The Worthington advance. [volume] (Worthington, Minn.) 1874-1908, 1879-11-06
FORTY YEARS Ago.
Ths Way Ihlnss Were Do,ss II 1910 Z

,... FORTY TEARS Ago.
Ths Way IhInss Were Dons II 1Slo o.
Tlscrcssl>t,,,ia.
from the New York Graphie.1
"Ycs," said the man who wasn't afraid
Of telling his age, you young fellows
OF IS don't really know how old VIC OF
As arc. You can't realize the changes
which havo come over this land in SO
short time. Look at our railroad sys-
TEN, even that in our noighborhoods.
Forty-one years ago I travelled with my
father up the whole north side of Long
island from Greenport in q carriage.
The mail was three days getting to New
York. A single railroad track extend
ed from Jamaica into Brooklyn. We
crossed from Brooklyn to New York in
horse.ferryboat. They were playing
King john in the old Park TLeater.
Fanny Ellsler was the star of the bal.
let, and one horse cabs, with step and
door behind, piled ON Broadway. The
Astor House was in it's glory, and I saw
the unfinished walls of Trinity Church.
My father took paper called the En-
press and the journal of Commerce,
out of which vai1ly sought for some
thing to interest Il 4.year-old boy. I
can recOllect but one sentence in either
of those papers. It read at intervals in
very big letters, Arrival OF the Great
Western from Europe, and it seemed
to me as If no ocean steamer, save the
Great Western, crossed the Atlantic for
years and years. Beside these head
lines, they used, on each arrival, to get
out q wood.cut of the vessel. A man
who had been to Europe in those daye
was somebody. Noted ministers used
to 60, and they always on returning
wrote books of their travels. 1t would
be good plan to compile ministerial
library of travel in Europe and Asia.
4 man with beard and mustache then
was at once curiosity and monstrosity.
I we'll recollect hearing one OF our vii
tage magnates gravely advising u young
New York doctor to shave off these ap-
pendages. They were clean shavers In
chose days. and almost everybody
shaved themselves. The razor. case anu
strop formed part of every mans trav-
cling equipment. Illinois was the
farthest Western State, letter postage
was lC cents, the Knicker1ocher was
the sterling magazine of the time, Sam
Sticks and Maj. Jack Downing's letters
the only very funny reading, gentlemen
wore swallow.tailed coats at all hours,
tomatoes were called love apples and
suspected of being poisonous, all TEN.
perance people were known as wash
ingtonians, circuses travelled with very
small negro minstrel bands who sung
Jump, Jim Crow fiddles made a row
among the older people when intro
duced in the country church choirs,
the Methodists wouldn't tolerate cross
in evergreens on Christmas, or any
thing else, or at any other time, every
body cnewed and spit, and built their
houses with Grecian porticos, photo
graphs were daguerrcotypes, and would
rub of the plates. whale oil was the on.
~ lighting tluil, all shirt-collars stood
up, doctors bied and gave calcmel for
almost everything, lung-fever hadn't
turned into pneumonia, every body had
barrel Of rum or hard cider in the cell
lar, nobody had put cauda' appendage
on our first parents, all schootmasters
came from Connecticut and licked with
a cowhide, girls hadn't learned to skate,
a man worth million was rich, the
Democrats were called 'Lcco.focos,'
and so were the matches, the Presby-
terians preached down the Methodists
and Episcopalians, the country papers
abounded in advertisements of runaway
apprentice-boys bound out to serve I'm
til of age, represented pictorially by a
young man making tracks, with his
bundle slung on a stick over his
shoulder. Good butter was only o
shilling pound, good cigars 3 cents
apiece. Rum was the favorite drink,
the best of liquor 6 cents glass. In
FAINT damnation, predcstination, and
election were the favorite pulpit topics,
Eclipse the fastest horse in America,
Bunker hill monument big thing just
done, nobody lectured, round dances
hadn't come over, lager.beer was I'M
known, general trainings we're held
yearly, the muskets had flint locks,
every householder was required by
law to keep two leather buckets in case
of fire, ladies' wore bustles, gentlemen
strapped their pantaloons under their
boots, trousers were cut with horizontal
instead OF perpendicular flaps in front,
and Henry Clay and Daniel Webster
were tile greatest men in the United
States. I tell you those were times,
now"