Oxford Democrat. [volume] (Paris, Me.) 1833-1933, 1903-12-29
The Good Old Times.

It Is tradition with every people on
the face of the earth that the old times
were better than the new. The Germans
have familiar phrase, "In den guten
al ten zeiten," which has long done faith
full service for that nation, and there Is
scarcely a language that does not produce
an equivalent phrase. Old people often
tell younger ones how they have come
into the world too late. We doubt not
that many really deceive themselves in
the thought that the times are not mend
ing and that we are all Fastening on to
some crash that will engulf the whole
mortal Babylon of wickedness and deca-
dence.
Youth in every land is careless and
bright. The outlook is clear. Experience
has not dulled the keen edge of little
pleasures. Indulgences which now give
us no delight leave happy memories that
come to have more and more lustre as
years wear on and we are confronted with
the difficulties and anxieties of daily life.
Rarely do We meet with men-certainly
there are few in middle age-who have
anything but fond memories of their boy
hood and who would not give much of
the accumulated experience and fortune
of later days if they could call the spring
time back again.
But the real is mistaken for the seeming
so. What self-made Americans such as
give us their autobiographies at biennial
periods in the Congressional Record
would actually care to return to the
aboriginal condition, sleep in an attic
through whose roof the snOwflakes blow
on winter nights and go out to fetch the
COWS or the milking early of frosty m orn-
ings, warming their bare feet on the
spots where the kline had rested their
great hot sides during the night hoursP
No millionaire even in moments of per-
plexity and govt would really want to
exchange to-day for yesterday.
Consider the age in which we live and
we need say nothing about such hack
neyed themes as locomotives and steam
ships, and telegraphs and telephones.
The poor fellows who were wounded at
Brandywine and Germantown had to pass
through the surgeons hands without
anasthetics. Robert Morris complains
in his Diary that one whole day at his
home at Lemon Hill, on the Schuylkill,
was wasted because his chimney smoked.
Franklin, when he went to France the
last time, old in the service of Pennsyl-
vania and the colonies, was so exhausted
by the tedious voyage in sailing vessel
that he could scarcely leave the ship.
For as the passengers had had no fresh
meat except for a dolphin which had
been caught over the ships side.
When the capital of the United States
was changed from Philadelphia to Wash
ington in 1901 President John Adams
household furniture was transported by
wagon over such horrible roads that it
was nearly all broken in transit. Mrs.
Adams, on arriving there, had to send to
Georgetown, three or four miles away,
for her marketing, and wood-choppers,
who could fell the trees and cut them in
to stove lengths to keep the White House
warm, had to be imported from Philadel-
phia. 1t took Charles Thompson about
ten days to go from New York to Mount
Vernon to notify Washington of his cleo
ton to the Presidency, and the Father of
His Country the same time to repair to
New York for the Inauguration. The
iurist, James Wilson, Robert Morris,
General Mifflin, and several other distin-
guished Philadelphians, during the Revo-
luton, had to take refuge in Wilson's
house and defend it with shotguns against
the Pennsylvania militia merely because
they were men of property and wealth.
The government of the United States,
late in the war, had to move out of
Philadelphia root and branch and take
shelter at Princeton because about a
hundred discharged soldiers from up the
state were marching to the city to collect
small sum which they said was due
them for military service.
In the closing years of the eighteenth
century what was called the plague
swept over Philadelphia every summer,
decimating the population, and within the
memory of most of us yellow fever was a
common visitant in American coast
cities in hot weather. 1t was not long
before the Revolution that women were
burned as witches in Massachusetts,, and
men, even in free America, were perse-
cuted for their religious views. 1t is
not half century since millions of our
fellow beings were slaves, the absolute
property of their masters, and most of
us can recollect when savage Indians
were still killing and scalping women
and children on the frontiers.
Talk about the good old times when
wheat was SO bushel and cotton brought
Is cents pound, if you like, but remem-
Der who eats the bread and who wears
the cotton cloth. Remember, too, how
men worked hard for twelve or thirteen
hours a day to earn less than dollar.
Picture it all in roseate hues, but mix
the colors so that you get truth as well
as brightness. "The good old times"
have gone never to return. Let them
60 and be glad of it.