“BACK TO METHUSELAH”

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 475, 3 October 1928, Page 8

“BACK TO METHUSELAH”

rOSE oldsters who delight to boast of having witnessed the wedding of William IV. and Queen Adelaide must give reluctant pride of place to the hardy old Turk, Zaro Agha, who, at 155 years of age, has selected his twelfth wife and who spent a recent gift of £-200 in divorcing his eleventh. The new wife is a mere flapper of 40—115 years younger than her husband. Zaro has never touched liquor in his life, and would provide an excellent advertisement for the benefits of temperance were it not for the record of Charles Macklin, an English actor, who drank buckets of porter, ale, and sweetened white wine, and died at the age of 107. Of course it may be argued that had he not touched liqour he might have lived to be 150. At all events, at the age of 100, he toddled on the stage in an attempt to play Shylock, and succeeded in getting through the first act without a mishap, although all his lines were forgotten when the curtain went up for the second. England has possessed many willing fighters for the longevity record. Each of them has prescribed a different set of rules for similar success. Contentedness appears to be as good a rule as any given. There was old Thomas Parr, of Shropshire, for instance, who was a happy bachelor as a lad of 80, and then married his first wife, with whom he lived for 32 years. Eight years after her death he married again, and when he died, heavy with 152 years, he was buried in Westminster Abbey. After a performance of that kind there would be few to deny him the privilege. A grandson set out to beat Parr’s record, but gave up the attempt at the early age of 124. There have been long-distance records in widowhood, too. It is written that Agnes Skuner, who lived to be 119, survived her husband by 92 years, while one widowed Countess of Desmond, who, chroniclers say, “did dentire [produce teeth] two or three times,” saw seven score years pass over her head. But Zaro has beaten all records (including those of widowerhood), and, with a century and a-half to his credit, looks forward to reaching his 200th birthday. Most of us, in these days of stress, scarcely expect to attain half his tally of years.