“Dear uncle, you will live many years yet.”
“I cannot hope to do that, my dear. I am past seventy. I have already lived out the threescore and ten years allotted as the natural term of a man’s life.”
“But, dear uncle, I think all nature teaches us that a CENTURY is the natural term of a man’s life.”
“A pleasant theory, my child. I wish it were a true one.”
“But I think it is a true one.”
“Why do you think so?”
“From analogy. All natural philosophers and historians who have made the nature and habits of the animal creation their study have agreed upon this fact; that all healthy animals, unless their lives are terminated by violence, live five times as long as it takes them to grow up. Now it takes the human animal twenty years at least to grow to maturity; therefore the human animal really should live five times twenty years, which makes a round hundred or a CENTURY; and I firmly believe it is intended for him to live that long, if he only acted in accordance with the laws of life and health. And, dear uncle, you seem always to have acted so, and therefore I think you may safely calculate upon living out your century and then dying the gentle death of mere old age.”
“There is a certain reasonableness in your theory, my little philosopher.”
“And there is a roundness and completeness in this full century of life which is so satisfactory,” said Drusilla, heartily.
“Yes, my dear, especially to those who love this planet Earth, with all her failings, as I confess I do,” smiled the old gentleman. “And besides, I would like to see Anna and Dick happily married, with a thriving family of boys and girls about their knees.”