ACTIVE OLD ACE,

Taranaki Herald, Volume LIV, Issue 13575, 5 December 1907, Page 8

ACTIVE OLD ACE,

SOME MARVELS IN ENGLAND. Sdme remarkable cases of active old age are reported by the London papers. An Oxfordshire man, who was formerly a shepherd, is now in his 103 rd year. Ho is able to shave himself twice a week, and rarely misses church on Sunday. He boasts that until recently he was .never in the hands of a doctor. Miss Marianne Henslgy, of Bath, celebrated her 102 nd birthday the other day, by writing fifty-two letters in reply to birthday congratulations. Mr William Callow, an artist of great reputation, now in his 95th year, recently held an exhibition of his pictures at*the Leicester, Galleries. Tho exhibits covered a range of fifty-eight years, but Mr Callow's working career is longer than that. It is difficult to realise that it was he of whom Thackeray wrote in 1839, "Anew painter, somewhat in the style of Harding, is Mr Callow, and better, I think, than his master original, whose colours are too gaudy to my taste, and effects too glaringly theatrical." Through more than six decades Mr Callow worked in the tradition of the old school, and is now tho only link that connects present-day art with those past days. But most astonishing of all is the record of the Rev. Thomas Lord, who on October 13th preached his 73rd anniversary sermon in Horncastle Congregational Church. Mr Lord is 99, yet he preached for half an hour, and his fine voice is described as ringing with wonderful resonance through the church. He started life as a shoemaker, and made his first notes for a sermon on a piece of leather, which he took into the pulpit. It is nearly thirty years since he retired from the active formal work of a minister, but since then he has been no less hard-working, and has brought his total of sermons up to 5000. He walks two miles every day, and his greatest weakness seems to be his sight, which does not allow him to read. At the bottom of the list comes Eliza Burgess, aged 88, who pleaded guilty to stealing a purse at Leicester. Eliza had been engaged in crhne for forty years, and was already engaged to serve the remainder of a sentence, amounting to two years. Under the circumstances the Recorder passed a nominal sentence, and Eliza expressed the wish that he might live long and die happy.