Connecticut western news., 1895-12-12
BETTER DAYS.

 the past or future only. ''All thats bright must fsde." says Tom Moore. Very likely, and 80 must all that's not bright. To hear some people talk, you ~ould imagine that there WAS no month in the year except November and that the leaves had nothing else to do than to fall off the trees. And to refer again to Tom Moore's song. about the ''stars that chine and fall, i" one might suppose that by this time all the stars in heaven had heen blown out, like so many candles; and as for flowers and leaves, if they go away. it is only to make way for new ones. There are as many stars in heaven as ever there were in the memory of man, and as many flowers on earth, too. It is all ervy we'll. now and then. to have bit of growl. or grumble. or . lamentstieu, but one mend. fault is worth ten find faults all the world over. It is all right enough, when the barometer of the purse is low when the stomach is out of order-to say that things are not as tbey used to be, and I would not for the world de- prive an honest man of the pleasure of grumbling. It is an Americans birth right. But don't like to see a matter of feeling made matter of history and philosophio verity. Let us have our growl, and have done with it. Bn some croakers remind one of the boy who said his grandmother went up stairs nineteen times a day, and never came down again. Or, to seek for aE- other resemblance, they may be hkened to the Irish grave-digger, who was seen one night looking about the church. yard with lantern in his hand. "What have you lost, Pat?" "Oh, I have lost my lantern "Ynu have your lantern in your band" "Oh, but this is lan- tern I've found; it is not lantern l have lost" Thus it is with man in general. They think more of the lan- tern they have lost than of the lantern they have found;
 It is true. indeed, that things are moi what they were with any of us. Great changes have taken place. and more are daily taking place. but there are greater changes in our, feelings and apprehen' sions. than there are in the external world. or insthe general frame of soci ety. What great change must have taken place between the time of the seige of Troy and the days of Homer For the poet speaks of Ajax peliiug the Greeks with stones of such dimensionI that ten or dozen-men of the degener ate days in which Homer lived could not lift such sn one. Ever bis time things have been growing worse and worse, so that now, dare say. the hu man race, compsred to what it was dur ing the siege of Troy, is not much more ,an . noble army of gnats. Nothing is as it was. The people grow worss and worse, generation after generation and the inhabitants of the earth become more and more attenuated, till at length there will be nothing left of them they will become gradually invisible The sun does not shine so brightly as il used to. and the seasons-every body says they are changing. There is great deal of truth in this--there Is n, denying it. But the worst of the mat ter is. that there is too much truth ii it. The evidence of the mutation of tn. seasons from youth to manhood is SC superabundant that, by proving tot much, it proves nothing.
 Between the years TAO and 175t Horace Wslpole wrote some letters which have since been printed ana published. I have not now . copy or hand to refer to, but I distinctly remem ber reading in them 6 lamentation or the change of the seasons. The write complained that on mid summer da, he is writing by the fire-side; and h. pettishly says, "We have now no sum mer in this country, but what we ge from Newcastle" and presently aftel he adds, that 1t was not SO when he va, young: Now, I think, when Horac. Walpole was young Dean Swift was old and yet the dean makes the same com plsintf Still more curiously, the poe Cowper, writing about forty years aftel Horace Walpole, makes the same com plaint, lamenting that neither winten nor summers were such as they used tt be. Those who are now living. wh, were children when Cowper complained that the summers were not SO hot nol the winters 30 cold as they used to bs do now maka the same complaint ss b, did then. In the year 1918 the summer was remarkably fine and dry and all tn. people began to cry out on the beaut, of what they called an old-fashione> summer. To be sure it was old fashion cd summer. So are all the summer old-fashioned summers. There is | passage in lac which describes tn, climate of this Country. just as it nigh be described now. Whatever change there is is in ourselves.
 It is precisely the same with regard to manners. The decoration of mAnnerl we do not perceive so soon as we do tho change of the seasons. We take oul impression of the seasons at about the age of ten, and from that to fifteen but our impressionlof manners we take at our first enterance into life. Ali changes that have taken place since that time xe regard as innovations. as kind of dehection from the standard oi | propriety. Whatever was the fashion