"Good Old Days"

[Jonathan Lighter]

"Would the Country-Gentlemen, as in the good old Days, make their diligent neighbouring Tradesmen their Cashiers, their Ambition and Industry would increase with their Power."

    Anon., _A Short View of the Apparent Dangers and Mischiefs from the Bank of England._    (London, 1707), p.13.


Sam Clements <SClements at NEO.RR.COM> wrote:
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Poster: Sam Clements
Subject: Re: "Good Old Days"
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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"
To:
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:
>
> <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
>

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