“The horse and mule live thirty years
And nothing know of wines and beers;
The goat and sheep at twenty die,
With never a taste of scotch or rye;
The cow drinks water by the ton,
And at eighteen is mostly done.
Without the aid of rum or gin
The dog at fifteen cashes in;
The cat in milk and water soaks,
And then at twelve years old it croaks;
The modest, sober, bone-dry hen
Lays eggs for nogs and dies at ten;
All animals are strictly dry;
They sinless live and swiftly die,
While sinful, gleeful, rum-soaked men
Survive for three score years and ten.
And some of us - a mighty few -
Stay pickled 'till we're ninety-two.”
Reported in Alpheus Thomas Mason, Harlan Fiske Stone, Pillar of the Law (1956), p. 731; Mason reports this as a toast Stone was fond of reciting, but does not settle authorship with Stone. Various other sources following Mason attribute authorship to Stone, but without citing an original source.
Attributed
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Harlan F. Stone 14
United States federal judge 1872–1946Related quotes
“5451. We never know the Worth of Water, till the Well is dry.”
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)
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Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010), p. 25
Speech of July 19, 1985. Quoted in David Robinson Simon, Meatonomics (Conari Press, 2013), p. 193 https://books.google.it/books?id=PY0KUnaIU5AC&pg=PA193.
The Lang Coortin, last two stanzas
Rhyme? and Reason? (1883)