The Abilene reflector. [volume] (Abilene, Kan.) 1883-1888, 1884-02-07
Early Village Life.

AS we look back upon that early life
in a small New England town, the chief
educational advantage seems to us the
concentration of public interest on
every individual in the community. We
do not give the old country life much
credit for its training of the body. II
was life that brought out tremen-
dous force and endurance in certain
types of physical constitution, while
for many others it was a slaughter
house far more than gymnasium. The
terrible toll of the women with the old
time stvle of dress, and exposure, Is
largely accountable for that mysterious
feebleness of young women that to-day
battles the doctors and inspires a good
deal of denunciatiOn of present sanitary
affairs. The fact is, the present condi-
tiOns for wholesome life, anywhere in
New England, among similar class OF
people, are incomparably more faVOra-
bic than thirty years ago in all save the
tremendous intensity of living which
has come in with the development OF
our new inventions, and the excitements
of revolutionary epoch. The health
of college boys, in that day. was pro-
verbally a matter of apprehension.
Half our own class at Amherst. Mass
fell out from sickness; whereas Am
herst now is a model institution in this
respect The stones in the old grave
wards tell the story of youthful mertali-
tv. The solid old millionaire who at
the head of his table declaims against
modern imbecility, is one of little
group of survivors of the large number
of country boys who fell by the way,
crushed by the first real conflict with
life. If the true destiny of man were to
plod on one hundred years in slow, un-
eventful, materiallstic 'jog-trot," that
old life was, perhaps, sanitary success;
but any bright Yankee boy, nowadays,
in twenty years, by the help of modern
appliances, can do more valuable work
than his grandfather, even were his
thread of existence spun out to the age
of Methuselah.
Certainly that old life was not largely
favorable to mental generosity or any
very broad habits of thought or intelli-
gence. The amount of mental force
wasted in circling round and round in
the peck measure of petty township af-
fairs, neighborhoOd gossip, school dis
trict, church and tOwn-meeting quar-
rels, was something incredible to an
outsider. 1t made the life of many Of
those old towns a beer-garden rather
than the Eden that figures in the remi-
niscence. Thousands of able men and
women frittered out their life in this
narrow inclosure during the two cent
uries before the opening of the great
West. The prodigious rush out of this
stvle of country life, even toward the
wilderness, shows how intolerable this
lack of varied interest and social geni-
ality and endless friction on rasped
nerves had become. And if from the
religious life or that period we subtract
the rage for theological disputatiOn, the
partisan bigotry of the little rival
churches. the personal worship of the
clergy, and the social element that
| gathered around the old meeting house,
| the superiority in morals and religion is
less real than apparent
But, for good or evil, this type OF
country life has gone forever. The
least village among the White Hills
now lies with all these old fences down,
open to the old world, throbbing with
the mighty life of modern times. We
| should do well to waste no breath in
vain entreaty for the return Of the past;
but rather apply ourselves with all dill
renee to the adjustment of child-life to
the varied and momentous conditions
of.the present hour.-JOurnGlo of Edsca-
| ton. -esfisr