Keeping Up With the Times. 



By Miss Bertha Tuckerman, Bridge water, N. Y. 



It is with some embarrassment that I hear the subject of this 

 paper announced, fearing the natural inference may be that the 

 writer is expected to furnish a living example of an up-to-date 

 twentieth century individual, whereas a sense of shortcoming, in 

 this respect, is more the feeling that prompts toward the choice 

 of subject. 



A reverence and love for the generation of our grandfathers, as 

 well as the remote past that lies behind them, and a sense of 

 our indebtedness to them, that we cannot emphasize enough, is 

 most commendable. 



There is a great revival of interest in colonial times, and much 

 is being done to preserve the landmarks of history, and every- 

 thing pertaining to industries that were once of prime necessity 

 and have now vanished completely. All this denotes a growing 

 feeling that the past must not be allowed to fade from sight, if 

 we would teach the youth of the present time the stern ways in 

 which the lessons of that time were learned, and its achievements 

 handed on to posterity. 



We cannot make a better acknowledgment of what we owe to 

 the past than the resolve to make the present a worthy child of it. 



The present hour is our time, and how best to use it, our 

 problem. This problem is not made less simple by the fact that 

 a wonderful age of mechanical invention has revolutionized all 

 departments of labor, for it is in the nature of revolutions that 

 they demand of individuals the most heroic sacrifice, that the 

 new order of things may be made to fit into tli/3 daily living of 

 the people. Whether we like the pace of rapid living, at which 

 life in this country is moving on about us to-day, or not, we are 

 in the current, some where it is strongest, others where the w T ave 

 is feeblest, and least apparent, but none may escape some degree 

 of pressure from the conditions of modern life if he would realize 

 the fullness of living. To those who have a living to get from 

 these times, when competition crowds the market to the wall, 

 the problem becomes one of greatest interest and demands the 



