It is a comfort to believe, as we are told, that the world can never lose
an iota that it has gained; that progress is the great law of the
universe. It is consoling to verify this truth by looking backward, and
seeing how each age has made use of the wrecks of the preceding one as
material for new structures on different plans. What are we that we should
mention our preference for being put to some other use, more immediately
remunerative to ourselves!
We must be all wrong if we are not in sympathy with the age in which we
live. We might as well be dead as not keep up with it. But which of us
does not sometimes wish in his heart of hearts, that he had been born long
enough ago to have been boon companion of his great-grandfather, and have
gone respectably and in due season to his grave at a good jog trot?
The Joyless American.
It is easy to fancy that a European, on first reaching these shores, might
suppose that he had chanced to arrive upon a day when some great public
calamity had saddened the heart of the nation.
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