494 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



Their comforts were few and their hardships many. Their food was 

 like that of the Homeric Greeks. Their houses were gloomy and fragile 

 and commonly shared by domestic animals. Their streets were unpaved 

 and filthy. There was relatively little security either of life, property 

 or reputation. Wars were almost incessant, bringing death, dishonor 

 or slavery to both men and women. The reign of terror which pre- 

 vailed throughout the cities of Greece during the long Peloponnesian 

 war was too terrible for detailed description. 



If we were to continue this study through the days of Eome, through 

 the middle ages, through the centuries preceding our own, we should 

 find that there has been a pretty steady growth in all the things which 

 we usually regard as making life worth living. If by the good old 

 times we mean the "days of Queen Bess in England, the days of our 

 Puritan forefathers, or the more recent }^ears of our own fathers and 

 grandfathers, history shows us that they were uninviting. There were 

 more and harder work, fewer comforts, less cleanliness, coarser and less 

 varied food, less security of person and property. The good old times 

 are therefore a myth pure and simple. The Golden Age is not in the , 

 past, but in the present. 



But, some one may say, a new list of evils has come to take the place 

 of the old ones. It is true that material comforts were lacking in the 

 other times, but people were more hardy then. They were more robust 

 and wholesome and less sensitive to mere inconveniences. They lived, 

 to be sure, on brick floors and wore homespun and went often to war, 

 but they did not consider these things as hardships. They were brave 

 and strong-shouldered and the very battles of life were a joy to them. 

 Now we are weak-spirited and degenerate. Our young men are not so 

 brave and our girls are not so modest. Our children, as Stanley Hall 

 says, 



have limp and collapsed shoulders and chests, bilateral asymmetry, weak hearts, 

 lungs and eyes, puny and bad voices, muddy or pallid complexions, tired ways, 

 automatisms, dyspeptic stomachs, showing the lamentable and cumulative effects 

 of long neglect of motor abilities. 



We live in an overworked, serious and tense age. We have for- 

 gotten how to fight, to laugh, to eat, drink and be merry, but we have 

 learned how to worry. 



Furthermore, they continue, our manners and morals have deterio- 

 rated. Boodlers and bribers abound. A new bunch of grafters springs 

 up for every one that is indicted. Jurors are fixed and voters bought 

 and sold. Justice miscarries in our courts of law. Courts are domi- 

 nated by shrewd attorneys more anxious for victory than for justice, 

 urging delays and appeals based on mere technicalities. Then, there 

 are the greedy trusts, the do-nothing congresses, the corruption of legis- 

 latures, jack-pot and bathroom politics, extravagance among the rich, 

 increased frequency of divorce, smoking and drinking among women, 



