A Very Old Bachelor.

Evening Star, Issue 7411, 5 January 1888, Page 3

A Very Old Bachelor.

ThD oldest man in New England has recently died, at the very respectable age of 120 years. This venerable personage was, like iUmost all centenarians, with the exception of the evergreen Chcvrcul, a standing contradiction to several generally accepted conditions of longevity, as well as of at least one doctrinaire notion, the truth of which is not established at all. We regret to say that from the age of ten he chewed tobacco, and continued to chew it for the remaining 110 years of his existence. Likewise, he suffered, sixty years ago, frotn a variety of physical ailments, and ought, by every rule, to have died at least half a century back. But the distinguishing feature ef his long career is his perpetual celibacy. It would certainly appear to be reasonable that a man who follows the natural law concerning tho increase and multiplication of the species should be, as the Stoics would have said, more "in accordance with nature" than one who does not, and should therefore have the better right to expect nature to deal tenderly with his old age. But this

particular centenarian not only never married, but even declared that he never felt the slightest wish to do so. Indeed, he was never in love except on one solitary occasion, and that was in his teens. Inasmuch as it is extremely improbable that an affection conceived at such an early age should have remained engraven on his heart for upwards of a century, oce is compelled to regard him as a hardened misogynist. He simply sat and chewed tobacco, and possibly did little sums in arithmetic about the number of great-great-grandchildren he might have had if he had married that sweetheart with whom he was in love just about the time of the Declaration of American Independence.