"Far Away and Long Ago"
So far from gratifying this wish, in another connection he put it right up to me, that I was looking around with complaisance, as though it was a college of this present size and appearance that I graduated from, but that such was not the historic fact. It did not seem nice in the stripling to move right out in the direction of ocular demonstration, and make particular inquiry of me about the library and chapel and training field and gymnasium that I used in that college that I graduated from. His very impudence made him interesting to me. But I wished he would cultivate more repose and serenity. He had sense enough to know better but his resources in that direction were not immediately available.
As we were looking around I observed that this young tyro was all the time tipping his hat and bowing and scraping as often as a pretty face came within the horizon, and so I knew that there was a way I could divert his remarks from poor me, and that was to ask him outright about the girls. I was astonished that I had not named them to the fledgling before. I was amazed that I was capable of passing them by so long. He said that there was nothing like them, that the air was favorable to their elegance and charm, that there was no place of its size in that state or in any other that could show fairer specimens of the various kinds of feminine attractiveness. But in his talk on the comeliness of the young ladies I noticed that he quoted from an actress who seems to have said that three things are necessary for success on the stage, vivacity, ability and beauty, and I told him that I could not be too thankful that the stage of practical life did not insist on these rigid requirements.
Stepping Stones in Recent History
It was a holiday within a holiday to traverse the town with this lambkin. I came to the right place to squarely meet him. Here they introduce people to themselves. This stripling that I used to be seemed bent on hiring a horse and carriage to show me about. That was his only idea of hospitality. On the best streets in town, he did not have far to go, the livery stables were as convenient to the homes of the people as the school-houses and churches. A very convenient location was near the public library. His fear was that all the horses would be already taken as there were a good many visitors in town. If the high steppers were out we would find their keepers in more or less rickety arm chairs tilted back against the side of a wall awaiting their return.
There are two panels placed side by side in the old palace at Potsdam. The left contains Napoleon refusing the queenly Louise favorable terms of peace at Tilsit, the right contains the nephew of that Napoleon receiving notoriously hard terms from the son of the beautiful Louise at Sedan. Entire shifts in history are vividly seen in companion pictures. On the left is a picture of the horse with the caption, The Greatest Pleasure-giver to Man. On the right is the picture of a Ford. All that a man hath will he give in exchange for an automobile. The left exhibits what God made, the right, what man made. No one living in the city will look at a horse. He now shows that he feels that he is something left over. Survey the specimens that remain, low-headed, tail-switching, creatures, with an indolent air, shuffling gait, abject, pitiable objects with mis-shapen, stumbling legs in front. No one doubts but that it takes all day to go anywhere and return with these antique, stunted, gaunt-ribbed, swollen-jointed, knock-kneed, piteous-eyed creatures that now survive. Knowing the pleasure that young people once had in horses and ponies, it seems odd to find that the rising generation has almost forgotten their existence.
