The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1927-04-28

~N'AA'S
about in ways of living since we We're
ourselves young. When l went to col
lege, students lived a mile and half
from the campus and walked to eight
o'clock recitations without thinking
that it was a hardship. The old horse
car made the trip every half hour, but
it started from nowhere and arrived at
about the same place and did both ut a
most inconvenient time so that there
was no counting on it to help, not even
in a time of emergency.
We had no telephones, no electric
lights, no automobiles. There wasn't
paved street in town. We studied by
kerosene lamps in rooms heated with
little soft-coal stoves, and if there was
a bath-tub in town excepting the one
in Terbush'S barber-shOp where we
paid twenty-five cents for the privilege
of cleaning up, never knew about it.
Our pleasures were as simple as our
way = VI Nv lHSs IhClC NClC llO lllON his
picture shows, no vaudeville, no ice
cream parlors, and no dance-halls.
There were about two dances a year,
one at Thanksgiving time and the other
at Commencement, at which time the
local opera house had some sort of
shaky improvised floor run out from
the stage over the seats in the dress
circle We didn't spend much money,
because we did not have much and our
parents lived as simply as we did.
[ say all this to suggest little of
what the conditions of living were
when we who are now past middle age
were young, for the conditions under
which l lived were not materially diff
ferent from the general conditions
throughout the country. We lived n
simple life. though that does not neces-
sarily mean that it was more moral
one than the young people of today are
living. We were not so frank, perhaps
in our discussion of our emotions and
in laying bare what was actually going
on in our minds. We thought about a
great many things about which it was
not proper to speak. There are no such
things today. The young person of
today talks freely on subjects about
which we would have scarcely dared to
think. Possibly it is just as well.
Their are fourteen saloons in the little
town in which | went to college and
they did a good business. The proprie-
tor of one of them went to his great
reward not long ago, and the schedule
fled on the probate of his will showed
ing. There was far more drinking then
than there is now, badly as prohibition
is enforced, and far more drunkenness.
Gambling houses were pretty open. A
friend of mine who is head of a big
institution not far distant told me not
long ago that he knew q half dozen
bright young fellows who paid their
way through college by means of their
skill at poker. 1t was done back in
those days. The ed-light district was
pretty flourishing. l called the mayors
attention once to a notorious place
which was running in plain sight of
his office.
"Oh, of course 1 know about it, he
said, but not officially, you see" City
officials took their responsibilities as
lightly then as now.
1t is said that young people We're
more religious then than nOw-that
they went to church more generally
and more regularly. Possibly they went
more regularly, for the church when
| was young was a general meeting
place. Young people went to chur'1
for social reasons then far more than
we now do. 1t is not necessary in these
days, for social activities are far more
general than they were thirty years
ago, and it is no longer necessary
for young fellow to go to church to
meet the girl he is in love with. He can
call her up over the telephone, or tear
down the concrete road in his fivver
and meet her within a few minutes
even if she lives several miles away,
and besides there is a moying-picture
house on every street corner where he
can talk to her under a subdued light
while a stirring drama is enacted be-
fore them.
We were trained to work hard forty
years ago, and the young had their
part in the work as we'll as the old. We
went through a good many hardships
and are what we are largely because
we Overcame these difficulties. We got
up early at our house and were out in
the fields, chores done and breakfast
finished, by six o'clock; but I've seen
Joe White, our neighbor, half mile
away resting on his plow-beam at five
in the morning. He got up earlier than
we did. We were not so well nor SO
widely trained ON entrance to college
then as are our children now; our