Once allow him to
turn seventy, he has then escaped the fatal three-score-and-ten, and
would consider himself an ill-used person should he receive notice of
ejectment a day short of ninety. Ninety comes, and he grows insolent.
Death, he thinks, has passed on and overlooked him. He asks why Nature
so long has delayed to claim her debt. She has suffered thrice seven
years to elapse beyond the period usually assigned for payment, and he
indulges in wild fancies of a Statute of Limitations. In his most
rational moments he talks of nothing but Old Parr. He burns his will,
marries his housemaid, hectors his son-and-heir, who is seventy, and
canes his grand-child (a lad of fifty) for keeping late hours. I
called on old S--g a morning or two ago: he is ninety-three. I found
him reading his newspaper, and inveighing against the outcry for
Reform and short Parliaments--declaring that, rather than be forced
down into Cheshire to vote oftener than once in every six or seven
years, he, for his part, would sell his franchise for a straw. 'Twas
clear he had outlived the recollection of the probability of a visit
from one who might deprive him of his franchise upon terms even less
advantageous. I took occasion to compliment him upon his fine old age.
His reply was an angry growl.--"Ugh! do you want me gone? I'm only
ninety-three Ugh! Mr. Parr wouldn't die till he was one hundred and
sixty!"
_R_.
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