ANTAEUS THE GIANT. 573 



his fascinating and seductive brother sin, who prepared the 

 way, that man could surely have laughed at his dart and 

 scythe, and defied them both. Sad is his fate now, born out 

 of time. Like a mournful and solitary traveler he gropes 

 his way through this valley and shadow of a youthful and 

 premature death. The inexorable curse of threescore and 

 ten now holds him by the hair, and irremediably reaps him 

 home to the harvest of everlasting rest. The flames of that 

 ancient and divine fire have long since died out of human 

 clay ; for very few men possess, in these degenerate days, 

 half the vitality of Methuselah, or at all contemplate re- 

 maining upon earth a thousand years', or seriously think of 

 perpetuating their species* at the good old age in which it 

 seems that venerable patriarch was in the full vigor of his 

 youth. "For Methuselah lived after he begat Lamech 

 seven hundred and eighty and two years, and THEN begat 

 sons and daughters." Science and philosophy will hang 

 long and sadly over this problem of the ages, (on the ques- 

 tion of the dead letter alone,) and regret that a chapter of 

 dietetics was not also written to accompany and somewhat 

 explain the chapter of " begats." Were the stomachs of men 



* Something after the style and power of the venerable Methuse- 

 lah has occurred in modern days, thus giving hope to those ancient 

 gentlemen of the present hour who are in the horrors of the rapidly 

 approaching period called grand climacteric. "A certain Baron Bara- 

 vicino de Capellis died in 1770, at Meran, in Tyrol, at the age of 104. 

 He had been married to four wives : the first he married in his four- 

 teenth, and the last in his eighty-fourth year. By his fourth wife he 

 had seven children, and when he died (at 104!) she was pregnant 

 with the eighth. The vigor of his body and mind did not forsake 

 him till the last months of his life. He never used spectacles, and, 

 when at a great age, would walk frequently a couple of miles. His 

 usual food was eggs ; he never tasted boiled flesh ; sometimes he ate 

 a little roasted, but always in very small quantities ; and he drank 

 abundance of tea with rosa-solis and sugar-camty." 



Another example : "A Frenchman, named De Longueville, lived to 

 the age of 110. He had been married to ten wives ; his last wife he 

 married when in his ninety-ninth year, and she bore him a son Avhen 

 he was in his hundred and first." HUFELAND. 



