HOW I regret the good old days, and all the pleasant, happy ways now perished from the earth! No more the worn breadwinner sings, no more the cottage rooftree rings with sounds of hearty mirth. The good old days! The cheerful nights! We had then no electric lights, but oil lamps flared and smoked; and now and then they would explode and blow the shanty ’cross the road, and sometimes victims croaked. The windows had no window screens, there were no books or magazines to make our morals lame; we used to sit ’round in the dark while father talked of Noah’s ark until our bedtime came. No furnace or steam heating plant would make the cold air gallivant; a fireplace kept us warm; the house was full of flying soot and burning brands, and smoke to boot, whene’er there was a storm. No telephones then made men curse; if with a neighbor you’d converse, you hoofed it fourteen miles; the girl who wished to be a belle believed that she was doing well if she knew last year’s styles. There’ll never be such days as those, when people wore no underclothes, and beds were stuffed with hay, when paper collars were the rage—oh, dear, delightful bygone age, when we were young and gay!
