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Show GOOD TIMES THAT ARE GONE ? Wealthy Citizen Moralizes Over Things That Were, as He Recalls with Joyous Recollections. Talk to Uncle Zenas and you will learn that to find Arcadia It is not enough to leave New York and come to Blnomfield Coiner. They aren't as neighborly even there ns they once were. There is not the frank democracy democ-racy that used to lie in his young days. Too much of what he scornfully calls "codfish aristocracy" has come in anil split the happy united village Into what he calls "clicks." They don't have the good times nowadays like they did when they got up apple-cuttings and corn-huskings, barn-raisings, and all the devices by which what was hard labor for one lone family was turned into a frolic for the whole settlement. Everybody knew everybody, every-body, and winter nights a whole parcel of 'em would pile into sleds and come hu'stin' in on some family. Maybe they were getting ready for bed. but the old imin'd get up and put his pants on and take down the fiddle, nnd they'd move the chnirs and things out and have a dance; stay up till all hours, and get home about time to feed the stock. Ah, dear! they were neighbors In those days I "And. even so. that didn't come up to what he'd heard tell about of the heroic period of this country, the romantic ro-mantic age. t lie log-cabin days, when they were all poor and struggling, but happy in their poverty, when the iatchstring was always out, and they would share their last pint of corn-meal corn-meal with the wayfarer, not knowing where the next was to come from, but sure they would make out somehow." Uncle Zenas shakes his head ; doesn't know what l lie country's coming to. One wonders who could have listened listen-ed to tile old-time circuit-riders when they called not righteous, but sinners, to repentance. Seemingly we have lost something something very precious. pre-cious. Eugene Wood in the Century. |