Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 July 1883 — Looking a Few Years Back. [ARTICLE]

Looking a Few Years Back.

Fifty years ago Young America was a quiet, subdued and nice sort of youth, quite unconscious that he was a popular sovereign | or,. if he was aware of the greatness to which he had been born, willing to bear his honors meekly and wait in the background till he became of age and had a legitimate right to claim his rich inheritance. The rod had not then passed out of fashion and parents still thought themselves the superiors of their children, while filial reverence still lingered in the breasts of their offspring. Those days'were not perfect, but they had advantages to which many persons look back with jespect. If we have less time to be formally polite and the brevity of life no longer permits us to dance the minuet, we can still be courteous in our more-modern fashion. Even if we live in days in which the doctrine of evolution has wrought a terrible disenchantment, we need not entirely lose the sentiment of reverence which forms the basis of all respectful attention to others. The rapid stream of life may now and then be checked in its headlong current, for decent social observance and kind feeling may oftener underlie the artificial manners and small etiquette which has taken the placet of the grander style and manner of our ancestors. We are in danger of allowing the glitter of wealth to supply the place of solid virtues, and the superficial refinement of an education that includes a little, of everything to be considered equal to the truer and deeper character that made our forefathers worthy of all respect. It is said that the race is becoming smaller physically year by year. It is to be hoped that the diminution of body will not be accompanied by a like contraction of the reverential element and the moral sense, in the saving of which is our only refuge against the sea of materialism that is setting in so heavily on us. — San Francisco Chronicle.