Bowman did not spare himself what would
generally be deemed excessive and imprudent,
exposure and fatigue. He prided himself, as
I have said, on being what he called "a top-
worker." Having often occasion to go for lime
or coals, he generally on these occasions slept
in the open air all night. Even when eighty
years of age he worked daily, during part of the
summer season, in a peat moss a few miles from
Irthington, and, rather than lose time by re
turning home, he would let his horse loose
upon the common and sleep through the night
in his cart. The story is told of a Scotch
Highlander who had been persuaded by his women-
folks to buy an umbrella, and was met in a
shower of rain with it carefully kept out of the
wet under his coat. This Cumberland farmer
must have cared as little for the rain as the
Scotch Highlander. If he got wet in the field
or on the road, he seldom changed his clothes,
taking to some hard work, such as thrashing in
the barn, until they got dry. When in the one
hundred and eighth year of his age, he still applied
himself to all kinds of farm labour, hedging,
reaping, haymaking, gathering, and mounting
stacks of corn and hay. In his hundred and
ninth year he walked to Carlisle from Irthington
and back again in one day with his staff under
his arm: a distance of about sixteen miles.

Bowman married at the age of fifty. When
asked why he was so late in marrying, he
answered, " I never thought much about getting
a wife, and how I got one I do not know. I
think it was by mere accident." By his
marriage at the age of fifty he had six sons,
and lived to see them all old enough to be
themselves grandfathers. He had himself three
great-grandchildren. His wife was twenty-one
years younger than himself, and died at the
age of eighty-one, when he was one hundred
and two. On his marriage he took a small
farm, for which he paid a rent of five pounds a
year, and, by dint of working hard, and saving
hard, he scraped together money enough to buy
a small estate, upon which he lived the remainder
of his life.

For forty years before his death Bowman
had not a tooth in his head. Septuagenarians
whom I have known have been dreadfully
alarmed on losing their teeth, becoming
despondent, and persuading themselves more and
more that without teeth they could not masticate
their food, and that unmasticated food is
indigestible. They forget that mastication is not
needed for a considerable variety of food,
including, among other excellent things, milk,
eggs, soup, and gravy. When one hundred and
fifteen, the brown hair of Bowman had
become white, but his skin was soft and delicate,
neither wrinkled nor shrivelled, and his face
appeared plump, round, and rather florid. His
sight was so good that he never wore glasses.
Of a very limited education, he had not worn his
eyes much by reading; on the contrary, feeding
his mind on the news of his village and
neighbourhood, the changes and improvements going
on around him, walking to see the foundation
aid of the new bridge, and inquiring particularly
about the canal, at Carlisle. Failing sight, like
the loss of teeth, being one of the causes of the
despondency of persons in the decline of life, it
may be well to record here that no instrument
in the human machine has such powers of
recovering itself as the organ of vision. I was
once driven by a shower of rain into a cabaret
on the banks of the Seine. The only guests
were myself and an octogenarian who was reading
the newspaper without glasses. I congratulated
him on the excellence of his eyes. He
replied, "I am eighty-six, my eyesight decayed
many years ago from excessive reading by
artificial light, and I used every kind of spectacles
I could get, until at last I could not see to read
with any. For many years I never tried to read.
At last one day, about ten years ago, I chanced
to look upon a newspaper, and, to my great
surprise, I could see the print. I have read ever
since: and I can see as well as ever I could."
This case is far from being a solitary case
of sight recovered by rest. Bowman's hearing
was so good, that when he was one hundred and
fourteen he could hear the ticking of a watch
which hung in the window several yards off.
His sense of smell was extremely acute. This
circumstance is of far greater importance than
might be supposed, for it would make him a
man always careful to avoid foul air, and anxious
to breathe pure air.

An account of Bowman's latter years and
death was contributed to a recent number of the
Border Magazine by Dr. Barnes, forty years
after the publication of his first sketch in
the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal. Mr.
Bowman slept well during the night, and
sometimes during the day. A Salisbury
physician, who died last year over ninety, and
rather of the Royal Society, answered, when
asked what he had done to live so long, "I have
always slept all the sleep I could get done."
Thirty years ago a book on the Duty and
Advantages of Early Rising had some vogue, con
taining the most pernicious views on sleep, as if
it were a sort of sensual indulgence, like drunkenness
or gluttony. But, during sleep, the nerves
derive their nourishment from the blood; and
the great nervous centres, and the brain
especially, are sound or unsound in proportion as
they are nourished by sleep.

Mr. Bowman enjoyed his life in his ordinary
good health during the three years preceding his
death, no particular change taking place until
the last three months. His life was less long
than it would have been, had it not been
shortened by severe accidents. An injury
which he received on his right shoulder-joint
caused the fingers of his right hand to
contract very much, and compelled him to use his
left hand in eating.

In his one hundred and ninth year the cold of
a severe winter made him take to his bed, and
after six years' confinement to it (although all
his limbs were free from complaint with the
exception of his right hand) he became
incapable of walking without the assistance of two