The Birmingham age-herald., 1904-11-27

mies Then our grandfathers, for the most part, had the pleasure of dressing without any wooen underwear next to their skins. They had the luxury of ma larial fever, scarlet fever and diphtheria, which used to rayage almost every house on account of poor water and drainage. They had the luxury of sitting up in the house at night and using small tallow candle light to read by when they were not too dead tired to read.
 As for me, give me less of the poetry of old times and let me eat in my humble home my three meals a day with some other food besides ham, and let me eat that food with a fork rather than be like Queen Elizabeth, who, upon her palace dining floor, made of cold stones, had her food placed before her on the table, so that she might eat the meats with her bare, greasy fingers.
 But, oh, if the well people, physically and mentally, are better off from tenn poral standpoint in this day than they were in our grandfathers' and grand mothers times, how much more ought the sick to be thankful unto him who is the Giver of all good giftsl Think of the merciful institutions which have been erected for the invalids, called hospitals. Think of all the marvellous wonders which have been discovered or Invented by means of which pain can be driven away at the point of the surgeons knlIe or cured by the physicians prescription! Think of the mercful angel "anaethe- sIa." who comes to the side of the operat- ing table and lays the soothing hand Of benumbment upon the twitching nerves and the agonizing brain! Tell me, 0 sick man, that this is not a better time to live in than those times in which our grand fathers lived
 No Dental Chairs.
 Then think of the mercies which have come to us through the dental chair. In olden times when man had toothache he would go to the village doctor or to the village blacksmith. The forceps wold embrace the aching tooth. There would be a gran, yell, kicking of the sufferer, and out would come the offend ing molar. What was the result? Among cur ancestors 1t was no exception to hnd a young man or a young woman ol thirty-five years of age without tootf in the jaw. Think of the dyspepsia ana after-dnner pains which were ther caused by poorly masticated food Some of us complain becauses we have not al the different kinds of food we tables VI would like to have But in olden times they not only complained about the few kinds of food they had to eat, but they also complained about their sore gums with whichc they had to masticate thai poor food. Many lives of our ancestors were shortened because prematurely' as King Solomon expressed 1t. "the grinders ceased, because they were few
 Then today make big inventory or the blessings of the modern public senool system of America. In olden unes IL was the exception for the son or daugh- ter of home to have what IS caieu q Iiharal education. Yale and Harvard and Princeton then dignified by the name of college, were in fact nothing more or less than modern high schools. These insti- tutions and colleges like them were very few and far between. only nere ana tbera we find that young man was able to go to one of them. The great masses of people of q hundred years ago were entirely uneducate. If you do not agree with this conclusion, go and study the old documents kept among the revolutionary