The Birmingham age-herald., 1905-12-03

are. but there was no danger of your grandfather's stockings having holes in them Why? They were made as thick as a bed quilt. Then the beauty of them was that like a modern Mother Hubbard dress, they would continually stretch and be made to fit any one, or, rather, they would never truly fit any one.
 Then you grumble about your wives and daughters always talking about dress. "Oh," you say, 'it is dress, dress, dress from morning until night and from night until morning whenever the women get together" But who is prouder of his wife when she is dressed well than you? Are you not little more willing to go to Thanksgiving seT-ice when you are walking by her side and you think she has a prettier winter hat on than any other woman in the church? Do you not feel nightly humiliated when she does not keep herself neat and up-to-date? No, for one do not want to go back to the old poetic times of the spinning wheel. l do not wish my wife to wear her wedding rousseau, composed of one or two dresses and a shawl, made so strong that they will last for twenty, thirty, forty hfty years, and then have her will them to her children and grandchildren as family relics For my part. I thank God for the comforts of modern dress. thank God that for mere song the sewing machine and the big factory can give me light garments for summer and heavy gar- ments for winter and brighten my Easter service not only with the flowers of the field, but with new spring garments for both masculine and feminine.
 Benefits of Improvements.
 But, after discussing for little while the benefits which machinery has given to us in our eating and drinking and our sanitation and in our wearing apparel, shall we stop there? Shall we not at , least hint at the wonderful benefits that have come to us from telephone and telegraph and the modern newspapers and the lights by which we read in the even ing hours, and from the typewriter, which has so lifted the onerous burdens of pro- fessional and mercantile life. and the electric cars which for cents make it possible for a business man to be in his office at half past in the morning and yet take his evening meal in a suburban home surrounded by flowers and grass grown yard, as well as by wife and child ren? Shall we not thank God for the wonderful inventions of the biologist s laboratory, for the microscope, the Roent- gen rays. and all the wonderful means by which disease is being halted in its on- ward march and driven back and by which | the cTOOktu lllubS are SlIdiEu ul | Shall we not thank God for the wonder full system of street lamps we have, which
 makes midnight in a large city almost as
 bright as midday and which light is the | greatest of all crime preventers? And
 above all shall we not thank God for
 our library shelves filled with books
 cheap books, yet books ready to serve
 us when we stretch out our hands toi | them?
 We are living in wonderful age. How 1 wonderful it is not one of us can truly grasp. l was never more impressed with | the rapid advancement of material bless 1 ings and of inventions than wherf reading
 recently a synopsis of a lecture delivered l by the late Bishop Clark of Rhode Is- 1 land in 1855 At that time there were nc l bicycles, no automobiles, no typewriting
 machines, no telephones, no Atlantic ca
 bles, no transcontinental railroad no i great steamship lines as we conceive 1 them. no successful airships. no sleep l ing cars, no large office buildings. with 1 their elevators, and no electric cars The | title of this lecture was '"rhe Next Fifty
 Years" These are some of the prophecies l Bishop Clark then made: We have made
 wonderful progress in travelling facilities
 during the last half century, but do you ] think improvement is going to stop there | Nay. Posterity will not be content to | travel at the slow rate of only thirty |