Now, I s'pose our old 4 fathers was attached to the idee of hitchin' an ox onto a wagon, and ridin' after it. And our old 4 mothers liked the idee of bein' perched up on a pillion behind the old 4 fathers. I s'pose they hated the idee of gettin' off of that pillion, and onhitchin' that ox. But they had to, they had to get down, and get up into phaetons and railway cars, and steamboats.
And I s'pose them old 4 people (likely creeters they wuz too) hated the idee of usin' matches; used to love to strike fire with a flint, and trample off a mild to a neighber's on January mornin's (and their mornin's was very early) to borrow some coals if they had lost their flint. I s'pose they had got attached to that flint, some of 'em, and hated to give it up, thought it would be lonesome. But they had to; and the flint didn't care, it knew matches was better. The calm, everlasting forces of Nature don't murmur or rebel when they are changed for newer, greater helps. No: it is only human bein's who complain, and have the heartache, because they are so sot.
But whether we murmur, or whether we are calm, whether we like it, or whether we don't, we have to move our tents. We are only campin' out, here; and we have to move our tents along, and let the new things push us out of the way. The old things now, are the new ones of the past; and what seems new to us, will soon be the old.
Why, how long does it seem, only a minute, since we was a buildin' moss houses down in the woods back of the old schoolhouse? Beautiful, fresh rooms, carpeted with the green moss, with bright young faces bendin' down over 'em. Where are they now? The dust of how many years—I don't want to think how many—has sifted down over them velvet-carpeted mansions, turned them into dust.
And the same dust has sprinkled down onto the happy heads of the fresh, bright-faced little group gathered there.