"Good Old Days"

[Sam Clements]

1821 Edinburgh Advertiser.

"Till this had been done, I would never have defiled my hands by placing the
sacred symbols in her's; and this she would have been compelled to do in
those good old days, when Church Discipline was in its pristine vigour and
activity."

Sam Clements


----- Original Message -----
From: "Baker, John" <JMB at STRADLEY.COM>
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: Thursday, September 23, 2004 7:19 PM
Subject: "Good Old Days"


>         From a review of An Empire of Wealth, by John Steele Gordon, in
the Wall Street Journal today:
>
>         <<In 1844, 63-year-old Philip Hone wrote:  "Railroads, steamers,
packets, race against time and beat it hollow . . . Oh, for the good old
days of heavy post coaches and speed at the rate of six miles an hour!"
According to Mr. Gordon, Hone's lament is the first recorded reference to
those mythical and ever-advancing "good old days.">>
>
>         I'll start the bidding.  From Bulwer-Lytton's The Last Days of
Pompeii (1834):
>
>         <<'When is our next wild-beast fight?' said Clodius to Pansa.
>
>         'It stands fixed for the ninth ide of August,' answered Pansa: 'on
the day
> after the Vulcanalia--we have a most lovely young lion for the occasion.'
>
>         'Whom shall we get for him to eat?' asked Clodius.  'Alas! there
is a great
> scarcity of criminals.  You must positively find some innocent or other to
> condemn to the lion, Pansa!'
>
>         'Indeed I have thought very seriously about it of late,' replied
the aedile,
> gravely.  'It was a most infamous law that which forbade us to send our
own
> slaves to the wild beasts.  Not to let us do what we like with our own,
> that's what I call an infringement on property itself.'
>
>         'Not so in the good old days of the Republic,' sighed Sallust.>>
>
>         But I'm sure we can do better than 1834.
>
> John Baker
>