Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 1.djvu/184

 176

��SOCIAL CHANGES IN NEW HAMPSHIRE.

��men as Judge Smith, Judge Liverrnore and Judge Richardson upon its bench ; and I have seen at the same bar Mason, the Websters, Bartlett and Woodbury. The entire country, aye, the whole world, cannot boast of jurists and orators supe- rior to those New Hampshire has pro- duced. No state in the Union has acad- emies superior to those of New Hamp- shire. Do you ask for proof of this as- sertion? Go to Meriden and Exeter, and then visit New Hampton, and from the mouths of two or three such witnesses every word shall be established. I close my somewhat protracted remarks on so- cial changes in New Hampshire during the past century with a little poem cop- ied from the Nevj England Farmer :

TWENTY YEARS AGO.

" How wondrous are the changes, Jim,

Since twenty years ago, When gals wore woolen dresses, Jim,

And boys wore pants of tow; When shoes were made of calf- skin,

And socks of home-spun wool, And children did a half-day's work

Before the hour for school.

��The girls took music lessons, Jim,

Upon the spinning-wheel, And practiced late and early. Jim,

On spindle, swift and reel ; The boys would ride bare-backed to mill,

A dozen miles or so, And hurry off before 'twas day,

Some twenty years ago.

The people rode to meeting, Jim,

In sleds instead of sleighs, And wagons rode as easy, Jim,

As buggies now-a-days ; And oxen answered well for teams,

Though now they'd be too slow, For people lived not half so fast,

Some twenty years ago.

Oh, well do I remember, Jim,

That Wilson's patent stove, That father bought and paid for, Jim,

In cloth our gals had wove ; And how the neighbors wondered,

When we got the thing to go ; They said 'twould " bust " and kill us all,

Some twenty years ago.

Yes ; everything is different, Jim,

From what it used to was, For men are always tampering, Jim,

With God's great natural laws ; But what on earth we're coming too,

Does anybody know? For everything has changed so much

Since twenty years ago.

��» »>

�� �