Year: 1878

THE AGE IN WHICH WE LIVE.


We live in marvellous age, and one
that has been prolific of new and strange
inventions Scarcely had the electric
telegraph been perfected, when it was
eclipsed by the recently invented tele-
phone Wonder succeeds wonder with
startling rapdity, and soon the same
inventive genius that produced the tele-
phone startled the scientific world by
the invention of the microphonc-
kccley keeps tinkering away with per-
sistent energy at his motor, and some
Of these sultry mornings. for aught we
know, he will blow the City of Brotherly
Love into atoms and send some hun
dreds of thousands of its citizens upon
a voyage to the land of the hereafter
Very recently an ingenious Yankee has
perfected a flying machine, with which
he navigates the upper air as easily
and as gracefully as a swallow and will
probably soon take a voyage OVER the
Atlantic, or startle the inhabitants of
the moon by paying his respects to
them, in order to patent his new inven-
tion there and paint the advertisement
of some life-saving potion or pill upon
the volcanic rocks that are said to
abound upon the surface of that satellite


But it is not alone in the mechanical
and scientific world that the inventive
genius of the nineteenth century mani
tests itself 1t also pervadcs the politi-
cal and religious world, producing as
startling effects in them as in the other.
Lying has been brought to such de-
gree of perfection that many of those
who practice it could easily put to
shame the mysterious parsonage in
whose capacious brain the first prevari-
cation was conceived. One of our New
York exchanges calls attention to the
National Burglar and Theft Insurance
Company, and probably in its next
issue will call attention to a company
Offering to insure that one. The vota-
ries of vice and crime no longer lurk in
secret and pine in penury, but stalk
abroad with brazen face and naughty
mien, to obtain, perhaps under the guise
of religion and philanthropy, the luyu-
rious living they are too lazy to earn.


Tramps are nearly as numerous and
annoying in this land Of liberty as were
the lice at one time in the land of
Egypt, while the moral atmosphere is
quite as dark as was the natural one
in Egypt while the seven plaques pre-
vailed Virtue and integrity in public
men have been superseded by chicanery
and fraud, the base inventions with
which Satan seeks to capture the silly
dupes that use them, while the alb
sence of morality and religion in the
masses indicates that the body polite
is fast becoming as rotten as was that
Of France just before the revolution in
that country, during which the oppres-
sion and RIGHTEOUSNESS of ages culmi-
mated in the reign of terror, in which
the highest dignitaries of the church
ceased to preach the religion of the
cross and boldly proclaimed that death
was an eternal sleep. Our condition is
almost as deplorablc now as was the
condition of France in the latter part
Of the last century.


Ten years ago, the other nations es-
teemed and feared us for our patriotism
and courage, for we were then a nation
Of soldiers. What are we now? Let
the discomfort of the masses, the echo
ing footballs of the tramps, and the die
tatOrial mandates of the ring-masters
answer the question, and let not the
teachings Of history be forgotten nor the
warnings of inspiration be despised.