 |
The extract below can be found on the site :-
![[off site]](../images/www.gif)
To Dance with Angels
Robert Peebles Sudall
13 Feb 1883 - 1966
GLOBE TROTTER AT 91
NEW YORK TIMES 17th June 1913
Dr. Peebles Does Things Instead of Talking of
By-Gones
The only passenger on the Atlantic Transport liner
Minnehaha, which arrived from London last night, who did not seem to
mind the heat was Dr. J. M. Peebles of Los Angeles, Cal., who will be
92 on March 23 next. Dr. Peebles has arranged to start on his sixth
trip around the world in the Fall of 1915. Dr. Peebles is over six feet
tall, with snow white hair and beard and clear gray eyes. He told the
reporters last night that he owed his good health to avoidance of drugs,
eating proper food, and regular rest and exercise.
"I have been a vegetarian for sixty years," said Dr. Peebles,
"and neither drink nor smoke, but I am not a bigot. I was born
in Bennington, [Whitingham] Vermont, and was one of the seven founders
of the Independent Order of Good Templars in New York State. I stayed
in the East until I was 28 years old. I contracted tuberculosis and
then went to California to save my life, and have lived there practically
ever since."
"What is the real secret of your vitality at the age of 91?"
he was asked.
"Just behaving myself, proper living, and always being up and doing
account for it," said Dr. Peebles. "I have the will power
to compel myself to do things instead of sitting in a corner talking
about the by-gone days, when I stood on the anti-slavery platform with
Garrison and other good men before the war."
"I feel that I am in the morning of my youth, and have no fear
of death because I believe that it merely means the shedding of the
outer shell and going to sleep, to wake up in a new world."
Dr. Peebles, who was accompanied by R. Peebles Sudall, his adopted son,
was anxious to have the reporters know that he was opposed to vaccination
and to vivisection. He was in the active practice of medicine for fifty
years, and still treats some of his old patients. He served as a surgeon
in the civil war, and was appointed a Consul in Asiatic Turkey by President
Grant during his first term, but only served eighteen months of his
term of office, as he found the life too tedious for endurance.
At the present time Dr. Peebles is a correspondent of thirty-one newspapers
and peridocals, of which nine are in India. Two are Mahommedan papers.
He made his first trip across the Atlantic in 1865 in the Cunarder Persia,
an iron paddle wheel steamship of 3,300 gross tons, with a speed of
14 knots.
Mr. Sudall said that Dr. Peebles when at his home in Los Angeles generally
arose about 4:30 o'clock in the morning and breakfasted about 5 o'clock.
He is accustomed then to go to his rose garden. He retires as a rule
between 8 and 9 o'clock at night unless he has a lecture to deliver.
He intended to attend the international convention of spiritualists
in Geneva this month, but the London fogs affected his throat. After
lying in bed for a week Dr. Peebles got up and said he was going back
to California.
From the New York Times
Printed June 17, 1913
|
