A Very Old Bachelor.

Te Aroha News, Volume V, Issue 239, 28 January 1888, Page 3

A Very Old Bachelor.

The oldest man in New England has recently died, afc the very respectable age of 120 years. This venerable personage was, like almost all centenarians, with the A ox. ception of the ever-green Chevreul, a stand ing contradiction to several generally accepted conditions of longevity, as well as of at least one doctrinaire notion, the truth of which h not established at all. We regret to say that from the age of ten he chewed tobacco, and' continued to chew it for the remaining 110 years of hia existence. Likewise, he suffered , 60 years ago, from a variety of physical ailments, and ought, by every rule, to have died at least half a century back, xs..: the distinguishing feature of j his long caio ,. is his perpetual celebacy. It would certainly appear to be reasonable that a man who follows the natural law concerning the increase and multiplication of the species should be, as the Stoics would have said, more " in accordance with nature " than one who does not, and should therefore have the better right to expect n ature to deal tenderly with his old age. this particular centenarian nok only ne ver married, but even declared that he nt? v«r felt the slightest wish to do so. InSQ ed, he was never in love except on one litary occasion, and that was in his teens. Inasmuch as it is extremely improbable that a-n affection conceived at such an early age should have remained engraven on his heart for upwards of a ceutury, one is compelled to regard him as a hardened misogynist. He simply sat and chewed tobacco, and possibly did little sums in arithmetic about the number of great-great-grand-children he might have had if he had married that sweetheart with whom he was in leve just about the time of the Declaration of Amorican Independence.