adequately picture to himself the time when the only public conveyance from Manchester to Boston was a lumbering stagecoach or the still slower canal-boat when the traveller was fortunate if he accomplished the journey in a day. The boy is impatient now if he does not arrive in sight of Bunker Hill monument in ninety minutes. It hardly seems possible that we were the boys whom our teachers taught how to write, fold and seal a letter so that its contents would not be exposed. That great boon to the indolent as well as to the busy man, the envelope, came into use less than sixty years ago. Have you forgotten how we took the letters to the post-office with five cents for postage if its destination was not over three hundred miles distant, and if the correspondent chanced to reside beyond those limits ten cents was the lowest rates we could make with Uncle Sam in those days. Who would have then dared to predict that the time would ever come when two cents would take a letter to the farthest limits of the United States and Canada, and five cents to almost any part of the world. We had almost forgotten that the envelope, the postage stamp, the postal card, the free collection and free delivery of letters and parcels, the money order and registered letter service, not to mention free rural collection and delivery, were conveniences unknown fifty years ago. Have you, my venerable friend, forgotten how we boys, after the chores were completed at night, gathered around the table on which stood the tallow dip that we might see to cipher and "do our sums"? I remember now your people were "well-todo" and could afford the whale oil lamp. Whale oil was an expensive luxury, costing about one dollar a gallon. You might possibly have used for a short time a lamp burning what was called fluid. It was a kind of connecting link between the whale oil lamp and the kerosene lamp. We can remember very distinctly the first kerosene used. It was very dark colored and in burning emitted an odor in no way sugges tive of the perfumes of the pink or rose, quite different from the high grade kerosene oil of today. When first introduced it was sold for $1.25 per gallon. I remember when a boy and working in my brother's store on Elm street, of filling and trimming lamps in which was burned camphene. The lamps were rather intricate and required to be kept scrupulously clean in order to do good service. My memory may be somewhat impaired, but I have no recollection of doing anything else in that store but trim those seventeen camphene lamps. The lamps had to be trimmed every day, for it was then the custom to keep the stores open every evening in the week except Sunday. The gas pipes were first laid through Elm street in 1851. In the course of a year or two the pipes were so far extended that there was a gas light at the intersection of most of the streets in the more central part of the city. On nights when the almanac foretold the probability of there being moonlight, the street lamps were not lighted. No matter how dark and rainy the night might be the almanac's predictions were respected and the gas not lighted. On other nights they were promptly extinguished at eleven o'clock. But really it made but little difference whether the street lamps were lighted or not. The light was so dim and the lamps so far apart that they seemed rather to intensify than dispel the darkness. The story of the discovery of kerosene, or petroleum oil, of its evolution, how it has almost entirely superseded the use of all other illuminating fluids throughout the world, of the immense quantities produced, of the illimitable uses to which it and its by-products, including a university, are applied, of the wonderful revolution it has produced in the arts and manufactures, of what a boon it has been to the poor and rich alike, how its production has developed the most monstrous monopoly the world has ever known, of the enormous fortunes, beyond the dreams of avarice, which its manipulators have acquired, is a story indeed more wonderful than that of Aladdin's lamp. Such radical and magical changes in such a brief period of time have never before taken place within the memory of man. Perhaps in no other way can we arrive at so just a comprehension of the strong contrast between the methods and appliances in general use in our boyhood days and those in use today as by noting some of the changes which the adoption of electricity as an agent has brought about. Hardly a score of years has passed since electric lighting was first introduced. Imagine if you can what a pall of gloom would settle over the city if from the mills, the streets and the stores electric lights were eliminated. Fifty years ago the telegraph had hardly passed its experimental stage. Fifty-three years ago the first submarine cable was laid across the English channel, a distance of twenty-seven miles. Today there is hardly a place so remote or obscure but it may be reached by