erything, and
before a man kissed his wife he asked a blessing, and afterward said:
"Having received another favor from the Lord, let us return thanks."
[Laughter.] But our great need now is more religion in every-day life.

I think their plain diet had much to do with their ruggedness of nature.
They had not as many good things to eat as we have, and they had better
digestion. Now, all the evening some of our best men sit with an awful
bad feeling at the pit of their stomach, and the food taken fails to
assimilate, and in the agitated digestive organs the lamb and the cow
lie down together and get up just as they have a mind to. [Laughter.]
After dinner I sat down with my friend to talk. He had for many years
been troubled with indigestion. I felt guilty when I insisted on his
taking that last piece of lemon pie. I knew that pastry always made him
crusty. I said to him: "I never felt better in all my life; how do you
feel?" And putting one hand over one piece of lemon pie and the other
hand over the other piece of lemon pie, he said: "I feel miserable."
Smaller varieties of food had the old Fathers, but it did them more
good.

Still, take it all in all, I think the descendants of the Pilgrim
Fathers are as good as their ancestors, and in many ways better.
Children are apt to be an echo of their ancestors. We are apt to put a
halo around the Forefathers, but I expect that at our age they were very
much like ourselves. People are not wise when they long for the good old
days. They say: "Just think of the pride of people at this day! Just
look at the ladies' hats!" [Laughter.] Why, there is nothing in the
ladies' hats of to-day equal to the coal-scuttle hats a hundred years
ago. They say: "Just look at the way people dress their hair!" Why, the
extremest style of to-day will not equal the top-knots which our
great-grandmothers wore, put up with high combs that we would have
thought would have made our great-grandfathers die with laughter. The
hair was lifted into a pyramid a foot high. On the top of that tower lay
a white rose. Shoes of bespangled white kid, and heels two or three
inches high. Grandfather went out to meet her on the floor with a coat
of sky-blue silk and vest of white satin embroidered with gold lace,
lace ruffles around his wrist and his hair flung in a queue. The great
George Washington had his horse's hoofs blackened when about to appear
on a parade, and writes to Europe ordering sent for the use of h