The Ocala banner., 1906-10-12
REALISM IN REMINIscENsE-

A
that there are no girls like the old
girls. no boys like the old bows and
no love like the old love. Every man
thinks this way after he reaches fifty
land the conviction grows stronger as
the years increase. Much of the
poetry of the world owes its popular
.lity to the expression of this senti-
ment; such poems, for instance, as
The Old Oaken Bucket" Backward,
turn Backward, o Time in Your
Flight" and hundreds of others in
lsimilar vein. All of the old songs so
much loved by people in miidle life.
lsuch as my Old Kentucky Hime, ;"
THE Suwannee River" and Twenty
Years Ago. are some of the category
Their appeal Is to the memory and
a large part of our pleasures are
solely of recollections. 1t will be diff
difficult to convince an aged farmer
that the pioneer days are not to be
preferred to those ebullint tins of
progress Notwithstanding the rush
| ing troliy car, the noisy telephone,
the busy rural carrier and other con-
Iveniences of this age, your oldtimer
sighs with regret for the days when
mail came only once month, when
the only convenience was the road
cart, when harvest lasted for weeks,
when wheat was cut with cickle
and threshed with a fail. Girls were
much more modest in those days. he
will tell you. more Industrious and
lobedient and made finer "courtin .
and better wives. There were no
divorces. no abandoned husbands, and
farmers never locked their doors
when they went visiting. Nobody
feared thieves, nor charged for enter
tainment and the latch string wa..
always hanging out.
Alas! The good old times" are
always in the past, the bag of gold
is always at the end of the rainbow
and the land of promise is ever on
the other side of the mountain. 1t is
men and women, of course, who
make the good times or bad times,
and men and women remain substan-
TALLY the same at all times and in all
ages. The environments change:
physical features alter; things made
with hands multiply, but the boys,
the girls. the love. of which the poets
sing so plaintively, are not different
in the new days from what they were
in the old. Interview the boys Of our
times and you will learn from them
ss-+ tho girls Of the day are quite
convince a modern love-smitter swain
that they loved any harder in bacl,
woods times than in the age of steam
cars and traction, se,f-binders and
electric fans. In times these boys
tao. viii grow Old and be sayinb that
TIE year 1871 is not TO be compared
TO Re siesesd hours they spsat away
back in 1906 Despite all other
changes, tse Ie~o-y o~s-ates siri
larly in every individual and it is that
alone which coajUres up the delights
of "the good old days. The aged
live in the past; youth looks forward
to the future. A kindly fate softens
the outlines of happiness in the long
ago and throws a caio around things
pleasant while obliterating the disa-
greeabie. Love is always young and
the recolections of it partake of the
same deathless quality. The mother OF
the elder time did not love hr off
spring more tenderly than the mother
OF the progressive present. but mel
lowing memory make it seem as i'll
she did. We do not appreciate it at
the tine. but when it is gone forever
We recall it with the saddening hush
that brings the weeping mood. There
are "Old Kentucky Homes" just as
attractive now as the one that stirred
the emotions of simple-hearted Steven
Foster. The banks of the Suwanr ee
river still contain hamlets in which
the "Old Folks at Home" await the
return of wanderers with a longing
as intense as that which inspired the
sentiment of the immortal plantation
ditty
1t is useless to preach to the living
g ner;tion that the present is the
best time. 1t has all the joys of the
past, with many more not possible
before the age of comforts and con-
yeniences brought by invention and
improvements. But we cannot real
ize or appreciate them and sigh for
what is gon before. The time to be |
be happy as now; the place to be
happy is here. assert the philosophers
but notwithstanding it's constant iner-
tion. men and women fail to extract |
honey from the flowers while still
blooming and resort to memories or
the deac past that cannot be recalled
but which afford melancholy pleas