rence with strong sinews on each side.
We had no sidewalks then, not much taxation,
No lock-up, county gaol, no corporation,
No aldermanic wisdom, and no mayor,
To fill with dignity the civic chair;
No tax collector with his pressing bill
To cause consumption in an empty till;
Corrupt electors trod not freedom's ground,
No purchaseable franchise could be found--
Money was not the "altar and the God,"
Before which manhood bowed a venal clod!
The reign of truth, ere politics was made
By infamy a money-making trade!
No costly vehicles with horses gay,
In gilded trappings graced that ancient day;
Pedestrianism was fashionable then,
For boys were boys, as 'twas, and men were men.
And girls were what they always were, the best
Blossoms in the gardens of the blest!
One steamer only cleft the Ottawa's spray,
But did not, like the "Queen," come every day.
No railroad engine snorted o'er the plain,
Dragging along behind its ponderous train--
No telegraphic line with speed of light
Scattered intelligence with lightning flight;
No gas-flame shed its artificial ray,
Turning nocturnal darkness into day--
The tallow candle blazed away supreme,
And of the age of coal oil did not dream;
Yet, 'twas "a gay old time," a happy time,
And could I strike an upward note sublime,
I'd strain my very heartstrings with the blast
Of glory that I'd give the fine old past!
But times are changed, and things are altered too,
Fair civilization bursts upon our view;
The old men of the old time have been laid
In peace beneath the weeping willow's shade;
The middle-aged are in the yellow leaf,
Life's evening evanescent, sad and brief--
The little children who flourished then
Are now the mothers of our land, and men--
The wilderness has vanished, the old trees
Have disappeared before improvement's breeze;
Commercial enterprise is busy now,
The Ottawa's breast is cleft by many a prow,
The roaring, rushing locomotives scour
Along the track at forty miles an hour--
The electric current cleaves the ambient air,
Shooting the rays of thought round everywhere,
Darting like sunbeams to the left and right,
The swift-winged messengers of mental light!
Disturbing 'neath the billows of the deep,
The ocean monsters from their dreamy sleep;
Cleaving resistless through the watery waste
A miracle not dreamt of in the past,
Annihilating time, and leaving space,
Like Noah's dove, without a resting place!
Thy fame, too, "old brown Bess," hath passed away,