Miscellaneous Papers. 



165 



The death rate is low for a few years succeeding graduation, as 

 might be expected of young men in the prime of life. As the 

 years go on the curve drops down and shows that about 50 per 

 cent survive forty to forty-five years after graduation. It takes 

 about twenty years to cut down the first 10 per cent of a class. 

 Ten per cent more will be gone in about fourteen years more. An 

 equal period will now remove as many as 20 percent, while, as said 

 above, 50 per cent will be dead in another ten years. As we ap- 

 proach the limit of seventy-five years the percentage of loss grows 

 less, for at this period there are generally a few cases of extreme 

 longevity, and these withered leaves drop off more slowly. 



From thirty-five to fifty years after graduation there is wit- 

 nessed a period of great irregularity, as if the vital forces of men's 

 lives were often exhausted, and we might conclude that frequently 

 they live too fast and the decay is not steady and normal. Prob- 

 ab y we could with a more complete record and with similar sta- 

 tistics from other colleges draw other interesting conclusions. 



