The Montgomery advertiser., 1906-12-30
BY MARGARET E. sANGsTER.

BN MAktEAkkkEE E. SAMGSTksH.
 kCopyright, 1906. by Joseph B. Bowles.] I wonder if our godmothers knew anything about that bane of our ex- istence. nervous prostration?" This malady has invaded our homes and i: the foe of household happiness in a thousand instances where there is great ease and comfort in the environ ment, proving itself stubborn and diff ffcult to cure. The women who came before us, the first Colonial Danes and Daughters of the Revolution, were in circumstances incomparably harder than ours Many aspects of their lives were harsh and comfortless, and, al- though they accepted them without pr1test. 1t was because no improve ment was then possible. Some of the richer people in the old days had a certain magniicence and certain splendor, but wealth itself could not command our luxuries Of which even a queen did not dream.
 When there were no matches, no stoves, no furnaces for hot air, no gen- orators of steam, no oil lamps, nor H. Illuminating gas, nor electric lights, houses were neither so warm nor so cheerful as they now are. When there were no canned vegetables nor pre- srved fruits, no pickles in many varie- ties, beautifully bottled. no jams. jellIes or other conserves to be bought in the market. 1t was a much more comp1i-, cated task to spread a table and eater for family than 1t Is today. When letter postage between New York and Boston was 25 cents. when envelopes were unknown, when ladies wrote on foolscap and crossed their letters to save weight In the mail, when a jour- mey of any length was made by stage or private conveyance, life waa more exacting, anxious and monotonous than at present. It was also less interesting end less exciting before the days of telegraph and telephone and multiplied newspapers. Look at any old-time newspaper and observe how local it Is. how ancient in its news from abroad brought by sailing vessels over the wide sea, two or three months on the way and so condensed that it is rather peg on which to hang discussion than a description of what is actually go Ing on. yg Fao4sys.
 A Current Events club n hundred years ago must have confined itself to neighborhood gossip, and could have known nothing of what was transpir- ing in India or China, one of which was then land of mysterious romance, and the other hidden land behind vast, fortified wall. Ine cnAlufeu dp SCHoOl today talk with interest about the sit- uation-in the far east, and daily news paper in the home Is as educational to the young as a university course.
 Before anesthetics were discovered a surgical operation was an abysmal horror Read 'TRab and His Friends, and compare the sufferinEs of cancer patient under the knife. in that day, with the entire freedom from pain which is indispensable to critical operation now. Medicine and surgery were alike primitive in days when doc- tors carried pills in their saddle-bags and dosed whole counties with calo- mel and salts
 Before we had heard of germs and been taught to, dread bacteria, before our Hear of tuberculosis, some times re- Rarded as a visitation of Providence. but now known to be curahle under proper conditions. had made us ocea- sionally as inhuman as savages, 1t must be admitted that people died. A good many of them died sooner than they now do, but they died of fever and eroup or some other thing that boldly attacked the citadel. They neither died of nervous prostration nor dragged