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Show The Best Time To Live The "good old days," which are so regarded because we have conveniently though perhaps, . unconsciously trained our memories to recall only the good things and forget the bad, weren't as good as they are popularly supposed sup-posed to have been. You can take this from Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, dean of the supreme court of the United States, who, in his !)l)th year, finds the complex of 19:S0 richer and more interesting inter-esting than that of 1865 when, already a lieutenant-colonel at 23, he left the Union army to pursue a career at law. ,The venerable jurist p.ives his opinions in the current issue of the Golden Book magazine. Listen to a few bits of his wisdom: "When it is said we are too much occupied with the means of living to live, I answer that the chief worth of civilization is that it makes the means of living mors complex, com-plex, that it calls for great and combined intellectual efforts ef-forts instead of simple, un-co-ordinated ones, in order that the crowd may be fed and clothed and housed and moved from place to place . . . Because more complex and intense intellectual effort means a fuller and richer life. They mean more life . . . Life is an end in itself, and the only question of its being worth living is whether you have enough of it." $ Thought our own experience with life is many, many years less than that of Justice Holmes, we believe as he believes. be-lieves. "Our mode of living today calls for greater effort than that of a generation back, but we are compensated with richer and fuller lives. We enjoy more conveniences, comforts, pleasures and opportunities than our grandfathers grandfath-ers ever thought possible. True, life is faster, competition competi-tion is keener; but the compensations therefore are abund-; abund-; ant. Regardless of those who pine for "the good old days," we think there nns never been a better time to live than the present. And, in addition, we look to the future for improvement. im-provement. Our children may pay a greater price for Iheir iives, but the comper.aai.ion will be commti surate ivith ihe increase. |
