AN ESSA V ON LONGEVITY. 1 33 



successive decade of his career saw him a wealthier 

 man. He never knew sfirious care : was active, and 

 of what in his day of universal drunkenness was 

 deemed temperate habits ; but he was a steady port- 

 wine drinker. His son and heir composed a song 

 that was sung at the centenary celebration, one verse 

 of which fairly describes his general mode of living 

 thus : — 



"Some take pills and physic, for gout or for phthisis. 



Try every new nostrum for malady sore ; 

 Some quit their home-quarters to drink foreign waters. 



And yet kick the bucket the same as before; 

 But comfort and quiet, and temperate diet. 



Will make a man healthy and wealthy and bold, 

 While a glass of good wine, too, will strengthen the spine, too, 



And make him, like Shuldham, a hundred years old." 



By. referring to Davy's "Suffolk Collections," pedigree 

 "Shuldham" (British Museum), you may ascertain that 

 the Shuldhams were, upon the whole, given to 

 longevity. The centenarian's grandfather completed 

 his eighty-sixth year. The said centenarian married 

 early in life my father's first-cousin, Mary Barber, of 

 Boyton, who survived her husband and died con- 

 siderably more than ninety years old : and the 

 vigorous constitution and tenacity of life of, these 

 long-lived parents were transmitted in some degree 

 to two of their offspring. The centenarian had by 

 Mary Barber four children, William Abraham Shuld- 

 ham, who lived to see his seventy-fourth year, though 

 he suffered from epilepsy more violently than any 



