of the
Pontificate.

Personal Habits.--According to Hufeland and other authorities on
longevity, sobriety, regular habits, labor in the open air, exercise
short of fatigue, calmness of mind, moderate intellectual power, and a
family life are among the chief aids to longevity. For this reason we
find the extraordinary instances of longevity among those people who
amidst bodily labor and in the open air lead a simple life, agreeable
to nature. Such are farmers, gardeners, hunters, soldiers, and sailors.
In these situations man may still maintain the age of one hundred and
fifty or even one hundred and sixty.

Possibly the most celebrated case of longevity on record is that of
Henry Jenkins. This remarkable old man was born in Yorkshire in 1501
and died in 1670, aged one hundred and sixty-nine. He remembered the
battle of Flodden Field in 1513, at which time he was twelve years old.
It was proved from the registers of the Chancery and other courts that
he had appeared in evidence one hundred and forty years before his
death and had had an oath administered to him. In the office of the
King's Remembrancer is a record of a deposition in which he appears as
a witness at one hundred and fifty-seven. When above one hundred he was
able to swim a rapid stream.

Thomas Parr (or Parre), among Englishmen known as "old Parr," was a
poor farmer's servant, born in 1483. He remained single until eighty.
His first wife lived thirty-two years, and eight years after her death,
at the age of one hundred and twenty, he married again. Until his one
hundred and thirtieth year he performed his ordinary duties, and at
this age was even accustomed to thresh. He was visited by Thomas, Earl
of Arundel and Surrey, and was persuaded to visit the King in London.
His intelligence and venerable demeanor impressed every one, and crowds
thronged to see him and pay him homage. The journey to London, together
with the excitement and change of mode of living, undoubtedly hastened
his death, which occurred in less than a year. He was one hundred and
fifty-two years and nine months old, and had lived under nine Kings of
England. Harvey examined his body and at the necropsy his internal
organs were found in a most perfect state. His cartilages were not even
ossified, as is the case generally with the very aged. The slightest
cause of death could not be discovered, and the general impression was
that he died from being over-fed and too-well treated in Londo