Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 January 1895 — Beginning to Enjoy Life. [ARTICLE]

Beginning to Enjoy Life.

Americans are just’beginning |o .-enjoy life. We are not quite the sober and sad-cheeked race that vve_ once were. The struggle for existence finds the people better off than they were one ami two hundred years ago. There is more abundance ami comfort, less cold, hunger and exposure, better food, shelter aqd clothing. Things can be enjoyed now which could noteven exist here previously, for both the comforts ami luxuries on one ham] ami the margin for expenditure on the other have increased ami come into being. ThestHtave given color and interest to life... The religious belief, too, is more -cheerful. The awful deity of Puritanism has been supplanted by a loving one. Religion now busies itself more with good deeds and human sympathies ami less with gloomy introspection. It hasgathered a larger beiw vo 1 enee aswell as justiCcT of God, amhof the substantial \ ictory of good over evil which this implies. Contact with Germans and Jews, who have migrated to this country ami become a part of our environment, is having i s influence. Go to Saratoga and who among the visitors are having (he most enjoyment? . The Hebrews. .Among the work people who are out for a holiday in the park, or the country, or on tlie water, the Germans show the most hearty-devotion to the occasion; and neither are the Irish and other Europeans wanting in this respect 1 . All these influences of better feeding, more leisure, a belter religion, a growing msthet icism. huger incomes and possibilities of bettor living generally, to say nothing of_ the contagious example of the Germans, the Hebrews ami other peoples who know how to enjoy living, are bringing the people of this country into a better enjoyment ol