Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1875-04-02
1.-THE G0OD OLD TIAE,S.'


misery in the world at the present time, and
assertions that the human race is growing
worse and worse, wiser but more wicked.
In politics, religion, education, morals,
there is the same cry, that the tendency is
downward. Men with yearning for
the past read their morning papers with
intelligence of transactions of the day be-
fore from all parts of the globe, but they
cannot see any sign of progress in the
wonderful record before them which steam,
electricity and fast printing presses have
combined to produce. They travel in a
day by railroad farther than they could go
in a week by stage forty years ago, and
with more comfort and much less ex-
pense, but they are unable to see any i'm
provement in the mode OF travelling.
Our common schools and colleges they
regard as useless. because the ways OF
supporting and conducting them have
changed. The institutions of charity that
exist are decried as only establishments
to rob and cheat the public, while at
tempts to reform criminals, to do away
with barbarous punishments, are con-
sidered sure signs of sickly sentimental
ism and the decay of robust manhood.
They see corruption everywhere, virtue
nowhere.
The real difficulty with people of that
class who extol everything past and de-
preciate everything present, who lament
and decry all progress or attempt to aban
don the old and try the new, is with them
selves and not with the times. They
neither see the past as it was nor the pres
ent as it is. They blind themselves to the
facts in both cases. One of our cotempo-
raries, the Chicago Tribune. has en-
deavored to open the eyes of the admirers
OF the past by presenting an array of
facts about the good old times which we
think worthy the attention of our readers.
1.-THE good old times Of idyllic peace
and innocence. says the Tribune, "were
marked, first by terribly destructive wars,
epidemics and plaques. Theological
quarrels and prosecutions almost depopu-
lated Northern Africa. The wars of JUS
tinian made incredible inroads on the peo-
pie of Italy. Spanish barbarity killed
100000 Mexicans, and swept Peru
almost bare Of life. England, thanks TO
war, bloody cruelty, sickness and misery,
only barely doubled its population in 500
years after the Norman conquest. The
normal rate of increase doubles popula-
ton every fifty years. In the famine of
1880, human flesh was cooked and sold.
In 1858. $4,000 persons died of hunger in
London, then city of not more than 1O0,-
600 souls. Eneas Sylvius. afterwards
Pope Plus H., visited the British Isles in
1880, and has left description of the con-
dition Of the common people at that time.
They lived, he says, in huts built of stone
without mortar, with turf roofs, with a dry
bulls hide for door, without windows,
with no chimneys, with clay floors. Some
of them had never seen bread They
lived on coarse vegetables and on pulver-
lied bark. Their scanty clothing swarmed
with vermin. They were brutal in their
habits. The condition of things in Paris
and London for a thousand years before
the reformation was scarcely better. The
houses were of wood daubed with mud
and matched with clay or reeds. Dirty
straw was the only carpet. Domestic and
human animals herded together in filth.
A bag of straw and wooden log were
bed and pillow. Modesty and purity were
impossible. Outside the houses. things
were no better. The narrow, filthy streets
without sewers, drainage, or lamps, were
filled with garbage and nigh.-soil. Show
ers of Stops fell on the wayfarer who
walked through these alleys after night
Michelet has said with French exagger-
alton Of an unclean truth: There WIS
not bath for thousand years King,
cOurtier and slave We'd with each other in
dirtiness. When Thomas "a Beckett was
murdered, his clothes were found to be
full of vermin. The 'odor of sanetity' at
that age would demand disinfectants and
Boards of Health now.
The good old times, thus rich in war,
pestilence, famine, misery, and dirt, were
poor in the resources of healing art. A
sick man sought shrine cure, not ply
stefan. The first were everywhere, the
latter almost nowhere. Some crusaders
brought back to Europe two sovereign
cures for all the ills flesh is heir to,-a bot
tie of the pretended milk of the Virgin,
and finger of the Holy Ghost.
The good old times, again, were times
OF utter insecurity. William of Malmes-
bury, speaking of the Anglo-Saxons, says
The common people were prey to the
more powerful their property was seized,
their bodies dragged away to distant coun-
tries; their maidens were either thrown
into brothel or sold for slaves; drinking,
day and night, was the general pursuit
vices, the companions OF inebriety. fol.