About three years ago she became blind, and has since been kept at her home on the Onondaga reservation. She retained her faculties to the last. Her husband died thirty years ago. Her dying request was that the pagan ceremony be first observed and afterward the Christian ritual.

What are we to reckon, says the Home Journal, as the declining period of man’s existence? The point at which old age taps us on the shoulder, and says it comes to keep us company, varies with every individual. It depends a great deal on circumstances, which are hardly the same in any two cases. Some writers have said that a man is old at forty-five, others have set down seventy as the normal standard. Dr. John Gardner, who has written on “Longevity,” remarks: “Long observation has convinced me that sixty-three is an age at which the majority of persons may be termed old, and as a general rule we may adopt this as the epoch of the commencing decline of life.”

Suppose then we agree to call no man old till he is past sixty-three. Let us set down the names of some of the illustrious people of the world who have prolonged their days of usefulness after that age. We shall make a table of them, and begin it with those who have died at seventy,—that is to say, with those in whom the springs of life have not stood still till they have had at least seven years of old age. It will be found, however, to be far from exhaustive, and every reader may find pleasure in adding to it from his own stock of information:

Age at Death.

It may be said that they were exceptional in living so long, but if what the best authorities say be true, the exceptions ought to be the people who died young, and not those who prolong their lives and carry on their work till they are old. Few of us may find ourselves, like Lord Palmerston, in our greatest vigor at seventy, or be able, like Thiers, to rule France at eighty, or have any spirit for playing the author, like Goethe and Victor Hugo, when over eighty; or for playing the musician, like Handel and Haydn, when over seventy; but by good management we may do wonders.

The wisest men and the best have been conspicuous for working to the end, not taking the least advantage of the leisure to which one might think they were entitled. They have found their joy in pursuing labors which they believed useful either to themselves or to others. John Locke began a “Fourth Letter on Toleration” only a few weeks before he died, and “the few pages in the posthumous volume, ending in an unfinished sentence, seem to have exhausted his remaining strength.” The fire of Galileo’s genius burned to the very end. He was engaged in dictating to two of his disciples his latest theories on a favorite subject, when the slow fever seized him that brought him to the grave. Sir Edward Coke spent the last six years of his life in revising and improving the works upon which his fame now rests. John Wesley only the year before he died wrote: “I am now an old man, decayed from head to foot…. However, blessed be God! I do not slack my labors; I can preach and write still.” Arnauld, one of the greatest of French theologians and philosophers, retained, says Disraeli, “the vigor of his genius and the command of his pen to his last day, and at the age of eighty-two was still the great Arnauld.” It was he who, when urged in his old age to rest from his labors, exclaimed, “Rest! Shall we not have the whole of eternity to rest in?”

A healthy old age cannot be reached without the exercise of many virtues. There must have been prudence, self-denial, and temperance at the very least. According to the proverb, he that would be long an old man must begin early to be one, and the beginning early just means taking a great many precautions commonly neglected till it is too late. More people would be found completing their pilgrimage at a late date if it were not that, as a French writer puts it, “Men do not usually die; they kill themselves.” It is carelessness about the most ordinary rules of healthy living.

The enjoyment of old age may be looked on then as a reward, and the aged may pride themselves on being heirs to a rich inheritance, assigned to forethought and common sense. Many years are an honor. They are an honor even in the case of the worldly, and a great deal more so when life has been regulated by motives higher than any the world can show. “The hoary head,” says Solomon, “is a crown of glory;” but he adds this qualification, “if it be found in the way of righteousness.” Old people form a natural aristocracy, and to be ranked among them may be recommended to all who have an ambition to close their lives well up in the world.

For a picture of an old man in this enviable state of mind take Cornaro. In his eighty-third year we find him congratulating himself that in all probability he “had still a series of years to live in health and spirits and to enjoy this beautiful world, which is indeed beautiful to those who know how to make it so.” Even at ninety-five he wrote of himself as “sound and hearty, contented and cheerful.” “At this age,” he says, “I enjoy at once two lives: one terrestrial, which I possess in fact; the other celestial, which I possess in thought; and this thought is equal to actual enjoyment, when founded on things we are sure to attain, as I am sure to attain that celestial life, through the infinite mercy and goodness of God.”