The Stark County Democrat. [volume] (Canton, Ohio) 1833-1912, 1882-06-22
PRIMITIVE TIMES.
In the Forest Primeval of Stark
County.
Address of Judge George W. Raft Before
the Old Pioneers Association
on June ID.

In that delightful book "Prue and l."
| by George William Curtis, it is beauti-
| fully and aptly said that "the years pass
| like the summer Clouds" and to us, who
have this day gathered for the purpose
of renewing old associations and TeYiv-
| ing old memories, the thought thus
felicitOusly expressed comes as a self
evident truth, confirmed and verified by
our own individual experience. YesteT-
day, we were boys; to-day, (mOTe than a
half century of years having passed over
| us,) we ind ourselves suddenly trans
formed into old, or at least, middle-aged
men and women, and wondering to find
! ourselves classed among The pioneers of
Stark county. Yesterday, we stood at
the altar, with the chosen of our hearts;
to-day, (the intervening years appearing
but as IAN hand-breadth'O our sons and
daughters are pledging their faith to
kindred hearts at the same sacred shrine.
Yesterday, with high hopes and noble
ambitions we crossed the line dividing
youth from manhood, and took our
places among the full-gTOWn men and
| women of our race; to-day, $50 impeT-
| ceptibly have the years tled,) the falter-
ing step, the shortened breath, the
| dimmed eye, the wrinkled brow, the
frosted head, indicate to US and to all
| nun lLclG IllC JNulo VI Jul llldRb
| are drawing to a close; that our lives
| lie behind us; that to us it will always
be evening, and never again, upon earth,
morning; and that
sour only sure possession is the past"
The child and the youth look forward,
with longing, eager eyes, to the attrac-
tiOns of manhood and wOmanhOOd. Their
thought is of the future, and what it
will bring them. The years creep
wearily and tardily alOng-sO tardily,
| indeed, that even in later life, as we
scan the path along which we have ad-
vanced, the first ten or fifteen years of
our existence seem to have been longer
than all its subsequent periods COM
bined The young man and young
| woman live in the present, and find the
passing hour and the near future the
chief food for thought and individual
effort. But the aged live in the past,
stTaying ever amid
Fields of dream where memory
| Wanders like cleaning Ruth"
Taking up here the fragment of for
gotten melody; there, the recollection
of an incident fraught with perennial
pleasure, and at other times summon
ing up to the eye and ear of the imagi-
tiOn the faces and tones of the loved and
| lost, to when the heart was bound by
cords the most tender and exquisite
these, with the fellowship of old friends,
the affection that centres in the house,
hold and its members, the satisfaction
resulting from the survey of a we'll
spent life, and the visions of the Land
beyond the Crystal Sea, form the delights
ia which the minds Of the aged revel,
and make their declining years in reality
the happiest of their lives. Henry Bas-
com, one Of the most eloquent men this
country has ever produced, says: ut is
a benevolent provision of nature that in
old age the memory enjoys a second
spring, and that, while we forget all
passing occurrences, many of which are
but the usual cOneOmitants of old age,
we have vivid and delightful TecOllec-
tiOn of all the pleasures of youth. OBJ
jects become shadOwy to the bodily eye
as they become more remote; but to the
Rental eye of age the most distant are
the most distiRct. A man of eighty may
forget that he was seventy, but he never
fOrgetS that he was once boy"
But as We have come here for the pur-
pose of renewing, for day, the life
which we lived fifty years and over ago
let US drop the train of thought into
which have endeayOrd for a few mo-
meRts to lead you, and let us travel
back, in imagination, TO the time when
this county, in which some of us had
our birth, and others have been long
| lAfluB -EJ duOpblOng WAS Ill It's YOU'LL
and when the ''early settlers" possessed
it. Many of you can trace your recOllee-
tiOns' of men and things, as they existed
in the early times, quite a number of
years beyond the point to which my
memory reaches. 1 cannot go beyond
1929, but there are men and women here
whO'can, if they will, give US reminis-
scenGes of life in old molly Stark, -
ante-dating mine fifteen to twenty
years, and trust that before we separ-
ate we shall have the felicity of hearing
1 from the lips of at least some of them,
the experiences through which they
passed in those lar away times, while
yet the white man and the Indian Occu-
pied these woods in common.
4 The young people of our day can have
but a faint conception of the priyatiOns
and hardships through which the men
and women passed who started this
county out on its grand and noble
4 career. Surrounded, as we now are, by
all the advantages which the years have
brought to tighten the burden of mans
existence, and to relieve him from the
effects of the primal curse, it is hard
even for US, who, to greater or less ex-
tent, were compelled to pass through
the experiences to which have referred,
to realize the changes which have taken
place under our very eyes in the status
OF things as theyf formerly were, when
compared with what they now are. Just
think of It'll A man who died in this
county fifty years ago, never saw a rail-
road with either steam or horse-cars,
a steamship, a telegraph, telephone, a
gas light, a steam or hot-air heating
furnace. a moving machine, a reaping
machine, with or without self-rake or
self-binding attachment, a lawn mower,
a threshing machine, a grain drill, a
horse hay rake, a corn planter, a corn
shelter, hay loader or hay unloader, a
hay scale, planning machine, buggy
with elliptic springs, an iron safe, a
sewing machine, cook stove, Frank
lin stove, cOal-heating stove, port
able engine, a portable saw-mill, a
| clOthes-wringeT, melOdiOn or cabinet
organ, copying press, a gold pen, a
letter envelope, pOstage-stamp, a ro-
| tary or other rapidly multiplying print
ing press, daily newspaper, a photo
graph, canned fruit or vegetables, India
rubber goods, carbon oil, the use of
chloroform or other anaesthesia in surg
cry and dentistry, the almost universal
use of steam as a motive power, nor