SIR CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVII, Issue 23, 8 June 1899, Page 27

SIR CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY.

THE SECRET OF A LONG LIFE

In a recent issue of the Windsor Magazine Sir Charles Gavan Duffy' among other veterans, lets the public into the secret of how he has managed to live so long. Sir Charles is now 83 years. The Windsor also gives portraits of the veterans, but according to the Aunt rali an the one supposed to represent the veteran of the Repeal movement is that of his son Mr. John Gavan Duffy, Postmaster General of Victoria. The magazine has evidently been the victim of a mistake or a joke. Here is what Sir Charles Gavan Duffy sayß of himself • —

■ I attribute my prolonged life to a careful and systematic method of living. In boyhood and youth I suffered habitually from dyspepsia, and in early manhood I was so engrossed in political work that I gave no attention to the state of my health. At about ray 3Gth year a great change came. I read in Addison's Spectator a paper on Louis Cornaro. Addison describes Cornaro as an Italian gentleman of undoubted credit, who lived to be a hundred years of are by strict and habitual moderation in eating and drinking. I studied his little book with great satisfaction. From that time I rarely or never ate to fulness or drank to elevation. I have also avoided, as far as was compatible with the business of life, studying or sitting up past midnight, or in later years past l> o'clock, and I have always be^n an early riser. I have lived as much as possible in the open air, and have read for instruction or amusement, but still more for necessary rest and relaxation, some hours every day. I have never suffered trorn rheumatism, gout, sciatica, or any other torturing malady, and this immunity is, I think, attributable to my mode of life.

' You ask if life, after 60 years and 10, is a burden. I have not found it so. The most tranquil and serene period of my life was ! from my 64th to my 7 2 ad year, and so it would have continued, T j think, to this day, but that two great misfortunes befell me. I lost I my beloved wife, and my sight — which was not more precious to me ! than my wife — became seriously impaired. But, notwithstanding, I i have since written two or three books, the eyesight of my daughters supplying what failed me. Ido not consult a doctor on an average more than once a year, and altogether refrained from taking medicine till after my 80th year, when some of the processes of nature became lethargic, and needed occasional assittance.'