"You link together today and yesterday.
"Long may you wave.
"I want greatly to get out to the great show and am endeavoring to shape things that I may. It would be a delight in many ways, and maybe my last chance to see what is left of the Old Guard.
"And I would like to see my old friend Meeker, amid the surroundings that become him most, and in the impersonations of the old days that the next generation, nor those to come can ever know, for the waste places of the earth are being inhabited, and the old ways are lost ways, and may never be known again. We that were of them know that the world grows better and we do not wish the dial to now reflect only the shadows of the past, but there are times when the old simple ways are ways to regret, even though we accept the truth that progress means betterment. But in the betterment, we lose some things we miss greatly and would love to retain. There is nothing more humanizing, nothing more tending to the brotherhood of man, than much interdependence.
"In those days while there was of necessity great self-reliance, there was also much wholesome dependence upon our neighbors, in all the matters of daily life the need was felt, and the call was answered.
"The day, in the last extremity, when death invades the household doubtless the last rites are better cared for in the skilled hands of the "funeral director" than by the kindly neighbors who in the earlier times came with tender thought and kindly intention to you in your affliction. It brought you close together. If there were need to be tolerant to some blemishes in their general make up, you felt you were constrained to exercise such tolerance, for you had accepted their services in your need.
"You knew them at their best and always remembered they had such a best.
"We lose this in our larger life, and it is a serious loss, as are all things that separate us from our fellow man, when our need is to be brought closer together. In all large gains we have to accept some losses.
"It is the remembrance of this feature of primitive days that make them so dear to us."
"E. J. ALLEN."