It was anything but medically correct, even in his own time. But Mark Twain's recipe for reaching a ripe old age remains as entertaining as when he first offered it 90 years ago.
The occasion was a banquet a few days after the author's 70th birthday on Nov. 30, 1905. Turning 70, Twain declared, is a milestone that confers the right "to tell the world how you got there. It is what they all do. . . . I have been anxious to explain my own system this long time, and now at last I have the right."Twain claimed in that 70th birthday speech to remember his first birthday "very well." ("And I always think of it with indignation," he added. "I hadn't any hair, I hadn't any teeth, I hadn't any clothes, I had to go to my first banquet just like that.")
Having described that first unsatisfactory birthday, Twain went on to reveal his secrets for surviving so long after it. Among them, he declared, was "unswerving regularity" in his sleep schedule.
"That is one of the main things," he explained. "I have made it a rule to go to bed when there wasn't anybody left to sit up with; and I have made it a rule to get up when I had to."
Diet was "another main thing," of course. His own approach, Twain said, was to be "persistently strict in sticking to the things which didn't agree with me until one or the other of us got the best of it."
He did have a definite policy on exercise, though.
"I have never taken any exercise, except sleeping and resting," he said firmly, "and I never intend to take any. Exercise is loathsome. And it cannot be any benefit when you are tired; and I was always tired."
Twain, who detested preachiness and busybodies, made clear he wasn't prescribing his methods for anyone else, just explaining his own rules of living.
He did offer a general admonition - "which I think is wisdom" - that "if you find you can't make 70 by any but an uncomfortable road, don't you go."
But those who do make the passage, Twain concluded, reach a pleasant plateau. "Threescore years and ten! It is the Scriptural statute of limitations. After that, you owe no active duties. . . . You are a time-expired man, to use Kipling's military phrase: You have served your term, well or less well, and you are mustered out.
"You are become an honorary member of the republic, you are emancipated, compulsions are not for you, nor any bugle call but `lights out.' "
As for himself, he told his audience, at 70 he was ready to "nestle in the chimney corner, and smoke my pipe, and read my book, and take my rest, wishing you well in all affection, and that when you in your turn shall arrive at pier No. 70 you may step aboard your waiting ship with a reconciled spirit, and lay your course toward the sinking sun with a contented heart."
1995 Maturity News Service
Distributed by Universal Press Syndicate