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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 9, Issue 11 (February 1, 1935)

Long Life, and the Recipes

Long Life, and the Recipes.

Are people living longer than they used to, or is it that we hear more about those who succeed in keeping Old Time at bay for a century or so? Certainly there seem to be more centenarians among us now than there were in the days of one's youth.

Perhaps a contented mind has much to do with longevity. There was an Auckland man I knew who roamed the city looking for a particular kind of vegetarian diet and a very special kind of bread. He was the most abstemious of men, took the greatest care of himself and was rewarded by being carried off at a comparatively youthful age. Per contra, there is the happy old party who just eats and drinks anything that is going, and to that comfortable diet he attributes his long life. To everyone his, or her, taste.

In Wellington, there died a few years age an old-timer of ninety-two who had been sailor, whale-hunter, soldier and gold-digger in his day. In his youth he had served in a British warship on the Pacific station, and he attributed his long life and good health largely to “regular habits” formed in the Navy life—those habits centering in the regular daily issue of good Navy rum. He never broke the good old way. He smoked his pipe and took his daily tot, and dug his garden and told his yarns, a round-bodied, cheerful-tempered chip of the old Navy to the last. His sons dutifully saw to it that he was kept supplied with the best old Jamaica; it prolonged his life. And he was a truly temperate man. Regular habits.

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