Evening times-Republican. [volume] (Marshalltown, Iowa) 1890-1923, 1911-12-15
THOSE OLD CHRIsTMAsEs.

THOSE OLD CHRISTMASES.
NY daughter, if you had been the
daughter Of ordinary people forty years
ago you wouldn't have fixed your
mouth for a hornback alligator hand
bag and the like as a Christmas pres
bilious enough to have dreamed of ex-
pensive presents, you'd have awakened
with a great shock Dec. IS. 1872. Be
cause you wouldn't have got them.
My son, If you We're back in the
third quarter OF the Nineteenth CEN
fury, when pa was boy, bicycle
would look bigger to you than pas
senger train and a 20 rifle like 10
inch cannon. One OF Horatio Ayers
or Oliver Optics books would size up
like Webster's international and six
Rollo books loom like the Encyclopedia
BRITANNICA. Why in those days an or
ange was bigger than pumpkins are
now, 20 cents worth Of candy was
confectionery beyond the dreams Of
childish ararice and a handful Of Pc
cans and niggertoes would fill peck
measure of today: that is. the way you
see them now and the way they would
have looked to you if YOU had kept
Christmas as a child in those halcyon
davs older persons tell their children
about of evenings.
Along ten or fifteen years after the
civil war in America if you had been
would have held Barlow knife--an
implement much esteemed among the
youth Of that period-a pair of GRO
cheted wristlets some wooden socks
knitted by grandma's own hands-you
sometimes sat down in her rocking
chair where she had dropped her
knitting and sustained a severe pune
ture from the knitting need!es-invari-
ably an orange-oranges cost ten cents
apiece then-some stick candy and as
sorted nuts. If 1t was Christmas to
be specially marked with a red cross,
you found a pair of skates with straps
across the toes and long screw to be
twisted into the heel. There might
have been homemade handsled paint
ed red WITH "Comet' stenciled on it
in black letters, but not likely. The
skates and sleds scarcely ever arrived
together. Maybe those old days and
old Christmases We're the best that
ever dawned but your dad is going TO
be honest with you and confess that il
he were going to be a boy over again
he'd choose the year of our Lord. 1912
to be II or - years old in. Not that
bows didn't enjoy their presents forty
years ago as much as YOU seem to
now or that they didn't have fun all
right. Boys enjoyed presents and had
fun in the year II as they do 1900
wears after. But the honest fact is
that the boy Of 1912, has more oppor-
tunity, ought to know more and should
be able to have better time than
any boy of any previous year. And
that is true OF the boys father. Nine
teen hundred twelve beats 1872 to live
in as an automobile beats a democrat
buggy to ride in. You go so much
farther, see so much more and do il
SO much easier.
The point is YOU have all the chance
that other boy had and the accumu-
lated opportunity of forty years of op
portunity making to boot. Schools arr
better, business is better. Sure it cost:
more TO live but people don't live a:
they Gid and the difference is worth
the money. It's as easy to live in ;
pretty fair house now as to live in ;
poor one then, as easy TO have furnace
heat now as to burn cordwood in ;
stove was when pa was a boy. YOU
!, never faced d cord OF red oak O.
\ maple single handed with a bucksaw
You don't know what you have missed
When an older person starts in t
sing the glories Of his boyhood liste,
respectfully, that's your duty as wei
behaved boy, but reserve judgment
Take it from your old father that Their
never was so good time to live in
so many comforts obtainable at tn
cost of less exertion. SO much tru
charity, sincere desire to be helpful
so much kindness as today. It's
peach Of world. The thing the olde
person misses is his boyhood.