We seem at last to have found an undoubted centenarian.
The widow of Sir J. E. Smith, the founder and first President of the Linnman Society, died on Saturday, the 3rd inst., and as far as human evidence can prove anything, was born on May 11, 1773, and was therefore within three months of 104 years old. She was married at 23, lived 32 years in wedlock, and was once, in the early days of her widowhood, dangerously ill of typhoid. This, however, was her only serious illness, and she appears, like most centenarians, to have been possessed of unusual vital energy, both in body and mind. Her teeth were almost perfect, her eyesight did not fail her till she had lived a century, and then only failed so far that she was unable to read, being still able, as she said, to see the landscape, and her hearing was at worst only a little "hard." What is much more wonderful, she retained her memory up to the very last, correcting a friend within a week of her death as to the authorship of a hymn. Lady Smith, like most persons who have survived their contemporaries, was a woman of exceptional mental vivacity ; took a keen interest in science, declared that she "was for inquiry," whatever its theological results, and manifested to the last a keen interest in public affairs. She appears also to have been generally loved for the graciousness of her character, and was mentioned as one of the most charming of women by the historian Roscoe. After she was a hundred she was troubled with optical illusions, faces crowding round her ; but she had nerve enough to be slightly amused with them, and dis- cussed the very extraordinary fact that in the multitudes of faces she saw, not one was familiar to her. Courage, in truth, seems to have been the chief differentia between her and other people, but there must of course have been some specialty of physical organisation besides.
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