Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 October 1884 — LONGEVITY AND LABOR. [ARTICLE]

LONGEVITY AND LABOR.

Work Prrservrs the Health, IndtoneM Weakeitolti Ericsson, ths veteran inventor, waa 80 years old yesterday. He is in excel* lent health, and works,,it ia said, sixteen hours a day, thus proving an exception to the general rule that old men are incapable of gr< at exertion. But perhaps t:hs general rule, _ like many others that are received without question, is a lallacy. Perhaps it might be fairly asserted that busy men live longer than idle men; that work is, alter all, the true elixir of life. Many noteworthy instances where longevity coincides with-remarkable mental activity will easily occur to the reader. Wasi not Sophocles more than 90 when, to prove that he was not in his dotage—as his hen claimed, in order to get his money—he wrote <?ne of his greatest tragedies? Did not Humboldt do more work at four score than many bright men at 40? Goethe, as everyone knows, died with pen in hand at the age of 82. Von Banke, the foremost ot living historians, has just published another volume of his Universal History; he will be 89years old next Dcveiuber. Carlyle and Emerson lo a t none of their vigor until they reached three score years and ten. And, to day, who imagines that Oliver Wendell Holmes, already on the verge of 7.”', is old? Longfellow did some of his 1 ost work shortly before his death, at 75. and Whittier is now two years older than that. The vast energies, whose sum in many directions are known as Victor Hugo, shows no signs of decreptitude, although it is more than eighty-two years since Victor Hugo was born. Historians, it may be remarked, have usually been long-lived. Voltaire died at 84, Thierry and Michelet at 76; Mignet sand Guizot at 87, Ge<irge Bancroft is now 84, and George Tichnor lived to be 80. In public life we have had several recent examples of great men whose power for statesmanship did not diminish through age. Gladstone is nearly 75, Palmerston was Prime Minister at the time of his death, two days before he had completed his 81st year. Benjamin Franklin , in the last century, lived to bo 84. ’’

These instances suffice to show that tTjefe“afe~cdiistltutions which not only can bear, but which actually need the stimulus of hard work up to a very advanced period. Of course, on the other hand, might be cited the remarkable men who died yopng, but even from their experience the fact might be brought out, not that they were killed by overwork, but by irrational work. Usually, as in the case of Keats, early death is the result of chronic disease. Shelley, who is always mentioned among those whose life stretched but a span, was drowned accidentally, and tnere is good reason to be/leve that but for this he would have lived to old age, because he was physically str mg. Raphael, Mozart, Byron, Burns, and Schfibert succumbed just at the age when most men reach their prime, but it must not be forgotten that the last three undermined their health by excesses. Shakespeare, Napoleon, Cuesarf and recognized as the unrivalled giants in their respective departments, died between 50 and 60. But ou the other hand Michael Angelo, than whom no man ever expended more energy on his vast achievements, lived to evident, therefore, that while no strict law can be established, there is a relation between longevity and labor. Work preserves Ihe health while idleness tends to weaken it— Philailelphia Bulletin.