleged extreme longevity are worth noticing in connection with the results of modern investigation into the subject. Thus, a cable-dispatch from Paris, April 30th, to the New York papers, announced the death of Baron Jean Frédéric de Waldeck, at the age of one hundred and nine years. Having been born, according to this account, on March 16, 1766, he was, if it is true, nine years old at the outbreak of our Revolutionary War. It is said that he taught Marie Antoinette to play upon the harp, and instructed her in Italian during Before the "oldest man in the Union, in the first years of her sojourn in France. Inall probability," as Harper's Weekly calls its timate, as he told a newspaper correspondent, latest hero of longevity, can establish his with Robespierre, and having Camille Desclaim to the great age of one hundred and moulins for his dearest friend, a staff-officer fifteen, he must present more satisfactory evi- of Kléber in Egypt, and fighting under Nadence in favor of it than has yet appeared.poleon at Austerlitz, he had, according to his In fact, when the journal that champions him with pen and pencil says that "reports differ a little as to Mr. Griffin's precise age," we are prepared for the delightful discrepancy between the statement of his present wife, whom he married about twenty-five years ago, that he is one hundred and three, and the "other evidences and testimony that make him out to be about one hundred and fifteen." What the other evidences and testimony are is not stated, and, in default of documentary proof, it is, of course, too much to assume that he has reached a period which no human being that ever lived is positively proved to have attained, or even that he has rounded the exceptional limit of a century of life. To be sure, this old man is said to recall distinctly the departure of his brothers for the army, to take part in the struggle for independence; but the memory of old people is proverbially | treacherous as to what happened in their early life, and nothing is more common than for them to confound their remembrances of a noted occurrence with the public talk of it long afterward. Thus Henry Jenkins, the man whose name has come down to us as that of the longest-lived individual in modern times, had his story generally credited, and even admitted into the Transactions of the Royal Society of England, on the strength of his statement that he remembered the battle of Flodden Field, which was fought one hundred and fifty-two years before, when he was twelve years old. As Jenkins's claims to this extreme longevity have lately been shown by Mr. Thoms, Professor Owen, and other investigators, to be unfounded, it is supposed that he may have heard the accounts of the battle so often that he finally thought he recollected it instead of them. In the same way the alleged ante-Revolutionary veteran of our own time, if only ninety years of age instead of one hundred and fifteen, may, as he says, have had brothers in the Revolutionary War, and long afterward have heard their stories about its opening scenes, so that in time his remembrance of their accounts of their departure for the battle-field would assume the form of his recollection of seeing them as they went. The chances are, however, that, instead of brothers, he had a father or an uncle in that war, and memory is, supposing him to be an honest man, playing tricks with

cess.

lately occurred, reached the remarkable age of one hundred and eleven years; but, until the evidence in her case has been presented and sifted, she cannot be allowed a place even on the small roll of centenarians, to say nothing of a wholly exceptional position as the oldest individual on record. It is interesting to learn that the venerable deceased was little and lively, and of pure gypsy descent, and that though her sight was not particularly good, she was able to knit twinebags almost to the last; but these facts, if they prove any thing, tend to take off something from the age of a person whose antecedents and vitality near the close of an exceptionally long life favor the idea that she was much younger than she assumed to be.

The cases thus far referred to, of what have been aptly termed ultra-centenarians, must be decided, in the absence of that positive, convincing evidence which none of them exhibit, on the strength of the latest results of scientific research, which fix the extreme limit of human life at one hundred and five years. It is obvious that the records of insurance-offices afford no unimportant evidence of the extreme duration of existence among men and women. The position of the insured as regards health and the chances of life, based not only upon the acceptance of the risk by the companies, but upon the care and forethought and presumably comfortable pecuniary condition of the applicant, illustrates a state of things very favorable to longevity. And yet, among the thousands of persons who have been insured in England, there has been, according to the report of the registrar-general, but a single case of centenarianism-that of Jacob William Luning, who died in 1870, at the age of one hundred and three years. It is obvious that the age given by an applicant for insurance is not likely to be overstated, as this would be against his interest, but the ordinary claimant to centenarianism has an object in the increased consideration likely to accrue to him, and, if he is one of the mendicant fraternity, this extreme longevity is a strong appeal to the sympathies of the charitable. Quaint old Thomas Fuller illustrated the pro

