ACTIVE OLD AGE.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8994, 3 December 1907, Page 3

ACTIVE OLD AGE.

Some 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. He 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 Hensley, of Bath, celebrated her 102 nd birthday th 3 other day, iy writing 52 letters in reply to Dirthday congratulations. Mr William Callow, an artist of great reputation, now in his 95th year, recently held an exhi , bition of his pictures at the Leicester Galleries. The exhibits covered a range of 58 years, but Mr Callow's | - ( working career is longer than that. It is difficult to realise that it was he whom Thackeray wrote in 1839, "A new painter, somewhat in the style of Harding, is Mr Callow, and better, I think, than his master origi- ' nal, 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 the only link that connects presentday 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 sez'mon 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. since then he has been no less hardworking, and has brought his total of sermons up to 5,000. He walks two miles every day, and his greatest weakness seems to be his sight, which .does not allow him to tend. At the bottom of the list cornes Eliza Burgess, aged 88, who pleaded guilty to stealing a purse at Leicester. Eliza had been engaged in crime for 40 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.