CORNARO, who made two dinners of the yoke of an egg, was merry at ninety-five; Cato studied Greek at eighty; Charles Kemble did the same, or rather brushed up his old Greek, when nearly as old; Cibber, when he was still older, merrily replied to one who declared that he looked well, that at eighty-four it was well that he looked at all; and there was the Countess of Desmond, who was perhaps the merriest of all, for she lived to the age of one hundred and ten, and died of a fall from a cherry tree then. UNFAILING SIGN OF LONGEVITY. STARTING from the base of the big toe there is a distinct line. That is the life line. In one foot it will curve along until it terminates under the instep far toward the lower base of the little toe. This means long life. If broken in the hollow of the foot it denotes a sickness at middle age, and if it terminates in the hollow of the foot it means a short life. This line is the most interesting one on the foot. The experiments that have been conducted lately have proven this to be an almost unfailing reading of longevity. New York World. 66 WE now turn to a great and noble woman," says Mr. Reginald Turner, in his interesting article in the Temple Magazine, entitled "At Work at Eighty and Ninety," the woman of whom the king, when Prince of Wales, once said, Next to my own mother, she is the most remarkable woman in England." Few will care to dispute this dictum, or deny that the Baroness Burdett-Coutts is as good as she is clever. Although eighty-seven years of age she still takes a share in the control of a great banking business, and it requires a wise head, to say nothing of a philanthropic heart, to distribute over a million pounds in charities, as she has done. Throughout her long life she has endeared herself to all classes, and no act of the late queen was more popular than when she conferred a peerage upon Miss Coutts, a very rare honor, indeed, for a woman to receive. "To this day the costermongers look upon her as one of their best friends, for did she not come to their rescue, putting them on a firm financial basis with a money club from which they could obtain loans for the purchase of barrows, repayment to be made at the rate of a shilling a week, the very amount demanded of them by money-makers for hire alone? No one will ever know all that this one woman has done for suffering humanity. And when the costers' trade was threatened she again came forward as their champion, and with her own counsel fought their case and won it." Throughout the cholera epidemic, and in the terrible winter of 1861, she relieved the suffering people by the expenditure of large sums and by personal supervision of the distribution of the necessaries purchased. She has been, and still is, an example to those who have riches, for, good herself, she has been the cause of good in others. CARPE DIEM. LET it come when come it must; Pluck it with unclouded will From the great tree Igdrasil. Edward Rowland Sill. WHO lives and works for Love The miracle shall prove; The Eternal Power is his, whate'er he do; Weakness is strength for him, and old things are made new, As he mounts higher on these rounds of time, As one by one Our selfish handicaps away we fling; Love speaks the oracle of truth; And they who prove The strength of love Grow younger and more young For forty years! Edward Everett Hale. I Do not imagine that I can add anything to your store of wisdom regarding the secret of keeping the spirit young in the frame advancing in age. It is an open secret to yet I am glad to bear you and many of your friends, witness to the supreme necessity of some form of cheerful activity and an ever-fresh interest in life in order to preserve health in the body and hopeful elasticity in the mind. When courage droops the form becomes bent; when faith declines the flesh, too, languishes. With cordial good wishes, John Townsend Trowbridge. Not in rewards, but in the strength to strive, In daily duty done, hope kept alive; That Love and Thought are housed and entertained. John Townsend Trowbridge. JOHN TOWNSEND TROWBRIDGE. THE practice, so common among early littérateurs, of following several occupations in addition to authorship was never indulged by John Townsend Trowbridge. 'Way back in the early fifties he started out to earn a livelihood with his pen, and, with the exception of three years' editorial service on Once a Week, has relied entirely upon his writings for support. A serious, hard-fought battle it proved," said he, recently, in commenting upon the fact to the writer. "I often wonder, when I stop to consider the countless difficulties, the tremendous competition encountered along the way, how I ever managed to survive it all." This remark is highly illustrative of the extreme modesty, the self-effacement of this giant of letters. Success of the highest came because his very effort was that of success. Although long since relieved from the necessity of "getting on," he is glad to say that at 75 years of age the impelling to work is still strong within him and is likely to remain so to the end. The asperities of life, the demands of exacting popularity, and triumphs arduously attained, have done nothing to rob him of the kindly sympathy and genial amiability which have always been chief among the many charms of his society. His stories will continue to be read years after current trash has fallen to its real value as junk, while his poetry is destined to enjoy, if possible, a far more enduring fame. In the delightful quietude of his Pleasant Street home in Arlington, the jovial author is happily engrossed in the preparation of his autobiography, or, as he felicitously puts it, "My Own Story," an undertaking somewhat forced upon him through his articles for the Atlantic Monthly on Whitman and F. H. Underwood; yet one that thrills him with pleasurable memories, revived the deeper he becomes immersed in the subject. The most surprising feature of all, to Mr. Trowbridge, is the remarkable activity of his memory. Things which had apparently escaped him come trooping back with startling accuracy the moment he focuses his attention in their direction. |