Read "Methuselah" by Eugene Field online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
The discussion now going on between our clergymen and certain / unbelievers touching the question of Cain and his wife will surely / result beneficially, for it will set everybody to reading his Bible / more diligently. Still, the biography of Cain is one that we could / never become particularly interested in; in short, of all the Old / Testament characters none other interests us so much as does / Methuselah, the man who lived 969 years. Would it be possible to find / in all history another life at once so grand and so pathetic? One can / get a faint idea of the awful magnitude of Methuselah's career by / pausing to recollect that 969 years represent 9.69 centuries, 96 / decades, 11,628 months, 50,388 weeks, 353,928 days, 8,494,272 hours, / 521,656,320 minutes, and 36,299,879,200 seconds!
How came he to live so long? Ah, that is easily enough explained. He / loved life and the world, -- both were beautiful to him. And one day he / spoke his wish in words. "Oh, that I might live a thousand years! " he / cried.