Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/337

Rh to let her child go to places which would formerly be considered out of the world, because she can correspond with her daily; and it only requires a journey of a few hours or days, which also promises a welcome variety to the monotonous life of the parental home, to bring the separated family together again. A change has also come over the course of family life, in which habit and tradition had established fixed customs, whereby the old ways are slowly dissolved and new forms take their place. The prescription of kin, in which the choice of a wife was formerly confined, is relaxed; the old Frankish courting by the parents for the son is out of fashion; the wedding-feast is arranged to suit the railroad-train on which the young couple will begin their journey; fresh blood and strange customs are pressing into the close circle of ancient relationship and stiff usage; they break up the pride of neighborhood narrowness, and make it first tolerant, then inviting to the foreign better usages, against which it had shut itself up, and which it had despised, merely because they were strange.

On the other side, if modern facilities for moving about furnish opportunities for extending our ideas and knowledge, they also lead to superficiality in observation, which loses in depth and thoroughness what it gains in extent. We travel far in a day, but we see only by glances. Between the beginning of the journey and its appointed end the passenger generally stops only as long as the train, or, at very important stations, only over till the next train. What lies between passes before his vision like a scene in a theatre, or is lost while he sleeps. The guide-books furnish all the information he seeks. For many the number of miles they have traveled over is the most important point. It is evident that nothing useful can come from traveling of this kind. Another undeniable result is the neglect of what is near and around us for what is distant. Many people know more of foreign countries than of their own neighborhoods, consequently their attachment for home is weakened. From indifference to disdain is only a step. On this ground are explained the disappearance of old customs, which gave fixedness to social life in the family and the commune, the dissatisfaction with the narrowness of the home, and a relaxation of regard for persons in authority and for older persons, whose experiences, gathered in the narrow home circle, are not allowed to compete with the assumed versatile and superior knowledge of traveled youth. In a wider circle are thus explained the rapid spread of the fashions and a kind of leveling in life and customs. The new styles, which formerly went out very slowly, now spread quickly through all classes, and the differences between country and city are disappearing.

Returning to the public life of society, we find two features in which there seems to be a connection between changes that are going on and the modern conditions of transportation, viz., the democratic tendencies of society, and the prevalence of materialism. The democratic tendency, which is peculiar to the times, does not limit itself to