The impression produced by the old man upon a friend of Mr. Thoms's, who called upon the count for the purpose of testing his age, was one of unreality and exaggeration. It appears that the contradictory statements in the obituary dispatches to the New York and London papers as to the incidents of his life had been exhibited in previous reports-verbial tendency of persons of advanced years a fact which unsettles confidence in any of them. That the old gentleman was largely indebted to his imagination for his age is the opinion of Mr. Thoms, the conclusion of whose letter to the Times puts the case on its true basis: "When I add that in returning thanks to his friends for drinking his health on his birthday in 1874, he concluded with this startling announcement - Mon grand-père a vécu jusqu'à 162 ans ; et je suis le 21me centenaire de ma famille' your readers will probably share my feeling that the one hundred and nine years of Count Waldeck cannot be admitted as proved until evidence has been produced as exceptionally strong, clear, and irrefragable, as the age claimed is exceptionally extreme."

The same may be said of the claims of Elizabeth Leatherland, which Sir G. Duncan Gibb has recently brought to the attention of the English medical journals. Sir George is said to be confident that this person, whose death has

to add to them when he said, "Many old men set the clock of their age forward when past seventy." As confirming the experience of the English insurance-offices in regard to centenarianism, that of the National - Debt Office, which records only two authenticated cases between 1790 and 1872, is important. In this country, there have been a number of well-established instances of persons living beyond a century, but they are few, indeed, as compared with those which rest on insufficient evidence. Four graduates of Harvard College have been centenarians, and if we accept the statement in the report of the Health Department of New York City, for 1873, ninety-one persons had, during the previous ten years, died there at or beyond a hundred years of age. In these cases, as reported, however, the absence of any evidence of such extreme longevity, except that furnished by the assertion of the individual, the belief of his friends or attending physician,

deprives them of the authenticity which indubitable documentary proof alone can furnish. The fact that most of these centenarians are Irish or colored widows throws great doubt upon the legitimacy of their claims, for in their position the means of verifying them would naturally be inadequate. One of these persons, a woman of color, called Mary Ann Bastine, who died ten years ago at the alleged age of one hundred and eighteen, which would make her twenty-eight years older than the republic, is said to have been born and passed all her life in New York. In her case, at least, the registry of her birth or baptism, in connection with other facts of record, would throw some light on the question of her age, but, in default of such evidence, the extreme longevity claimed for her cannot be accepted.

In reference to the difficulty of authenticating the cases of alleged centenarianism just mentioned among Irish and colored widows, the remarks of the English registrar-general seem appropriate. After mentioning the fact that two-thirds of the centenarians returned by the census are women, he adds that "several of them in England are natives of parishes in Ireland or Scotland where no efficient system of registration exists; few of them reside in the parishes where they were born and have been known from youth; many of the old people are paupers, and probably illiterate-so that it would no doubt be difficult to obtain the documentary evidence which can alone be accepted as conclusive proof of such extraordinary ages." It may be remarked here that the statements of age in the reports of the English registrargeneral, which are often quoted as decisive evidence of the claims of centenarians therein mentioned, do not pretend to be the results of official verification, but are merely given, like other particulars, from information of relatives or other persons, regarding the death. From this it is easy to see that the average of seventy-eight deaths of centenarians a year, from 1861 to 1871, in England, as deduced from the registry, is of no value in settling the vexed question of longevity. Whenever the department is able to investigate any exceptional case of this kind, the report is made in "The Weekly Return," and it is very seldom that the result bears out the claims of centenarianism. Even documentary evidence, as Mr. Thoms shows in his interesting treatise, cannot be relied upon until it has been thoroughly sifted. Parish registers are often misleading in such matters, from the danger of confounding the supposed centenarian with another person of the same name, especially when belonging to the same family, it being not uncommon for parents to give one name to successive children when one or more have died young. As the persons present at the baptism of an individual of such advanced age are usually all dead, there is need of great care in examining the secondary and circumstantial evidence which is put forward to establish his identity. That inscriptions on tombstones are often as untrustworthy in regard to the age as they proverbially are to the characters of those who lie beneath them has been abundantly proved in many cases of alleged centenarianism. The way in which

credence is given to such cases is well illustrated by the examples of the three typical representatives of extreme longevity in modern times the Countess of Desmond, Henry Jenkins, and Thomas Parr.

