Democratic Sentinel, Volume 5, Number 40, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 November 1881 — Mental Progression. [ARTICLE]

Mental Progression.

In our day knowledge is power as it never was before. We live in a steam age, the age of rapid transit, of ceaseless movement and activity, in an age essentially practical. Where is the bookworm of the past? the dreamy thinker, the slow philosopher? only to be dimly traced in some aged survivor of a quieter and slower epoch, only to be met with in remote towns, still outside the radius ol modern hurry, towns which grow fewer every year, and which in another decade will be aS populous, as noisy, as unrestful as the cities of to-day. Imagine quiet Austin Caxton in the hub-bub of New York life ; conceive of any man to-dav, devoting his life to one abstruse work, feeling that even if he lived to complete it, he would have accomplished wonders. One can scarcely even conceive of a lexicographer to-day—it seems as if it were incredible that any one could toil through years study, devote a lifetime to a task, no matter how important. We feel that dictionaries, encyclopaedias, glossaries and such monuments of industry are out <?f place, unless they are manufactured by the thousand, steamed into being, or evolved out of consciousness without concentrated effort. Never in the world’s history was so much attempted as to-day, but is it as well accomplished as in the stage-coach days of slow living ? Are the rpyal roads to teaming any real gain? All these primers, ana handy volumes and condensed history, science, politics —dp they make better men and women of us ? Will the next generation be wiser, nobler, stronger? The history of the world will soon go on a sixpence, and before a great while we anticipate a preparation of infants’ food, which shall introduce a knowledge of science and the fine arts into the system by absorption, and the time given to education will be saved entirely.— New York Mail. Dr. Pierce’s “Pleasant Purgative Pellets” arc sugar coated and inclosed in glass bottles, their virtues being thereby preserved unimpaired for any length of time, in any climate, so that they are always fresh and reliable. No cheap wooden or pasteboard boxes. By druggists.