The commonwealth., 1901-01-10

minister or IaWyer-and boys were less
expensive than in these days of the
nations s luxury and comfort. In 1900
to 20 from a North Carolina village
to Philadelphia or New York would be
like a trip across Russia and Siberia or
to the North Pole in 1900. Letters
we're written when somebody died or
was born, as the lowest rate of postage
under 40 miles was cents and it took
about month to get from Maine to
Georgia. The stage cosch was the
means of transportation and roads
were bad, whenever there were any.
It was simple, isolated life the peo-
pie lived then but it was beautiful
idyllic, bucolic, pastoral life, enchant-
ing to US in Its dim distance down the
colonnades of the past. With the
advent OF the railroad, which annihlla-
tes distance, and the telegraph and
telephone, which annihilate time,
there has been born in human kind a
sad, serious tendency to flock together ::
The nineteenth century has been mar
ked with an exodus from country to
city, and it has not proved an exodus
ell Of Nimrod and the Babylon OF Dan
lei, the Sodom of Lot, the NineYeh OF
Jonah, the Rome OF Nero to the great
municipalities of today, cities have
been comfortable, convenient, convlv-
ial, affording the greater opportunities,
producing wealth, but tending to be
bad. And the worse they get the
more they draw upon the ruddy, sturdy
youth of the country to repair their
depleted manhood, but these, too, or
their children soon feel the effects Of
luxurious environment.
The century has been marked by
wonderful strides in methods of trans
portation and in invention in general
In the last three-quarters of the CEN
tury the globe has been girdled with
an iron let work of 100000 miles of
track The locomotive is the most
magnificent engine of power. It Is
the realization in iron and steel OF the
tabled Pagasus OF the Greeks and Ro-
mans. From Fulton's little Clermont
has evolved the modern liner, the
ocean greyhound, the Oceanic, the
Kaise: Wilhelm der Crosse, the
Deutck!and.
The inventions Of the period are al
most countless. Among the greater
ones are the sewing machine, the
jacquard loom, the blast furnace,
reaping, harvesting, binding an d
threshlng machines, the Hoe perfect
Ing press, the typewriter, the match,
the Roentgen rays, a pefected telescope
that brings the moon within one hun
dred miles and renders the discovery
OF a new star marvel, celIuloid, IL
Illuminating gas, electric lights, electric
motor, aluminium, India rubber, the
telegraph, the telephone, the stetbo-
scope, the spectroscope, the car coupler
with variations, the Zeppelin airship,
the producer OF this editorial--the
llnotype-etc., etc. Truly the nine
teenth century must have been that
ioh ,Jcio Nf
seer, overlapping centuries and mlllen-
NUNS, rested when he wrote: "Many
shall run to and fro, and krowledge
shall be increased"
A hemisphere has been chopped In
twain at Suez a hole bored through
the Alps with an auger at Mont Gems
and St. Gothard; the widest rivers
crossed oyer with suspension bridges
and under with tunnels; houses built
80 stories high-yeritabIe modern
Babels and their tops reached with
elevators. Marvellous things tor enor-
nifty Of achievement have been accom-
pilonOA OJ thO 1OS1YAGy Va bA0 A4AAeA
ants that swarm over the globe. But
more wonderful still for marvel has
been the search after the discovery Of
the little things. The science OF bac-
terioIogy has been established. The
microbes specific diseases have been
found to exist in an army of hostile,
ampbibious germs, swimming In Red
Seas of blood or crawling about on the
dry land of muscle and tissue, bent or
murder. By inocula!lon with antido-
tai lymph, another army OF unseeable,
nfinitessimal germ-soldlers, is sent to
the rescue, and awful Thermcp ylas,
Marathons, Sadowas, Waterloos, Get
| tysburgs and San Juans are fought al!
at once in the in'ards OF folks, and yet
the only way to see the raging battle
is to glue ones eye to 10000 power
minifying microscope. Lister, Pasteur
Koch and their schools have become
famous in medical science in the
nineteenth century.
In 1900, atheism and infidelity were
4