Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 December 1883 — How Times Have Changed! [ARTICLE]

How Times Have Changed!

“Changed I” exclaimed Deacon Green to the dear little school-ma’m, a year ago come Christmas, “I should think they had changed?’ Why, many’s the time I’ve heard my dear old father tell how, years ago, when he and Aunt Mary were children living- on their an.nl fl England, thadeast little present used to delight them. “They were well-to-do pcople, too, the Greens were; but to find one book -or - a ball ouw"shepberd’s pipe in his Christmas stocking would make father perfectly happy when he was a boy; and his sister thought a box of sugarplums or a new doll, or any once pretty “gimcrack, was a joy, indeed. ChangedvrW'ell; • 1-4 - like to— know-! Why, I’m told that a boy of this day, a real boy of the period, would con-sider-himself a much-al#uaed fellow if he didn’t find on bis Christmas-tree a ball, a six-bladed knife, a scientific top, a box of carpenter’s tools, a printing-press, a jig-saw, a sled, a bicycle, ice-skates,' roller-skates,' a Runch and Judy show, a telephone, a steam-Ongine, a microscope, a steamboat, a working, train of cars, a box of parlor magic, a pistol, a performing acrobat, a real watch, a gold scarf-pin, gold cuff-buttons, a bound volume of 67. Nicholas, and twenty Or thirty other books, more or less, besides a pocket-book with gold money in it, and a pair of kid gloves. “I may have forgotten something,” added the Deacon, wiping bis brow, “but, so far as I can make out, that’s tfie proper thing for an average boy’s Christmas, nowadays.” “As for the girls,”’the good manwent oh, raising his\ voice, “as for the girls—as sor —” ■ " How she did it, I do not know; but that wonderfid little school-ma’am actually stopped the proceedings then and there. So, to this day your. Jack doesn’t, know what an average girl of the present day does, might, could, ' would or should find on a Christmastime., ■ *