226 CENTENARIANISM VI 



fellow-creatures as to exceed greatly the average 

 height, have never attracted so much attention as have 

 the long-livers ; and yet it is probably as rare for a 

 man to exceed eight feet in height as to live beyond 

 the hundredth year, — indeed, we believe much rarer. 

 No one asks the details of the life of an eight-foot 

 giant — how much pudding he took as a boy in order 

 to attain his astounding dimensions — apparently 

 because nobody believes that any administration of 

 pudding or its correlatives would make a boy, who 

 was going to he five foot four, into a man of larger 

 size. Possibly, moreover, not very many persons are 

 greatly anxious to attain large dimensions. It is not 

 so, however, with long-livers : even to-day all classes 

 of society take an interest, which is sometimes pro- 

 found, in the details of life of a long-liver; they 

 w^ould fain imitate the centenarian, and by copying 

 his mode of living inherit his years. Even where 

 there is no intention of pursuing a system of diet and 

 manner of life, people seem to like to know how they 

 could, if they chose, lengthen their years. There is 

 a relic of the old times, of the search for the elixir 

 vitcB, in this kind of thing : that great enthusiasm of 

 past days, which served an important part in opening 

 for us the door of science, is still alive. Clearly the 

 people who take more interest in the lesson to be 

 learned from the diary of a centenarian than from 

 the report of a Eegistrar-General or a medical officer 

 of health, are yet mediaeval in their views of life and 

 death. The real fact seems to be that the man who 

 exceeds one hundred years of life has no more to 