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The old countess's claim to one hundred and sixty-two or one hundred and sixty-three years was based on Horace Walpole's mistaken identification of her with another member of the family, and the statement that she had danced with Richard III., while perhaps justifying Tom Moore's reference to her as "that frisky old girl," was assumed by Walpole on mere oral tradition. As the Quarterly and Dublin Reviews and Mr. Thoms have completely annihilated the claims of the countess to extreme longevity, there is no need of dwelling upon them here. Henry Jenkins was also born before the days of parish registers, and, being a professional beggar, his own story of his age, which is the mainstay of the long-current belief that he was one hundred and sixty-nine years old, is not credible. His alleged recollection of Flodden Field, which was fought one hundred and fifty-two years before, was, as we have said, admitting his honesty, only a recollection of the public talk of it long afterward. That his integrity in such matters was not above reproach was shown by the reproof be got from the judge for swearing to a circumstance that occurred one hundred and twenty years before. Considerable stress has been laid upon the testimony of "divers ancient witnesses" that Jenkins was a very old man when they first knew him, but, as their own age at that time is not mentioned, his cannot be reasonably supposed to be wholly exceptional on such evidence. It is highly probable that both Jenkins and Parr were centenarians, and possible that they had reached one hundred and two or one hundred and three years of age. The only reason for crediting Thomas Parr with one hundred and fifty-two years of life is the statement of the eminent physiologist who dissected him; but, as Harvey merely reported what was stated by others, and made no personal investigation into the matter, Professor Owen agrees with Mr. Thoms that there is no authentic evidence on scientifically acceptable ground of Parr's precise age.

As for the claims of the festive old soldier who has been dined and wined in New York for several years past on the strength of his having been born in 1766, and who on this theory is now one hundred and nine years old, a critical examination of his claims by the light of the British Army List shows that Lieutenant Lahrbusch (for he never was a captain) is more likely, as Mr. Thoms concludes, to be eighty-nine than one hundred and nine. Cashiered in 1818, when he was, if born in 1766, fifty-two years of age, for what he afterward pleaded were "youthful errors," after nine instead of his alleged twenty-nine years of service, a deduction of twenty years from his assumed longevity may reasonably be made, even at the risk of spoiling the fine stories about his serving with the Duke of York in the Low Countries in 1793, with Lord Cornwallis in Ireland in 1798, with Nelson at Copenhagen in 1801, and witnessing the interview between

Napoleon and Alexander which led to the Peace of Tilsit in 1807.

Professor Owen has shown that the age of the patriarchs, as given in the literal version of the first chapter of Genesis, is inconsistent with physiological laws regulating the length of human life, which bears, as with other animals, a certain proportion to the period of growth, and is inexorably limited in a state of nature by the progressive hardening of the tissues and the gradual destruction of the teeth. A sound Biblical criticism is not opposed to these views, which harmonize with the expressions of the Hebrew Psalmist in regard to the longevity of man. But, although human existence is seldom prolonged to a century, the improvements effected by modern civilization have so increased its average term that there seems no reason why, in time, a hundred years, declared by Flourens and Buffon to be the natural, may not become the actual limit of life with the majority of men and women. Dr. Gardner,

