SLEPT IN A THOUSAND BEDS.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 6, Issue 239, 5 January 1917, Page 4 (Supplement)

SLEPT IN A THOUSAND BEDS.

SOME REMARKABLE CLAIMS

- I've slept in over a thousand different beds in my time!"

As the speaker was a commercial, (-ays thu Sheffield Weekly Telegraph) and* had been on the road tor over thirty years, his boast may not lw very wonderful after all.

But contrast it with the case of a man who claims that he has slept on the same iron bedstead for over seventy years, without missing a single night. He ha» never been away from homo even for a single day's holiday The cottage which lie 'lives in has been in the? occupation of the family for over a hundred years. The grandfather's clock which stands in one corner has been there for over a century, and the old man declares that he has wound it up regularly himself for the last fiftv yearn. AVoman in the Midlands Is proud of tire fact that there is a stretch of more than a hundred years between the bit til of her father and the birth of her son, it must be something of a record to have had a blood relative of the first degree in England's three principal wars of the present century and la*t. WORKED FOR A HUNDRED EMPLOYERS. There are several records of men who have been in the service of one family or firm for over sixty years, but contrast tin: with the case of a man. still in his prime, who boasts that he has worked for more than a hundred employers, and has had a score of distinct and separate occupations. He has been soldier, s.iilor, policeman, task-master at a workhouse, lumberman in Canada, sheep-drovcr m Australia, been a gold-miner, a porter at an hotel, an insurance agent, and about a dozen other occupations.

How many letters do you receive in a year? Between fifty and a hundred, probably, if you are an average sort .if individual. An acquaintance of the writer's, however. who is well over sixty, boasts that he lias never received a letter in his life. Neither has he ever written a letter. that is, for himself, but when he was a young man he did a considerable amount of letter writing for neighbours v.h owished to correspond with their relatives and friends, but had not sufficient confidence in their own ■composition to tackle the job themselves. Let ters remind one of postmen. We often see paragraphs relating to the distance which postmen have walked during a good number of years in their capacity as letter carriers, but wo are rarely informed of how many letters they have delivered.

A postman of thirty years' service, however, boasts that he must have delivered something like three millions in his time. Reckoning three hundred a daY, that number would be about icached.

ATE TWO TONS OF EGGS

There i« a man who boasts that for fifty years he has never missed his two eggs for breakfast. He has eaten some thirty-six thousand in all, weighing about two tons, which works out at about thirty times his own averdupois, and which must have cost liim about £'2so in all. There is a schoolmaster who l>oasts that he bin taught three generations of one famiiv —that is, grandfather, son, and grandson. When the school-master was a, teacher at sixteen, the grandfather wsa a lad of eight years. The latter had a son liefore he was nineteen, and this son in turn was taught by the present schoolmaster. The son married when he was eighteen, and his ekkst lad is now at schoa! with the se.liolmaster who taught his grandfather.

Si>eaking of marriage, there is a man who boasts that hj» took a second wife after himself having boen a widower for over half a century. He married the*ftrst time when he was sixteen, and as his young wife died when he was only eighteen, he cwas 'but sixty-eight on his second venture. He has a son over fifty, however, who is himself a There are various records of numerous descendants possessed by living men and women. But as a variation to this there is a man who claims to have twenty-seven aunts and twentyyeven uncles, besides upwarsd of eighty couisns. His. mother was one of a family of fifteen, nnd his father one of a family of fourteen, all of whom married.