THE LONGER LIFE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19219, 9 July 1924, Page 4

THE LONGER LIFE.

(By Cicely Hamilton, in the Daily Chronicle.) The world, so our numerous pessimists declare, is a poor sort of place to abide in; .all the same, statistics assure us that the average baby now makes up its mind to livo 12 years longer than its grandfather. Further, the present activity in the monkey trade would seem to indicate that large numbers of our adult fellow-citizens are not of one mind with the pessimist, and see life as a fairly cheerful business. The trade in monkeys—monkeys with glands—is flourishing, and more than flourishing; so much so, that Trench officials in tho African interior are said to bo resigning their departmental posts m order to make fortunes by tho export of tlie local gorilla. —The Local Gorilla.— As a paying proposition the local gorilla is worth many years in the service of tire great French nation; the glands of tho beast are so much in demand for rejuvenating purposes that his value in the market has gone up with a rush, and a first-class specimen now fetches a good thousand pounds. The rise in the price of the gorilla and his glands is credible evidence of ilia existence of a large class of elderly persons who have not found life too unpleasant to bo borne, who have not been disillusioned by bitter experience and crushed beneath the weight of the years. On tho contrary, their experience has been kindly, on the whole, and their shoulders broad enough to carry the weight of their worries; they can lock back on life and declare: “It was good—let me have it all over again ! ” Optimistic elderly persons who are ready to face all the risks of an uncertain future Bolshevism, income tax, wars, and influenzal' —so they can hut recover the years that were past and continue to wake with the morning. The world that is despised and abused by the pessimist they find a desirable place to inhabit, a world they would not willingly part from. —The Will to Live.— If the will to livo in the race be, but strong enough—and tho supply of gorillas large enough—it may be that wo shall soon add a new element to the life of the community—the old-young man and the old-young woman who combine, in their own persons, the experience of age with tho vigour and alertness of youth. Developed human beings who will look hack upon ns as half-baked creatureslittle more than children—and will begin to live, in the full sense of the word, at an age when their forefatliers were losing their faculties and lapsing into senile decay. The race, in short, that Shaw has foreshadowed in his drama of the New Methuselah. Be that as it may, it is a comforting thought for the year to come —a comforting thought to all save gorillas—{bat the will to live is strong in the race, in th-; new-born as well as the old. It suggests that our vigour is not yet exhausted; that, 'ar from being eifete and outworn, we are capable of sticking the troubles of existence for many years longer than our forbears.