EUTHANASIA. 467 



age, that dawns and dominates, just like the pride of youth 

 at earlier epochs of life. Deferring to these arguments in 

 their general application, it is still impossible to set aside the 

 precise testimony of certain cases. However easy it would 

 be for a supra-centenarian to tell an untruth, or to make a 

 mistake, as to the bare statement of age, it would not be easy 

 rather would it be impossible for him to make the bare 

 statement consist with cross-questioning founded upon con- 

 sideration of events and historical periods. The extreme age 

 of Jenkins he died at one hundred and sixty-nine is 

 attested by the following line of, as it would seem, unim- 

 peachable evidence. 



Henry Jenkins is said to have been born at Bolton-upon- 

 Swale, Yorkshire, in 1500, and to have followed the active 

 employment of fisherman for about a hundred and forty 

 years. Being produced as a witness on a trial at the York- 

 shire assizes, to prove a contested right of way, he swore to 

 near one hundred and fifty years' memory, during all which 

 time he said he remembered the right of way. c Beware 

 what you are swearing,' said the judge; ( there are two men 

 in the court each above eighty they have both sworn they 

 have known no such right of way.' 



6 Those men,' replied Jenkins, 'are boys to me.' Upon 

 which the judge inquired of those men how old they took 

 Jenkins to be. Their answer was, they knew Jenkins very 

 well, but not his age ; for that he was a very old man when 

 they were boys. 



Here, then, we have evidence of the great age of this 

 patriarch, evidence, so far as it goes, of the most satisfac- 

 tory kind; educed, as it was, from the testimony of those 

 who, being in a certain sense antagonists, can hardly be 

 assumed to have gone out of their way to enhance his an- 

 tiquity. Evidence equally satisfactory and more precise, as 

 it goes to fix his age exactly, wa$ elicited by judicial cross- 

 questioning founded on comparison of historical dates. Being 



