PRAYING FOR DEATH

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21332, 5 November 1932, Page 2 (Supplement)

PRAYING FOR DEATH

MAN OF A HUNDRED "TWENTY YEARS TOO OLD" Samuel Claire, of Northampton should have d : ed 20 years ago. Every night he prays: " Will the Lord be pleased to take me before morning." lie is 100 years old, and says he is ashamed of it. "What is there to live for after eighty ? " he said on September 4. when a visitor called with birthday congratulations. "Eighty is the age when all. men should die to give the young a chance and to spare other peoplo from nursing you." Not that be needs any nursing. He still climbs a stile to the spinney near his cottage at Kingscliffe to saw wood for his lire, lie stall shaves himself with an open razor. " There is no happiness in being 100," he said. " One is only an object of wonderment." Mr. Claire, who has never been to a cinema, says ho believes that education has spoiled the country. Ho prefers the old days, when his father brought up eleven children on ]3s a week, lie points proudly to the example of the late Henry Labouchere, who resigned his parliamentary seat at Northampton with the words: "I think that after 70 every man lags superfluous on the stage of life, am! impedes tho promotion and happiness ot younger people."