The Dalles daily chronicle. [volume] (The Dalles, Or.) 1890-1948, 1896-11-28
THE LONG 400.

that each generation has looked back
ward to compare existing conditions
with those gone before, and each in
turn has regretted the passing away
of the circumstances under which it's
predecessors lived, prospered and
died. And yet each generation may
well afford to congratulate itself on
the advancement made over the con-
ditions of the generation it sue
ceeded.
We point to the early days of the
republic, and yet what was there then
that we would change the present
for. Then there was no cars, no
steamboats,, no steamships, no tele-
graphs nor telephones, no electric
lights, no postal conveniences, no
street railways no nothing. The
stage coach was the then solution of
rapid transit, the packet rushed along
the. canal at the rate of almost five
miles an hour, was an achievement
that filed the hebdomedal newspaper
with wonder, and The minds of the
gazing populace with awe. Mails
we've carried by private parties and
postage was charged according to
the distance the letter travelled. The
products of the West found market
in the East in the shape of live stock
that could foot it 20 its destination,
and in that alone. Cincinnati was
farther from New York, in time,
than Calcutta is today. The news
was fresh at the age of from week
to six months; the daguerreotype
was a wonderful thing, and the en-
cravings and works of art now with
in the reach of all were unobtainable,
even by the rich. Our old school
books were illustrated with pictures
that. while they delighted the fathers
of the republic in their infancy,
would not now be sent to an Indian
school in Arizona, and even then the
happy urchins who owned them, ad-
mired their beauties either by the
light from the fire or the extravagant
illumination of the tallow dip.
The country produced great men
then, it is true, but they were great.
rot on account of better opportunity,
but in. spite of obstacles. There is a
vast difference now-the difference
between the fifty mile-an- hour rail-
road train and the six mlle-an-hour
stage coach; the difference between
comfort and discomfort; between
stilts> and a bicycle; between the
speed of the horse and the get there
OF chain lightning.
1t is on the same principle that we
deceive ourselves about the things of
out childhood. Who ever revisited
the home of his boyhood after he
had reached middle age without be-
ing struck by the fact that every
thing had shriveled. The old chest
nut tree that was fifty feet to the
irst limb, has sprouted branches
forty feet lower. The great hay
NOW, where. we sought the new-laid
egg, has become but a very small /
affair; the lake above the mill that
our, wonder is frog pond,
and the fonr-acre field, where we so
longed for the short rows in hoeine
time, has become a mere truck patch.
Il IS better, perhaps, that we
should regret conditions past, that
did not exist, than to envy those yet
held in the future, but sure to come.
Life fifty years from now will exist
under highly improved conditions,
but most of US will not be here 10
enjoy them. We can console our
selves with the reflection that how
ever much we may. envy those who
come after US, they Will in turn talk
Of the good old DAYS of their fathers,
meaning us, the dissatisfied genera
ton mourning for the good old DAYS