Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1906-05-16

| Johnson never heSttated to express his
low opinion of those wonderful con-
temporaries of his whose bold dramas
have made the Elizabeth age the
| noblest in English literature.
Morals are gone" said Seneca, "evil
triumphs. Altvirtue. all justice is dis
appearing
That is just what was exclaimed in
our fathers days, what we are repeat
ing to-day, and what will be the cry
of our children. We always imagine
that ours is the prosaic day, and that
chivalry and the picturesque died with
our forbears. No doubt Merlin
mourned for the old time of romance.
Cervantes held that all romance was
dead
What nonsense this all is,-this fall
lacy of praising old times at the ex-
pense of the present
You're praising up necessarily
The habits, manners, likings. ways,
Of people in the good old days;
Yet should some God this moment give
To you the power like them to live
You're just the man to say acOnti
So laughed Horace, and Horace was
right Who of us would go back to
any Golden Age" that gilded society
OF France, for instance, when Louis
XV.'s prime minister fired at Tiers
for the pleasure OF seeing them roll
off the roof; when two footmen held
a yard of damask under a lady's chin
while she ate with her fingers from
| huge bowl and emptied her goblet at
a draught; when ladies' headdresses
represented frigate under full sail,
a garden with terraces, the Coliseum
at Rome Carriages not being high
enough to accommodate these confec-
lions, ladies drove to balls with their
heads out of the windows or kneel-
ing on the floor of the conveyance.
| Well, the knife of the revolution was
whetting for these foolish heads.
Privileges are accorded the past
which are denied to commercial trav-
elers. Lander addressed a poem to
Ianthe. This was not the young
lady's name. She was a Miss Jones.
Let Miss Jones of to-day take notice!
The proudest of the Caesars could
not drive around the Roman empire in
less than 100 days; but now we can
send letter or bale of goods around
the whole world in less than So
This fashionable harping on fife's
dizziness and mans meanness, is, as
Stevenson insisted, a loud profession
of our own incompetence. The ideal
of one generation is the working fac.
tor of the next The Golden Age lies
before, not behind us Let us help
to make it come true
The past was goodly once. and yet
when all is said,
The best of it we know is that it's
done and dead.
DO not forget 10 seek the wise men
among yourselves said Socrates to
his friends, as he held the hemlock
cup; for he is nowhere more likely
to be found" Do not let us believe
that all greatness and heroism are in
the past. Let us learn to discover
princes, prophets, heroes and saints
among the people about us. Be as.
snred they are there. Adopt Ruskin' 8
motto, To-day, to-day, to-day!
There are just as good pies az
mother ever made; there are just az
large barns as on grandfather's farm:
contemporary poets and wits are fit
to quote; examples of conservation and
noble living need not be sought in far
off countries or conditions of life wide.
ly different from our own; the heav,
ems still remain
A world above mans head, to let him
. How boundless might his souls hori
ION be,
, How vast, yet of what clear transpar
ency!
How it were good to abide there a I'D
breathe free;
How fair lot to fill
Is left to each man still
Copyright, 1905. by Joseph B. Bowles.)
: ABOUT THE TERRITORIES.