DEARE SONNE,

Some thinck that great age superannuates persons from the vse of

physicall meanes, or that at a hundred yeares of age 'tis either a

folly or a shame to vse meanes to liue longer, and yet I haue knowne

many send to mee for their seuerall troubles at a hundred yeares of

age, and this day a poore woeman being a hundred and three yeares

and a weeke old sent to mee to giue her some ease of the colick. The

_macrobii_ and long liuers which I haue knowne heere haue been of

the meaner and poorer sort of people. Tho. Parrot was butt a meane or

rather poore man. Your brother Thomas gaue two pence a weeke to John

More, a scauenger, who dyed in the hundred and second yeare of his

life; and 'twas taken the more notice of that the father of Sir John

Shawe, who marryed my Lady Killmorey, and liueth in London, I say that

his father, who had been a vintner, liued a hundred and two yeares, or

neere it, and dyed about a yeere agoe. God send us to number our dayes

and fitt ourselves for a better world.

Selected English Letters (XV-XIX Centuries) · 第 22 / 402 题