Page:The Diothas, or, A far look ahead (IA diothasorfarlook01macn).pdf/67

 only, female family name. My mother was a Palutha: your—I mean Ismar's grandmother—is a Sasta, a matron still as active and energetic as when her son brought home his bride."

"How old may she be?" I inquired.

After a short mental calculation, he stated her age as about seventy four or five. This, as I subsequently found, was by no means regarded as an advanced age. The average duration of human life had, through various causes, been prolonged by about thirty years. At seventy a person was, in health and expectation of life, fully on a par with one of forty at present; and lives of a hundred were rather more frequent than lives of seventy among us.

"It seems but yesterday," resumed my host, "when my friend's letters were filled with enthusiastic accounts of his son's extraordinary taste and aptitude for the studies in which he himself had gained such distinction. Eured Thiusen's minute investigations into the languages and early history of our race had made his name famous throughout the world. A premature death carried him off at what seemed but the beginning of a brilliant career.

"As soon as Ismar had recovered from his first grief, he resolved to devote his life to the completion of his father's unfinished work, and thus raise an enduring memorial to that honored name. In his ardor, he was not content with the ordinary means of study. Years of labor, he saw, would be requisite to place him merely where his father had stood. In his impatience, he rashly ventured on dangerous methods. A certain Mesmer, as you know, gave, at a very early period, some obscure hints,