Illinois newspaper directory. History of the Illinois press association

Illinois \i wsiwim u Directory and Historymotive power is needed. The intense age demands it. It must come. We must have atrain that can out-run a cyclone, and a flying ship that can ride above a storm at sea."Ice-making machines, that will manufacture ice in August, have grown common.It is now suggested that snow-melting machines or engines may be run on the railroadsto clear the track in winter. This suggestion may be premature; but it shows thatthere is thought upon the subject, at least."The sportsman of this age sneers at a 2:40 gait. The horse must make his milein a trifle over 2:08 or he is n.g."It is the age of cyclones in more senses than one. We have the greatest conflagrations,the greatest floods, the most intense heat, and the most intense cold—the mostintense everything. Even a politician must be an intense partisan to attract attention.People nowadays get drunker than they used to—and soberer. Lightning trains carrythe mails across the continent, and quick delivery stamps are used in all towns of anyconsiderable pretensions. This age has produced the fastest steamers, the biggest engines,the greatest bridges, the longest tunnels, the tallest monuments, the awfulest crimes,as well as the most munificent gifts; the most ballot-box manipulation, the most populouspenitentiaries, and the grandest almshouses. It is the Jumbo-colossal-aggregationage—the cap-sheaf of all the ages. Even the small boy of the Sundav school wants tosee Goliath first when he gets to heaven."The music of today has quicker time, and the Sunday school music of this agewould have frightened the Pilgrim Fathers into the woods topray."It is the age of the greatest riches and the greatest poverty."Nobody takes time for deliberation; it is not an age of deliberation. What arecalled deliberative bodies, are often more nearly howling mobs. You who have attendedstate or national conventions, can bear witness to this fact. And yet it is not a frivolousage, but a practical one, and things seems to happen about right, despite the lack ofdeliberation, owing probably to the inherent sense of justice among the people."The whole American people seem to be in a hurry. You step into a store fora trifle. The clerks are busy. You wait just four seconds. If no clerk is then ready towait upon you, you most likely walk out and enter another store."Every man who orders a job of printing wants it 'right away.'"Is there a man in the house who likes to stop a conversation to hear a clock striketwelve times?"Railroads advertise, in big type, 'Two hours and forty-seven minutes the shortestroute between Washington and Denver,' and throw in, in smaller type, 'through sleepers,dining coaches, reclining chairs,' etc. Two hours saved in two thousand miles! Distanceis measured by time, not by mileposts."In every live town you see a path across every corner where it is possible to goacross. Who wants to describe a right angle when he can cut across and save time? Thehypotenuse is shorter than the sum of the other two sides."The only job of the very early times that seems to have been done in a remarkablehurry was when the world was made in six days. There was not much hurrying forsome time thereafter, however, as the travels of Moses would indicate. And the earthseems to have pretty well satisfied the people for some fifty or sixty centuries. But oflate they have been cutting through isthmuses, tunneling under mountains, burrowingunder rivers, and blowing up Hellgate; and some of these days we may wake up to finda new world entirely, made by some enterprising corporation or syndicate of capitalists."The fable of the hare and the tortoise is lost on this generation. The hare of thisage doesn't stop to nap. It would run the race and get into the clover field or nibblehalf the trees in the orchard before the tortoise could get fairly out of his favorite71