"What can we reason, but from what we know?"
Let honest men look back an hundred years--
Nay, fifty, and behold the wondrous change.
Where wooden tubs like sluggards sailed the sea,
Steam-ships of steel like greyhounds course the main;
Where lumbering coach and wain and wagon toiled
Through mud and mire and rut and rugged way,
The cushioned train a mile a minute flies.
Then by slow coach the message went and came,
But now by lightning bridled to man's use
We flash our silent thoughts from sea to sea;
Nay, under ocean's depths from shore to shore;
And talk by telephone to distant ears.
The dreams of yesterday are deeds to-day.
Our frugal mothers spun with tedious toil,
And wove the homespun cloth for all their fold;
Their needles plied by weary fingers sewed.
Behold, the humming factory spins and weaves,
The singing "Singer" sews with lightning speed.
Our fathers sowed their little fields by hand,
And reaped with bended sickles and bent backs;
By hand they bound the sheaves of wheat and rye;
With flails they threshed and winnowed in the wind.
Now by machines we sow and reap and bind;
By steam we thresh and sack the bounteous grain.
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