The Lakeland evening telegram. (Lakeland, Fla.) 1911-1922, 1916-08-31

Times Certainly do Change

I'M Z ~ III
On this lovely Sunday morning. af-
ter I've been putting in one hundred
and nineteen hours trying to give the
folks something to kick about and at
the thought comes to me that things
are some different nov from what they
were when l was kid. You know 1t
You old duffer; you know that things
which we thought were real luxuries
then have become what we term the
necessities of life now. I'm wonder
ing if there'l be as great an advance
made in the next half century?
The boy who lived In the country
and was anxious to get an education
thought but little of getting up at an
early hour, helping do "the chores"
and getting bit Of breakfast and then
walking three miles to school; and
the girl who couldn't help mother do
the work and then get tidied up bit
with a new hair-ribbon and walk along
with him to the same schoolhouse was
''too weak and spindling" to ever
amount to much. And then there was
the same walk home after school,
with some more chores to do but
there didn't seem to be anyone
grumbling about it.
Never see anyone walking to school
nowadays, do you? 1t one lives more
than five blocks from "the institute Of
learning" there's either the family
auto or the school-auto to come after
one, isn't there; and after school son
is too tired to get the weeds out of
the garden or even run the errands;
while daughter is so tired that she
really couldn't get supper or wash the
dishes. It's just all she can do to
walk bit around the city, go to the
movies, slip over to the beach, take
la joyride out in the country few
miles and dance about nine or eleven
of the new ones. Believe muh, she
never was very strong, you know.
\ In the olden times the whole fifty.
eight of the pupils drank from the
same tin dipper that was all rusty on
one side of it and leaked about as fast
LAS one Of those old water-dropping
clocks used by the ancients. II old
Mike Robe landed on the edge of that
dipper he was a gone goose; don't
neglect to remember that. Sanitary
stuff? Why, son, we didn't know a
sanitary from cemetery or a semi.
nary. Old San hadn't been christened
pin those days--but l don't remember
of having many sickly kids at that
stage of the game!
The fellow who'd refuse to lend "his
girl his cud of gum was looked upon
as "stingy", and was about as small
as the lad who wouldn't "give a fell
low bite" Of the last apple he'd
brought to school. In these days a
|carefully-compiled list of health.
hints" prevents half the enjoyment we
used to have-and I'm doubling if
there is any more health now than
there was in those Ignorant days..
These new-fangled ideas may he all
right-but I can't understand why ID
is that we have discovered so darn
many things during the past fol- ty
Eyears-and every one of them bad
1t seemed to me that some of the dis
coveries ought to be good; but 1 fail
to find any that way. Honest, I
didn't know when I first heard of an
appendix whether the fellow talking
about 1t meant what was found in the
middle of a human being or the hind
end of book; it might have been a
new brand of summer apple for all
! knew about it. If you'd called a boy
a "bacilli" or "microbe" when I was
a kid there would have been a scrap
right then and there; and now any
one may say "vermiform appendix
right before the incest woman on
earth-and she won't even tell you
that unless they are cooked right in
butter they always make her sick.
Nossir.
These days may be all right-but
there are more killings and fewel
bornings, more "unwritten laws" and
FEWER living up to the law, more joy.
rides and fewer promenades, more
infatuations and less real attractions,
more desires to shirk and less love