Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1886-07-15
A HALF CENTURY.
Changes Wrought in Fifty Years Amount
ing Almost to Transformation.


ing Almost to a Transformation.
years 1 propose taking a second look at
some parts of Europe. This will give
my readers, as well as the writer, a
vacation to which we both seem en-
titled. 1t is Rip Van Wrinkle expert
ment which l am promising myself.
The changes wrought by half a century
in the countries Visited amount almost
to a transformation. / left the England
of William the Fourth, of the Duke of
Wellington, of Sir Robert Peel the
France of Louis Philippe, of Marshal
Soult, of Theirs, of Guizot. l went
new railroad, the only one l saw in
Europe. Hooked upon England from
the box of stage-coach, upon France
from the coupe of diligence, upon
Italy from the chariot of vetturino
The broken windows of Apsley House
were still boarded up when 1 was in
London. The asphalt pavement was
not laid in Paris. The Obelisk of Luxor
was lying in its great boat in the Seine,
as l remember it. / did not see it erect
ed; it must have been a sensation to
have looked on, the engineer standing
underneath, so as to be crushed by it if
it disgraced him by falling in the pro-
cess. AS for the dynasties that have
OVERLAND each other like DR.. Schlie-
mann's Trojan cities. there is no need
of moralizing over history which in
stead of Finis is constantly ending with
What neTt?
With regard to the changes in the
general conditions of society and the
advance in human knowledge, think
for one moment what fifty years has
done. | have often imagined myself
escorting some wise man of the East to
our Saturday Club, where we often have
distinguished strangers as our guests
Suppose there sat by mel will not say
Sir Isaac Newton, for he has been too
long away from us, but that other
great man, whom Prof Tyndall names
as next to him in intellectual stature,
as he passes along the line of master
minds of his country from the days of
Newton to our Own-Dr. Thomas
Young, who died in 1929. Would he
or | be the listener, if we were side by
side? However humble I might feel in
such presence, | should be so clad in
the grandeur of the new discoveries, in
ventons, ideas, | had to impart to him
that | should seem to myself like the
Ambassador of an Emperor. / should
tell him of the ocean steamers, the rail
roads that spread themselves like cob
webs over the civilized and half-civil-
lied portions of the earth, the telegraph
and the telephone, the photograph and
the spectroscope. l should hand him a
paper with the morning news from Lon
don to read by the electric light, should
startle him with a friction match, I
should amaze him with the incredible
truths about anesthesia, l should aston
ish him with the later conclusions of ge-
ologv, / should electrify him by the fully
developed doctrine of the correlation of
forces, l should delight him with the
cell-doctrine, | should confound him
with the revolutionary apocalypse of
Darwinisnl. All this change in the as
poets, position, beliefs of humanity
since the time of DIR. Young's death,
the date of my own graduation from
college! .t<- -f ..a
l ought to consider myself highly IA
vored to have lived through such half
century. But it seems to me that in
walking the streets of London and Paris
/ shall revert to my student days, and
appear to myself like relic of a former
generation. Those who have been born
into the inheritance of the new civiliza-
ton feel very differently about it from
those who have lived their way into it.
To the young and those approaching
middle age all these innovations in life
and thought are as natural, as much a
matter of course as the air they