Quadricentenarian

Two of these trees are pines and two are oaks; there can be no doubt that they are 400 years old because the mikado says they are, and he ought to know, for, as we understand, he planted them himself. But, whether they be quadricentenarians or not, Mrs. Potter intends to utilize them for all the advertising there is in them.

With drums proudly beating, / With glad birthday greeting, / At Columbia’s feet their priceless gift they cast / To the quadricentenarian / Both Greek and Barbarian / Before her strength and beauty stand aghast.

A POSSIBLE QUADRICENTENARIAN / A LIVING creature that has trod the earth, however sluggishly, since the days of the Spanish Armada is an object of no common degree of interest. Such a creature has just passed away peacefully in London, in the person of Drake, a venerable tortoise of the Zoological Gardens, supposed to be nearly four hundred years old.

Historic towns. Some are centenarians. But San Germán (right) is a quadricentenarian — and the home of one of the oldest churches in America.

But today I would have to wonder, since only by this very year of 1985 do any composers in our standard concert repertoire date back as much as three centuries. (Our one notable quadri'''centenarian this year, Heinrich Schutz, still has not quite entered into the “standard concert repertoire.”)

The quadricentenarians of the colony sat on the foremost benches, nodding numbly to the drone of the hardrangers’ strings, their liver-spotted fingers rippling to the runs of the tune.

Previous to the discovery of this quadricentenarian, the record for the oldest animal was held by a 374-year-old Icelandic quahog clam housed in a German museum.

So I began the series as a quadricentenarian, a 400-year-old, and travelled backwards in time until eventually I reached the age that I was, 58.