Life — August 12, 1915 — page 29: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Interviews With Dead Celebrities 'HE road map of Mesopotamia is not what it should be. I got lost several times, but at last, just at dusk, I came upon him sitting up against the haystack back of his woodshed, “How does it seem to have been dead all these years?” I ventured, as a_ beginning. “I don't mind it,” said the old gen- tleman. “I don’t have to read the editorials in the papers or the short stories in the magazines. No doctor prescribes for me, and no surgeon of- fers to cut me up at a maximum rate. I don’t have to mingle with suffra- gettes, talk over the telephone, get run over by autos, eat in restaurants or listen to Chautauqua lectures. It’s great to be dead.” “What I came for,” I said, thinking it best, even with such a serious old gentleman, to plunge at once into the subject, “is to ask your opinion upon , an important question. I presume you have heard of the United States of America?” Methuselah—for the intelligent reader must by this time have suspected that it was none other than he—bowed austerely. “You mean the country that is too proud to fight or do anything else but make money out of other people's misfortune. Oh, yes, I have heard of that place. It’s full of liberty-loving slaves, isn’t it?” “Well, something like that. Now, Mr. Methuselah, listen. It seems that, according to statistics, our men over forty are dying faster than is good for them. There are many signs that we are not so healthy as we were. The life-insurance companies have taken the matter up. Mr. Henry Ford says we eat too much. Mr. Edison adds to this that we sleep too much. The scien- tists say the cities wear us out. Now, a real opinion on the subject of how to live long from a leading authority like you will have real weight.” The old gentleman grew thoughtful. “Considering,” he said, “that there was no Scotch whiskey or tobacco in my day and that I didn’t sit up night after night eating Welsh rarebits and lobster Newburg and doing the tango, oa re a om I often wonder how I accomplished my great longevity feat. I used to do the best I could, however, with what opportunities I had. Our wine was all home-made, of course, but it was the Jersey lightning of my time, and used to keep me fairly well occupied.” “You always ate three square meals a day, didn’t you?” “And as many more as I could get. Then, just when I began to feel wopsy, Noah came along.” “Noah?” “Yes. He was my grandson. I was three hundred and sixty-nine years old when he was born, and that little chap certainly was a help. Noth- ing like a grandchild to renew your youth, I kept having ‘em after that. Why, a century wasn’t much more trouble than passing a week-end on a Long Island estate.” “Then what shall I tell the insur- ance companies and Henry Ford and all the rest of them is your secret for a long life?” 293 Methuselah leaned up against the haymow. “ My boy,” he said, “ there is no par- ticular set of rules. I say in general that if a man wants to live long let him marry often, repudiate his debts occasionally, absorb all the alcohol he can stand within reason, eat a goat a day, avoid all advice, keep having grandchildren and keep away from the doctors,” Luck On Our Side T turned out that Holt of Cornell was Muenter, lately of Harvard, wanted on a charge of wife murder. Crazy, no doubt, but very efficient, as the explosion on the Minnehaha helped to demonstrate. All things considered, it was wonderful, first, that with so disordered a mind he could do so much mischief ; next, that his mischief should have failed by so slight a mar- gin of doing serious harm. Every- thing was against us in the Muenter case except luck. TIME 1S MONEY WHY NOT UTILIZE THAT WHICH WE WASTE WHILE TRAVELING? comicbooks.com