Year: 1875

routine of people being born in the quiet. good old way, and be- ing quietly and soberly reared, and spending their three score wears and ten in a quiet soberly way, gathering all the innocent enjoyment they could while pass. ing through this earthly sphere, seems to have passed away. Now all is rush. All is hurry. We are ushered into this palpitating world in a rushing manner. We are rushed and crammed through the schools. We rush through life in any occupation we may choose, we rush to the end and we die in the same rushing manner. It seems that in this fast age, when "Our mountains, lakes and rivers are in a

 blaze of fire

 And We send the news by lightning on the

 telegraphic wire,"

 that men have hardly time to live and breathe and enjoy life. This desire for speed and rush keeps growing all the time. We we'll remember when sthe first trottipg- horse made his mile in 2.40, and for years that time was considered the fastest that could possibly be made by horse, and it passed into a by-word, so that when a man wished to express ex. traordinary speed in any thing, he would say "he went it at a 2. 40 gait" But that was not enough. The restless go-ahead kill-time spirit of the age demanded faster time; men commenced breeding and training horses for the sole purpose of speed in trotting, and the result is that ?. 40 has been left far behind and is no longer used to express speed. Az 40 horse is now considered a pretty good carriage horse, and will do very well to take your lady out riding or go to monthly meeting, but is unfit for the turf. We now hear of horses making their mile in 2 Is.

 We have here brought in the horse. to illustrate the feverish, go.ahead, break-neck spirit of the age. Now we do not wish to be considered as one of those old fogys who condemn the vast im- provements that have been made during the last half century, in which steam almost annihilated time and space, and the lightning was harnessed to the electric tele. graph and completed the job. We believei in progress and we believe that stean n and the telegraph are doing a great work in the march of civilization. They are making mankind more homogeneous by

  knocking of the rough edges of prejudice and the jealousies en- gendered by national isolation. They are bringing nations nearer together in a common brother hood and hastening on the millen- nium. How many bloody and devastating wars have occurred in the world simply because the nations engaged did not know each other. It was of this that the fine old English poet, Cowper, wrote, when he said

 Lands intersected by a narrow firth,

 abhOr each other

 Mountains interposed. make enemies of

 nations

 Which like the kindred drops should have

 mingled into One"

 But steam and the telegraph have changed that state of things. The great danger now is that peo- pie, partaking of the spirit of the swift winged messengers sent by steam and the lightning, are be- coming restless and impatient. A feverish excitement prevails. The old routine of business, where in men by energy. application and perseverance, acquired a compe- tency, after years of toll, won't do now. It is too slow. 2 16 is the rate of speed now demanded, and the devil take the hindmost. This ;s ruSbino through the world,