San Antonio daily light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1886-1907, 1896-06-28
SAFETY PINS.

1t is in the small things of life and
not in the large ones that the advance
of this present age upon all past ages
is so discernable. The present is de-
cried as the utilitarian age, the age of
the moneymakers, the practical age,
in distinction to former ages that were
reputed more heroic, but this age is
the best of them all in those diviner
arts of peace that make life an enjoy
able thing. The dreamers of golden
age that is past, or of mellow OBJ
security in which all distinctiveness of
vision is lost, may glorify that autums
nal haze, but wisdom takes courage
from comforts enjoyed and looks to
coming ages and not to past ones for
those enlarged opportunities for COM
fort that the past age gave not and
which are so largely realized in this
present. Realized in part only, for
the means of comfort are only being
partly, known.
How our gruff ancestors and their
forefathers back in the uncounted
centuries lived their lives, when cook
ing was an undiscovered art, chairs
an unknown comodity, beds an I'M
dreamed of luxury, tallow dips I'M
thought of, doors and windows I'M
imagined, and all the luxuries of the
revolutionary period of a hundred
years ago beyond conception, was a
puzzle to those old revolutionary
sires. who then thought that the pin
nacle of comfort was reached. How
our ancestors of that revolutionary
period lived when gas and electricity
and steam were unknown, or unap-
piled to any of the arts of living bet
ter, without the sewing machine and
the telephone and the telegraph and
the alarm bell and the district mes
senger service, etc, is now puzzle
to us
Iii like manner another century will
look down upon the almost crude ap-
pliances of comfort that this age so
much lauds and will wonder what
kind of life we must have led, when
thousand miles was the utmost eX-
tent of a days rail travel, when it
took a week to make the ocean voy-
age, when drouths consumed the
earth and cyclones devastated the
country, when people attended church
and concerts instead of hearing these
things at home, when families cooked
in their own houses and communities
for comfortable home service were
virtually unknown, when navigation
of the air was regarded as whimsical
and perpetual motion vagary of the
Imagination Thus from age to age the
infinite procession of inventions for
human comfort will succeed each 9th
er and each generation improve upon
the work and deyisement of its prede-
Icessor
But in every age, and throughout
all the endless succession of new
means of living, and ever increasing
adoption of supplying wants and in
creasing comfort, there will be a re,
turn to some simple ministry of home
living, some little unappreciated
mechanism for personal service, some
insurance of the life. against discom.
fort OF pain that viii still challenge
attention and perhaps defy the in.
ventive genious of the ripper era to
improve upon. AS it is in the little
arts Of life that its real luxury lie,
as it is in being great in little things
that the true greatness lies, so it will
be rVepd that. it is in these little APP
planes of increasing TOUR home en-
Joyments, or our personal convent
enee in dress or house service. that
the greater advantage of this present
appears. 1t is NJ these little things
that our life is rich.
Just as the friction match was an
improvement upon the old flint ant