a telegram. With the telephone we converse with a friend a thousand miles away and distinguish every tone and accent of his voice as distinctly as if he were standing beside us. The world has been girdled with wires and the message is flashed that circles the world. It was but as yesterday that the slow, plodding horse dragged the ill-furnished car along the tracks. Today we have ceased to wonder at the ponderous semi-palatial car bowling through our streets propelled, heated, and lighted by the same mysterious and invisible force. The electric light, the telegraph, the telephone, the phonograph, the X-rays, all these strange products of the wizard's wand have become such ordinary matters of course that we have almost forgotten that they are younger than ourselves. It is difficult to overestimate the importance to the science of medicine of the discovery and introduction of anæsthetics and antiseptics, and yet these two great factors in successful surgery, which have done so much for the alleviation of pain and the prolongation of life, were practically unknown fifty years ago. The first complete sewing machine was patented by Elias Howe, Jr., just fifty-seven years ago. You will hardly be able to conceive of what the result would be if the sewing machines were eliminated from the industries today. Those of us who are so fortunate as to have spent our earlier years on the farm need not be reminded that the mowing machine, the horse rake, the horse fork, the seed planter, the manure spreader, and various other farm machinery, make the lot of the farmer's boy of 1903 quite different, to say the least, from that of the country boy of half a century ago. It would seem that these improved conditions would be great inducements for the farmer's son to follow the occupation of his father. But the discussion of the great question as to why they do not keep him on the farm is outside the limits of this paper. But perhaps, now that the free rural delivery system is becoming generally adopted, thus bringing the country boy in closer touch with the world, he may be more inclined to remain at the old homestead and till the paternal acres. Among a hundred illustrations which might be adduced to show the difference between the present times and the comparatively recent past is what, for the lack of a better term, we may call the more general diffusion of literature in these days, of books, magazines, and newspapers, together with improved educational facilities. What I have to say in regard to this matter must be prefaced with an apology for obtruding my own personality into the subject. You will allow me to recall my own environment, as a boy upon a farm three or four miles from any city or village. In the large, square, low-posted sitting-room, with its wainscoted walls and uncarpeted floor, except for the home-made braided mats, opposite the wide, open fireplace, with its swinging crane, stood the secretary or bookcase. Upon the shelves of the secretary were the old family Bible, bound in calf, "Pilgrim's Progress," Bible Dictionary, "New England Gazetteer," "Doddridge's Sermons," "Watts on the Improvement of the Mind," The Old Farmer's Almanac, and The New England Primer. There were undoubtedly a few other books there the names of which I have forgotten. Besides these there were, of course, our schoolbooks: The Rhetorical Reader, The American School Reader, The Young Reader, Adam's Old and New Arithmetics, Morse's and Mitchel's Geographies, Murray's & Smith's Grammars, Comstock's Natural Philosophy, and Webster's Spelling Book. I cherish today the memory of many of these old books as dear friends of my youth. Many of the selections, read year after year, are yet, after the lapse of more than half a century, fresh in my mind. Bryant's "Thanatopsis," Ware's "Ursa Major," "Old Ironsides," "Marco Bozzaris," "A Psalm of Life," and bits of poetry of this character were well worth remembering. The prose selections were from the writings and speeches of such men as Edward Everett, Daniel Webster, Rufus Choate, Patrick Henry, John Quincy Adams, W. H. Prescott, R. H. Dana, and Macaulay. I was about to compare the character of these selections with those with which the readers of today are filled, but hesitate to do so fearing lest I shall be unable to disabuse my mind of a prejudice partial to those old readers. Mathematics were a frightful bugbear to me, and I fear I should be unable to speak without bias of those arithmetics. The rules were fearfully and wonderfully explicit: Write down the numbers to be added one under another, units under units and tens under tens-but if we neglected to draw a line underneath it seemed to invalidate the whole process. The only pleasant feature I remember about the old arithmetic was that the last page or two was given up to riddles and puzzles. The great question to be answered in one of these momentous problems was stated in these words: "As I was going to St. Ives |