Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 82.djvu/498

494 Their comforts were few and their hardships many. Their food was like that of the Homeric Greeks. Their houses were gloomy and fragile and commonly shared by domestic animals. Their streets were unpaved and filthy. There was relatively little security either of life, property or reputation. Wars were almost incessant, bringing death, dishonor or slavery to both men and women. The reign of terror which prevailed throughout the cities of Greece during the long Peloponnesian war was too terrible for detailed description.

If we were to continue this study through the days of Rome, through the middle ages, through the centuries preceding our own, we should find that there has been a pretty steady growth in all the things which we usually regard as making life worth living. If by the good old times we mean the "days of Queen Bess in England, the days of our Puritan forefathers, or the more recent years of our own fathers and grandfathers, history shows us that they were uninviting. There were more and harder work, fewer comforts, less cleanliness, coarser and less varied food, less security of person and property. The good old times are therefore a myth pure and simple. The Golden Age is not in the, past, but in the present.

But, some one may say, a new list of evils has come to take the place of the old ones. It is true that material comforts were lacking in the other times, but people were more hardy then. They were more robust and wholesome and less sensitive to mere inconveniences. They lived, to be sure, on brick floors and wore homespun and went often to war, but they did not consider these things as hardships. They were brave and strong-shouldered and the very battles of life were a joy to them. Now we are weak-spirited and degenerate. Our young men are not so brave and our girls are not so modest. Our children, as Stanley Hall says,

We live in an overworked, serious and tense age. We have forgotten how to fight, to laugh, to eat, drink and be merry, but we have learned how to worry.

Furthermore, they continue, our manners and morals have deteriorated. Boodlers and bribers abound. A new bunch of grafters springs up for every one that is indicted. Jurors are fixed and voters bought and sold. Justice miscarries in our courts of law. Courts are dominated by shrewd attorneys more anxious for victory than for justice, urging delays and appeals based on mere technicalities. Then, there are the greedy trusts, the do-nothing congresses, the corruption of legislatures, jack-pot and bathroom politics, extravagance among the rich, increased frequency of divorce, smoking and drinking among women,