Owen Chapter 23

SKETCH XXIII.

“THE GOOD OLD TIMES”

When I was a little boy at Sunday School I used to read about the deliverance of the Israelites from their terrible bondage, and I used to think they were the most ungrateful people in the world. No sooner had Moses liberated them from their hard life of drudgery, privation and physical suffering, and started them on the highway leading to a life of independent ease and luxury, than they sent up a howl in the wilderness and wanted to return to the “flesh pots” of “the good old times” down in Egypt. In my childish innocency I thought it would have served them right if Moses had driven every last one of them back to the land of Goshen, where they might break their backs in the old brickyards and sink out of sight in the muddy deposits of the Nile. Since that tender time in my life, I have been wandering for some forty years in the wilderness myself, and I have learned that modern Gentiles are quite as ungrateful as were the ancient Israelites.

Did you ever hear people talk as though everything in our day was out of joint, and that the country and everything in it was going to the dogs as fast as it could; and then roll their eyes ceilingward and heave a mighty sigh as they pine for a return of “the good old times” of our great-grandfathers’ days? Of course you have, and you don’t have to go very far from your own door-step to find one, either. To thus decry life and its wonderful possibilities in our day is base ingratitude.

Let us call upon Jones and see what these possibilities are. Mr. Jones lives in a two-story brick mansion, warmed throughout with hot air from a furnace in the basement, and lighted with kerosene lamps of gorgeous design—and if it were not a rural home it would be lighted with electricity. He rides to church over smooth, macadamized roads, in a carriage finer than any monarch in all Europe rode in one short century before his great-grandfather’s time. The steam-engine threshes his grain, and the locomotive engine hauls it to market. He may sit on a spring seat with an umbrella over his head while he ploughs, harrows, cultivates, sows, reaps, binds and sheaves, rakes his hay, pulls his peas, digs his potatoes, and cuts his corn. Horse-power cuts his feed, grinds his apples, saws his wood, and digs his ditches. In the house and on the farm machinery has monopolized so much of the labor that there is not enough left to harden the muscles of Jones or his wife, or give them a good appetite. After supper Jones dons his slippers, lights his cigar, sinks almost out of sight in a richly-upholstered easy-chair, and while the cat purrs at his slippered feet on the Brussels carpet, reads the happenings of the day before all the wide, wide world; and when the eight-day clock on the marble mantel points out the hour of bedtime, he retires to a bed which excels in comfort and elegance anything enjoyed by princes in “the good old times.” But, instead of returning thanks for the marvellous blessings it is his privilege to enjoy, he growls about the low price of wheat and horses; wonders what the world is coming to, and then drops off into the sleep of the discontented and ungrateful!

How was it in “the good old times?” What were the possibilities of life when Jones’ great-grandfather settled on this same land? These multiform comforts and conveniences of our day were unknown in “the good old times,” not because our forefathers were strangers to wealth, but because inventive genius had not yet awakened from its long, dark night of sleep. There was plenty of coin of the king’s realm in “the good old times,” but all the king’s coin and “all the king’s men” could not procure what did not exist. True, during that early stage of pioneer life, when the log hut with its bark roof flourished, local circumstances governed the conditions of life, making it one of great privation and cruel hardship; but after the clearing had grown into a number of fields of fresh, new virgin soil, and the primitive shanty had given place to the more commodious frame house, with its massive fire-places and its twelve 7 x 9 pane glass windows, the conditions of life were different. Grist-mills, saw-mills, tanneries, and stores of merchandise had made their appearance; mother-earth yielded up her treasures abundantly, and these were convertible into such comforts and conveniences as were known at that time; and this stage of pioneer life represents that condition of things known as “the good old times.” Let us note a few of the comforts and conveniences of “the good old times”: The old cord bed-frame was a veritable trough, and the only thing that made the squeaking old thing endurable was a plethoric straw tick. On arising in the morning, the first thing was to examine the fire in the big fire-place; if it were “alive,” all right, but if it were “dead,” then some member of the family had to wade through the snow a mile or two, to the nearest neighbor’s house, to “borrow fire.” Matches? Oh, no; they were reserved for our time. What light was needed beside that reflected by the fire-place was made by the “witch”—a saucer of tallow containing a coil of twisted cotton rag with its burning end hanging over the edge of the saucer. Candles came later, and were considered a great invention. Spikes off thorn trees were used for pins—real pins had been invented, but they cost a half-dollar a paper, and nabobs only could afford to use them. The only base of supply for bedding and wearing apparel was the raw flax and wool as produced on the farm; and the entire process of converting this raw material into various articles for domestic use was all done on the farm, by the women mostly. In “the good old times” human muscle and “elbow grease” were in great demand. Man power was the motor of that day; to-day, man thinks, and electricity, steam, and brute force does the grinding. All hail the great emancipation day.