It would seem treason or idiocy to sigh for these old days,--treason to
ideas of progress, stupid idiocy unaware that it is well off. Is not
to-day brilliant, marvellous, beautiful? Has not living become subject to
a magician's "presto"? Are we not decked in the whole of color, feasted on
all that shape and sound and flavor can give? Are we not wiser each moment
than we were the moment before? Do not the blind see, the deaf hear, and
the crippled dance? Has not Nature surrendered to us? Art and science, are
they not our slaves,--coining money and running mills? Have we not built
and multiplied religions, till each man, even the most irreligious, can
have his own? Is not what is called the "movement of the age" going on at
the highest rate of speed and of sound? Shall we complain that we are
maddened by the racket, out of breath with the spinning and whirling, and
dying of the strain of it all? What is a man, more or less? What are one
hundred and twenty millions of men, more or less? What is quiet in
comparison with riches? or digestion and long life in comparison with
knowledge? When we are added up in the universal reckoning of races, there
will be small mention of individuals.
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