the author of a recent English work on longevity, fixes the beginning of old age at sixtyfive, and, as all pathologists agree that most persons who live to eighty, or ninety, or longer, die from preventable or curable diseases, the advance of sanitary science and of general intelligence and comfort is likely to make the approximation to one hundred years of life more and more common. Whatever promotes the harmonious development of humanity in its varied functions, both of body and mind, is conducive to long life. It is in this way that matrimony is favorable to longevity, whether we regard the former as the cause, or, as Herbert Spencer, in his recent ingenious "Study of Sociology," maintains, as the effect of the latter, the instinct tending to marriage, and the ability to meet its responsibilities, determining, in his view, whether life shall be long or short. Hereditary influences also strongly affect this question, and Dr. Nathan Allen, a high authority, thinks it doubtful whether any individuals have reached a very great age without having had immediate or remote ancestors who have also been very long-lived. The inherited tendency to longevity, he adds, is strongest where the family is large and all its members reach a great age. Some striking illustrations of this are furnished by causes occurring in Massachusetts, the most notable being in his own family in the town of Barre, the average age of the ten children of Nehemiah Allen-four sons and six daughters-reaching eighty-eight years, eight months, and twenty days, which the doctor considers unexampled in the whole history of New England. Although centenarianism is more common among the poor than the rich, yet this is not because of the condition of the former being more favorable to longevity than that of the latter, as the fact is the other way, but in consequence of their greater numbers. Curiously enough, however, neither Sir G. Cornewall Lewis nor Mr. Thoms has found any well-authenticated instances of centenarianism in the British peerage. Still, Palmerston dying at eighty-one, Brougham at eightynine, Campbell at eighty-three, St. Leonard at ninety-four, and Earl Russell still active in mind at eighty-three, make a very good show

ing for the lords, though democracy can surpass them with John Adams living till ninety, Jefferson till eighty-three, Josiah Quincy dying at ninety-two, and Horace Binney alive to-day at ninety-five. All these cases prove also that intellectual activity of a high order is favorable to longevity, which in general may be said to depend upon the healthy, equable development of the bodily and mental powers.

ALEXANDER YOUNG.

THE STRANGEST THINGS IN LIFE.

Ο

NE breathless afternoon in August, 1874, as I was lounging under an ancient maple that overhangs a river, and wondering why the world could not come to an end before my funds gave out, which were just then running low, a letter was put into my hands. It read as follows:

"MUNSTER, NEAR STREATOR, }

ILLINOIS, August 25, 1874.

verse of which was a three-column article, by Mr. Syphers, under the startling caption, "Give the Devil his Due," concluding with the following resolution in due and proper form:

"In consideration, then, of his great services to our race, and for his many inventions and discoveries, I move that steps be immediately taken toward rearing for him a monument- -an alabaster shaft of famewhose lofty height shall pierce the stormy clouds and lift its towering head to heaven, bearing in golden capitals this inscription:

"SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF
THE DEVIL,

WHOSE DEEDS, WHOSE GLORIOUS DEEDS, HAVE RENDERED HIS NAME IMMORTAL."

I ran over the article amusedly, then over the letter again, with its obviously satirical intention, and its vague cant about substance and element-two words very familiar to those who have studied the literature of spiritualism, and invested with a mystic significance by philosophizers as to the nature of so-called spiritual phenomena. Finally, I "BROTHER FAIRFIELD: I just now read put the missive in my pocket, and went on your article in the Springfield Republican in with my day-dream, piecing together odds reference to spiritualism. You set out to and ends of supernatural tales, until one of hunt for one thing, and actually stumbled the strange aphorisms of Novalis intruded upon another thing, of vastly more imporinto my reveries. It was this, which most tance than the thing for which you were huntreaders of German literature will remember ing. Good! Accidents will happen in the in the original: "The soul is the most acbest of families. You don't say whether tive of all poisons; it is the most penetrating you found a psychological basis for inspira- and diffusible of stimulants." And this, by tion or not, but I presume you did. I am an one of those singular sequences that could honest investigator of spiritualism, and now only occur on a summer afternoon, under an I wish to inquire if your unconscious-cerebraancient maple, with a river purling in one's tion and nervous-lesion theory will cover all ear, recalled the death of poor Pabodie, Wilthe ground and explain all spiritual phenom-liam J. Pabodie the poet, who is represented I will give you a case that occurred in my own house-not a phantom case, but a real one. It was in the dead of winter, in a country-house, more than twenty-five miles from any city or hot-house where plants and flowers might be growing. A circle was held one evening, and, among other phenomena upon the table, fresh, dewy, and odoriferous flowers-a large bouquet of them-suddenly formed where an instant previous there had been nothing. They were certainly not placed there by any visible hand, but a shining vapor at the same point preceded them for an instant. Now, where did they come from? The flowers remained on the table for some days, until they withered away and were picked to pieces by me. The spirits said they created them then and there from substance and element that they drew from Nature. Did they lie, or were they only phantom flowers incubated according to your theory? Will you please answer?

ena.

