The difficulty, under such circumstances, of procuring trustworthy statistics relating to persons of advanced age without prolonged and tedious investigation is very apparent, and although there are undoubted instances of very old age in individuals, which can be easily authenticated, all statements in the gross of ages above eighty-five must be taken with considerable allowance for error. It is doubtful if sanitary improvements have produced much effect in the prolongation of life to an advanced age, which, after all, is what most persons have in mind when they speak of increased longevity. Weakly persons who have been preserved amid the dangers that assail early life are not likely to possess much of that innate power of resistance to toxic influences that characterizes those who live to be old. And yet, even if their inherited vitality be insufficient to put them on an equality with the favored few, their preservation beyond the unreasoning age gives them an opportunity of profiting by experience, and, without a doubt, enables them, by conforming their way of life to well-established hygienic laws, to live much longer than they would have done at a time when ignorance of such matters was the rule. The muscular, fullblooded person who laughs at doctors, and thinks his appetites great gifts of nature, to be satiated rather than satisfied, does not always outlive the valetudinarian who counts his grapes and stops at one glass of wine. So it may be said with truth that the saving of lives at the earlier ages brings a large number of persons to a point where they can look out for themselves, and however deplorable the general neglect to do this may be, it is certain that the average man has a better chance of living long than he ever did before in the history of the world.

Those who live to an extreme old age are probably the result of a long series of selected lives, further fortified by exemplary personal habits, like the Jews, who, for two thousand years, have been compelled to live in crowded quarters of cities, with a minimum of air and light, until nature's selective processes, together with their rigid adherence to the admirable sanitary code of Moses, have produced a stock that can endure almost anything with little apparent injury. The Ghetto in Rome was the healthiest quarter of the city, and at the present day the Jewish quarter of New York, the most crowded and, until recently, the dirtiest part of the town, has the lowest deathrate.

Persons with such constitutions, being, in a large measure, proof against morbific influences, are generally injured only by their own excesses, and it will be found, as a rule, that centenarians have been persons of this class, who have seldom been ill in their lives, who have had the contagious diseases of childhood lightly, if at all, who have always been temperate in all things, light eaters and drinkers, slow to wrath, able to control their passions and emotions, and usually leading a placid, uneventful life. Such conditions can be brought about by sanitary laws only as a result of long-continued teaching and pressure extending over many generations, and may not be perceptible in the race for a hundred years to come. Our first parents were driven from the Garden of Eden for fear they would become immortal, and their descendants have lost so much ground that only one out of millions is able to reach the physiological limit of life, which certainly should be one hundred years, and possibly one hundred and twenty.

ANNIE

NNIE and her mother had had a difference of opinion, and spanking had been mentioned as a possible result. It was all a matter of some few scraps upon the floor. To Annie's mother's mind there were reasons why the scraps should be picked up; while to Annie's, and doubtless from her point of view as logical, there were reasons why they should lie where they were. Annie did pick them up, as spanking is not agreeable to contemplate; but she uttered, rising on her short legs from the task, an awful threat.

"I won't be Annie Lowe," she said, "a minute longer! I'll go be Jones's little girl."

Now this, as she knew, should have brought any proper-feeling mother straight to terms; but instead of begging her to stay, Mrs. Lowe continued dusting, and said cheerfully: "Very well, Annie; run along!" Unable to believe it, Annie stood staring, first in sheer surprise, then in astonished wrath and grief. She had not in the least intended to carry out the threat, but after that there was only one course left to take.

Without another word, she walked upstairs to her little corner in her mother's room, and took out her dolls. These, BigDolly and Little-Dolly, with Little-Dolly's clothes, and as many of her own as she could find, she packed, with an occasional jolting sob, in a valise. Big-Dolly had only one dress, and that was fastened on-facts which Annie, as she squeezed the satchel to upon her, was for once too much engrossed with other matters to regret. Putting on her best hat, a straw with brown ribbons down behind, and crown scooped out to accommodate a brown-silk pompon on the top, she descended with her burden bumping after her, and walked out through the kitchen, without a glance in the direction of the room beyond,

in which her mother was. A little gate in the fence between led from their yard into the Jones's. Opening it, she went through, and reached up, from the other side, to hook it fast behind.

Mrs. Jones was sitting on her back stoop, peeling apples for pies, when she looked down and saw Annie, whose tear-wet eyes were trying to regard her with a smile. The small person looked up bravely, realizing that something might depend upon a good impression in this her new start in life.

"I'm not Annie Lowe any longer, Mrs. Jones," she hastened to explain. "I've come to be your little girl."

Mrs. Jones went on with the apple, and Annie thought she caught on her new mother's round, good-natured face a suspicion of something like her late mother's smile. But her words belied her looks.

"Well, now," she said, "if that is n't nice! I've always thought I'd like to have a little girl. Come right in, Annie, and take off your hat."

Annie climbed the steps with some difficulty, and when she reached the top, set the valise down, for she was warm.

"What all," Mrs. Jones demanded, with a return of the expression which had troubled Annie at first, "have you in there?" The tone, too, was just the least bit disconcerting.

Annie edged up closer to her bag.

"I have Big-Dolly," she said a little timidly, "and Little-Dolly, and my clothes and LittleDolly's clothes. I think," she added, with another very pleasant smile, lest Mrs. Jones should feel that she had brought too much, "they 'll all go in one drawer."