Cornaro was as happy at ninety as at
fifty, and in far better health at the age of ninety-five than he
had enjoyed at thirty.
"These cases all tend to show the value and benefits to be
derived from an actively cultivated brain in making a long life
one of comfort and of usefulness to its owner. The brain and
spirits need never grow old, even if our bodies will insist on
getting rickety and in falling by the wayside. But an abstemious
life will drag even the old body along to centenarian limits in a
tolerable state of preservation and usefulness. The foregoing
list can be lengthened out with an indefinite number of names,
but it is sufficiently long to show what good spirits and an
active brain will do to lighten up the weight of old age. When we
contemplate the Doge Dandolo at eighty-three animating his troops
from the deck of his galley, and the brave old blind King of
Bohemia falling in the thickest of the fray at Crecy, it would
seem as it there was no excuse for either physical, mental, or
moral decrepitude short of the age of four score and ten."
Emperors and Kings, in short, the great ones of the earth, pay
the penalty of their power by associate worriment and care. In
ancient history we can only find a few rulers who attained four
score, and this is equally the case in modern times.
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