Page:A thousand years hence. Being personal experiences (IA thousandyearshen00gree).djvu/107

 Our sons thus escaped, at their most critical age, exposure to much evil. The restraining modesty, natural to youth, is usually proof against the ordinary tear and wear of society; but the exposure of old university life had been only too apt to entirely break down and dissipate its barriers, and to send forth the youth into his maturer life deprived of those restraining tendencies, and that regulated moderation of desire, which are so indispensable to life's highest efforts and most real enjoyment. Under the better auspices alluded to, our youth betook themselves both more steadily and more heartily to all the science and business progress of their day, and brought, as well, a greater strength and endurance, mind and body, to the world's work. The old saying that the youth would turn out all the better man by a free and early sowing of his wild oats, is about as well founded as that other old saw, which, in spite of medical contradiction, was wont to aver that our bodies were improved after having been scourged by fever, smallpox, syphilis, and the other ills that flesh is heir to.

If the world's pace was so visibly accelerated, as I have had occasion to notice, by the happy solution of the woman's rights problem, and the consequent accession of the whole sex to the ranks of its workers, there was yet another change of the twentieth century, which was hardly, if at all, less momentous, even in the same work-and-labour direction. This was the final cessation of war, and the converting of all war's levies and expenses into the interests of peace and progress.