If you

can solve this case, I have others still more difficult which I would like to bring to your consideration. If you have struck bottom or found the key that unlocks this great modern mystery, you have done well even if you were not hunting for it when you found it. Inclosed find the devil's due-bill, which I take the liberty of presenting.

"Yours for progress,
"JOHN SYPHERS."

This was written on a large folio of paper rather more than a foot square, on the re

in Griswold's collection. He was the friend of Edgar A. Poe, and had, fear, caught something of the mad spirit of his friend. He died by his own hand in November, 1870. Unfortunately addicted to the opium-habit, and having a feeble will," writes a medical gentleman to me, who attended him in his last illness," he was unable to overcome his longing for the drug. I tried my best to aid him, but failed, and so from being by nature cowardly, and shrinking from the grim freebooter, he finally took with a gentle smile the cup of death, and died thanking the god of healing who had cured him of the disease of life. On reflecting upon his case and many others I have known," continues his medical adviser, in the same letter, "I discern the abstract truth of the fancy of Novalis-' Inoculation with death, also, will not be wanting in some future universal therapia.""

Ah, the few souls that have this strange sympathy with death and ghostliness, whom science styles of insane temperament, but who style themselves the sanest of the sane! They are poets generally, with flashes about them of new senses-particularly, of an inward sense that never comes to saner and more accurately-balanced organizations, and which to them is

"Like an Eolian harp that wakes
No certain air, but overtakes
Far thought with music that it makes,
As in the deepest trances men
Forget the dream that happens then,
Until they fall in trance again."

There are strange things in life. They pass mostly as coincidences. But the other. night, in an up-town residence, died a man whose life had been passed in Wall Street, in the business of a broker. At a few minutes past eleven o'clock, as the man's eyes were dimming with the last sight of earth, he asked an attendant to repeat the familiar hymn commencing

.

"Jesus, lover of my soul,

Let me to thy bosom fly." Nothing very singular about this request from a man whose eyes were glazing. But, at that exact hour and minute, a lady living squares away waked up from a dream, in which she had seemed to be standing by the death bed of this man, and he had requested her to sing that hymn to him. By what strange agency the wish of the dying man was transmitted to a sleeping acquaintance, squares distant, and reflected as a dream, is one of those problems that must engage scientific attention one of these days, when the mystery of life has yielded up so many of its more material facts that interest in that important direction has waned a little. At present, occurrences of this type are regarded as startling coincidences, but not as inductive evidence of the existence of a region not yet explored by science-a region of dreams and spectres and morbid imaginings, in the main, but one that occasionally yields strange and inexplicable facts.

My own correspondence furnishes a curious portfolio of such psychological data, some of them transcending the wildest creations of the professional romancer.

The wife of a well-known physician, resident in one of the larger cities of Illinois, sends me a curious transcript of the dreamexperiences of her husband. I will permit her to tell the story in her own way:

Throughout a large obstetrical practice, covering a period of ten or twelve years, my husband has," says she, "been able before leaving home to foretell with unerring certainty the sex of any infant he has been called upon to usher into the world during a series of cases numbering hundreds. The birth of a boy is invariably preceded by the dream of seeing a man shot; while that of a girl is not preceded by any particular dream. The phenomenon has probably attended his whole medical career, but at first it was naturally regarded as a mere coincidence, and it has only fixed itself in his mind by constant repetition. I recall an event that took place fifteen years ago, before the dream had yet impressed him with the force of a revelation. He dreamed one night of hearing the report of a gun and seeing a man fall, and, on examination, he found two men dead on the grass. He was awakened to visit a lady residing in the country, some miles distant. On the way thither he recounted to the messenger-the husband of his patient, by-the-way-the details of the dream from which he had just been awakened. The man remarked that he had a similar dream before he was called up and sent for the doctor. The latter had dreamed that he had gone out gunning and shot a young deer, and that, on arriving at the spot where the animal had fallen, he found there were two of them. The lady be

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