MAN MAY LIVE TO 120.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 162, 10 July 1926, Page 36

MAN MAY LIVE TO 120.

HOW IT IS TO BE DONE.

1 Sir Bobert Baden-Powell, who is in> his 70th year, writes in the "Daily Express" that people contrive to live to the age of over 100 years if they make up their minde to it. He says that eight veterans who marched out of Moscow in 1812, when Napoleon fled for safety, were alive in 1912. To live to such an age the great scout leader says that the first step for the man who want* to be frisky at eighty is to make up his mind that he is going to work on for thirty or forty years beyond it. Work . . . that is the secret for keeping young. The fellow who does not work and does not like work is bound to become a vegetable, and to fade early away. Work, so far from killing any man, is the elixir of life. "But there are numerous further ingrediente necessary to the makeup of a centenarian. If a man takes life seriously he soon sees the end of it. Of course no man will admit that he 'has no sense of humour, but the early deaths of many tend to prove that they lacked it nevertheless. J "A healthy stomach is naturally an important aid, but so is the ability to make yourself emile and whistle when things all go wrong. Do not go hankering round for things you do not possess. The richest man is the one with the fewest wants. "Keep out of clubs and away from cr6niea of your own age whose talk is of the great deeds they have done and the ailments from which they are suffering. Pretending to be young when your joints will not bear you out is no good and only expoees you to ridicule. You must have the young heart and spirit. Doctors will prescribe early rising, plain food, moderate exercise and all that kind of thing, tout give mc laughter and plenty of it. But, best of all—and that is where you catch the laughter through infection —is work among boys. There you cannot grow old. In the Boy Scout movement we had a rule that a. man might be a scout master at any age "•■»tween 18 and 81. Recently we have had to extend this age limit, since we have some young and lively sparks over that age. Yes, really active and capable. Lord Meath, for example, went through our school of training lately, living under canvas, cooking his own food, and doing night as well as day work in the open, in the ordinary shorts and* shirt of a scout. So the secret of youth aeems to be this: Join the Boy Scouts (as hobby teacher, playman, councillor, secretary, scout master, or what you will), and you wijl not only be doing youreelf good but you will find yourself involved in a work as satisfying as any that can fall to the lot of man—that of building up a new and better citizenhood for your country, a work which old Socrates, with prophetic foresight, described when he said, "No man goeth about a more godly business than he that careth for the right upbringing of his own and other men'e children."