Dodgeville chronicle. [volume] (Dodgeville, Wis.) 1862-current, 1872-11-01
Before the Flood.

ANTEDILUvIAN 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
Shakespeare, he could celebrate his own
tercentenary; he could look back with
pride upon at least two hundred constitu-
tional crises, and niRe 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 eight-year clocks by the
sixty-three year comets, fellow could, II
lazily inclined, lay in bed till September,
or go on ten years drunk. When he
went out to make friendly call he could
say TO his family: $50 long; Pm just going
to drop into Methusaleh's for couple OF
years; don't wait dinner for me;' or, ad-
dressing his toddling infant of eighty, he
might give him permission to go 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 man gave
notes at six hundred years, renewable for
rily have been proportionatIy low.
The peculiarities of pre-Noachlc exist
ence would have been made most striking
ly manifest had three or four of these OLD
sinners padded their own canoe through
the flood, survived, increased and multi
piled.
49," would observe hale old man of
nine hundred to his companion, a jolly,
middle-aged septcentenarian, "they are at
it again, prating of reforms and amend
ments, and constitutionality, to US, who
remembered the Heptarchy. Alfred died
the year I was born, but I remember
William as if it was only yesterday. l
was only child then. Well, well, Bill
was good fellow. Once"
eyes" might interrupt here beardless
youth of four hundred and eighty, my
uncle often told me that"
"Little boys" would interpose the SEN
ior, in tones of dignifed rebuke, "must be
seen, not heard. If 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"
'Parvenus, Lamech, parvenus, all OF
them Talk of your old families to me,
whose great grandfather remembers
Adam. We've seen a thing or two in our
century. Confound 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
boy at that time" And so these cid
fogies would prattie on. Ii is perhaps
Just as we'll that Noah had no spare state.
rooms in the ark, as surviving antedilu-
Wan would have been as fly in precious
ointment A man sitting at your table
whose memory went back to thirteen
hundred odd-who commenced his anec-
dotes by moralizing: "lt was just seven
hundred years ago to-day, when P'-who
had dandled the founder of one aristo-
cratic family on his knee in 1712, and dis
tinctly recalled the author OF another
noble line in the Junk business-with such
man at large society would be unsafe.
The manners and customs of that age
would particularly impress US. Fancy
blushing and awkward girl of 300, in
pantalets, listening to the avowal of
promising young lawyer of 400, or
clever young sophmore of 575, or an an
tediluvian "old family" Into what in
significance would shrink the purpled
centuries of Nassau, Hapsburg, Guelph
or Bourbonl And as for an antediluvian
Susan B. Anthony, the mind recoils at
the thought as of something entirely be-
yond conception.
The revival Of these happy days has,
however, not yet come. 1t is the error,
not the fault, of many truly great and
good men and women that they discount
the future, and are abused for laborlng
under what appears to the vulgar and un-
sentimental hallucination. To play the
under a postdillIvlan as
pensation is nonsense. 1t would be well,
for pew holder and breaches, reader and
writer. could all remember that there has
been a flood, and the Duration of human
life ID dw!ndled to q span, ~!St, Loife
Democrat