Science class

  Our ninth grade science teacher, later to be our chemistry teacher, was born in the late 1800's.  I no longer have any conscious recall of anything scientific that he related to us, though he was a good teacher so I suppose a lot of his teachings were assimilated over the years.  But I do recall his recounting an anecdote from his youthful days, as he would sometimes do.   The means of travel in his courting days, he told us, was by horse and buggy.  The advantage was great, he explained, because when he would be returning to his home late at night, and was very tired, the horse would know the way back to the barn.  He didn't have to worry about the drive home, and could even fall asleep.  Not something you could do nowadays, he told us.    Ever the optimist, he also told us that since he came from a family that had a lot of longevity, he believed he had the chance to have been alive through three different centuries.  He retired just slightly over half-way through his second century, in 1955 I think, and he didn't make it into the third century.  He'd said it would have been a long shot.