Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1872-11-14
Before the Fieed.


ANTEpILUvIAN life had its advantages;
there is no denying that With an exist
ence Of nine hundred sixty and nine years
before him, man could do much. He
could be his own "oldest inhabitant,"
and 'never remember anything" If a
Shakespeare, he could celebrate his own
precautionary; he could look back with
pride upon at least two hundred constitu-
tional crises, and nine hundred successive
seasons which brought the green pea of
the spring and the fresh Oyster of the fall,
In those blissful ages, when time was
reckoned by months instead of hours,
and men set their eightyear clocks by the
siXty-three year comets, q fellow could, if
lazily inclined, lay in bed till September,
or 90 on q ten years drunk When he
went out to make friendly call he could
say to his family; 80 long; I'm Just going
to drop into Methusaleh's for couple OF
years, don't wait dinner for me-" oY ad-
dressing his toddling infant of eighty, he
might give him permission to 60 out and
play till 1895, but insist on his coming
home then, so as not to keep his fond pa.
rents sitting up for him. Life assurance
would be cheaper under such system
and the rate Of interest, when a man gave
notes at six hundred years, renewable for
three hundred years more, must necessa'
rily have been proportionately low.
The peculiarities OF pre-Noachlc exist
cnce would have been made m0ststriking-
" manifest had three or four Of these old
sinners padded their own canoe through
the flood, survived, increased and multi
Piled
80, - would observe hale old man Of
niEe hundred to his companion, a jolly,
middle-aged ptcentenarian, they are AT
it again, prating of reforms ana amend
ments, nd consttutionality, to us, who
remembered the Heptarchy, Alfred died
the year ! was born, but remember
William as If it was only yesterday. |
was only child then. Well, well, Bill
was a good fellow, Once"
Yes might interrupt here a beardless
youth of four hundred and eighty, "my
uncle often told me that"
Little boys, would interpose the SEN
Tor, in tones Of digniied rebuke, must be
seen, not heard II you cannot keep
still while your elders are speaking, Elem,
my son, the nurse must put you to bed.
Well, as | was saying"
True, true" here would observe La
mech, "and what snobbishness it is in
folks to talk of their long descent, and
Norman or Knickerbocker ancestors, We
remember all that, don't We? Well, well,
everybody had ancestors then, only they
can't all trace Them
"Paryenus, Lamech, parvenus, all OF
them. Talk of your old families to me,
whose great grandfather remembers
Adam. We've seen thing or two in oul
century. Confouud this rheumatism,
caught caught cold sitting in draft about
the end of the fifteenth century, and
every hundred years or sol have twinge
of it."
"That was about the time Christopher
Columbus sailed to discover America"
"The same year. Poor Chris! | knew
him well You knew Smith?"
''Kirby?'
No, John, the fellow that Pocahontas
got struck with. But you were only a
boy at that time" Aud 50 these old
fogies would prattle on. II is perhaps
lust as well that Noah had no spare state
rooms in the ark, as a surviving antedilu-
Wan would have been as fly in precious
ointment. A man sitting at your tabie
whose memory went back to thirteen
hundred Odd-who commenced his aneC-
dotes by moralizing: at was Just seven
hundred years ago to-day, when ln--who
had handled the founder of one aristo.
cratic family on his knee in l1l2, and dis
tinctly recalled the author Of another