Her death at the age of eighty-seven may furnish a moral lesson to those who desire a long life. She died in complete possession of her mental and physical faculties.
At eighty-five, Gladstone was felling trees in his garden and writing articles on Homer and theology as a rest from his political labours. At eighty-two, De Lesseps was riding three hours every day in the Bois de Boulogne. At ninety-eight, Sidney Cooper was exhibiting pictures at the Royal Academy.
Yes, so long as the human machine is kept well oiled and regularly wound up, it goes; and not only do active bodies and minds who go on working live long, but they live happily and die peacefully, and they also make happy all those who live with them.
It was a lovely sight to see De Lesseps ride and drive with a troop of grandchildren and great-grandchildren. The youngest and most boisterous member of the party was the old gentleman, and all that band of joyous youngsters adored him.
The man of healthy body and active mind, who abandons work at fifty, even at sixty, prepares himself for a life of mere vegetation.
Let him stop remunerative work, if he does not find it congenial, and has enough or more than he wants to live upon, but let him immediately trace out for himself a programme of life that will enable him to keep his body and mind active, or let him look out for dyspepsia, gout, rheumatism, paralysis, stiffness of the joints, and the gradual loss of his mental faculties.
'I am sorry to be getting an old man,' once remarked Ferdinand de Lesseps, 'but what consoles me is the thought that there is no other way of living a long time.'
It is activity, it is work, that keeps you young, healthy, cheerful, and happy; it is work—thrice blessed work—that makes you feel that you are not a useless piece of furniture in this world, and makes you die with a smile on your face. Work, work again, work always!