The Montgomery advertiser., 1901-09-12
THESE DAYS"
soMEoDY's GRAND
 MOTHERS ALBUM


 What a fruitful theme is These Days!' A theme which, like the poor we have always with us for there are always these days" on which spieeh may be vented, and there have al"a!s been those old days" on which may De cast the retrospective gaze of regret and admiration And, toe, there are the ..days to come" for which the croker may predict the return Of the sta'e oi perfection of the past
 X The dexentracy of the now existing s.these days" may be of a different spe- eie, but is it worse than that oi our crandmothers? They did not seek for nerve thrills in the same way lneir %eney experiences were not just ike ours. but were they more valuable! sur- mus money, time, and energy was not used in a search for the novel wnich re- suited as now in dog lunches, "veseta- ble parties" "circuses," etc. The aver sions which have been of late, the ave nue for the searchers after excitement at Newport, that summer gathering piace for the self-elected few" of America with a visiting contingency from the oth- ser side.
 But rest assured that back in the old days of which our grandmothers bid us speak with tender, mufied. reverent voices and abated breath; there were some these days at which their grand mothers croked while they told of bet ter and purer times when 'I was young. I heard an old lady once bewail at the inconstancy of the man of the present day and bemoan the fact that the type like my father had become extinct. Ftsu.- un faithful"
 I afterward got a peep into her moth- CTS album. In 1t was pasted with care a clipping-all yellow and faded-cut a hundred years ago, cut because 1t had touched the heart. and met with the ap- probation of the wife of man 'so good go true so pure; so faithful"
 How could anybodys grandmother have understood such things! Things that we arc taught are the product of our own dear but terrible these days" The cutting and pasting of the clipping be- speaks knowledge of the type of man who is not 'so good; so pure; so true; so faithful" In it are such lines as:
 'In how many instances, at the pres ent day. is marriage merely a union of hands." And again: "Oh, the loneli- ness of an unwedded heart"
 Turning over the time-yellowed leaves of this olden time My Ladirs Album such lines as follows are found penncd by a youth who thought his youth had gone:
 This world is not the world to mo : It seemed In fol mcr years to be. The rainbow huos, that Hope displayed Have faded; and the sober shade Of disappointmen mt lengthens OCT My path of life, sc bright before"
 guess the soIrowing youth who penneC those lines was suffering the pang caused by the self-same kind of incOr- stancy he. if he lived. would vizit oI some loving woman later.
 The question remains unanswered What could the perfect specimens of hu of the terrible degeneracy which belong! strictly to those days. when everythinI accC rding to cur grandmothers has gon' hopelessiy to pieces?
 A dear delightful uld maid of Montgom' cry who Is oing all in her power to man, on no condition. on no point, was appalled, at listening to the music thrum- mel on the mandolin hy the boys who gather on the front porch in the twilight, when she heard:
 ''She draws dem niggers
 Like a swarm O bees.'
 sang to beautiful strains of rag-time she expressed her horror at the state oi degeneracy and told of the days when hel beaux never got more undignihed thar to warble:
 "A 'tis a dream"
 An! These Days;
 These Days!