My mother had a couple of envelopes of various clippings, sayings, articles, poems, cartoons and such she had saved because they meant something to her. I was looking through one of these just before the anniversary of her death and found this bit of amusement.
This was written by my great-grandmother on the eve of the 20th Century. She was 20 years old, and a new bride when the 20th century began. While a student at Bloomingdale Academy, her English Literature textbook had featured an essay on the wonders of progress and the rosy prospects for the 20th Century. This inspired her to write in, on a blank page of the book, her own light hearted forecasts.
THE NEW CENTURY–1900 Reflections of Etna Marie Hixson
“The nineteenth century is great, but a century will come when children will be born with wigs, false teeth, glasses, and will study Latin and Geometry while they are too young to stand alone.
Everyone will own a flying machine, and the ladies of the world will give teas for their friends on Mars. The art of cooking will be developed until we will be fed stewed air, baked water, and fried sunlight.
People will no longer wonder why they dream or what becomes of the things they once knew, but they will have heads that can hold everything, eyes equal to the X-rays, ears that can hear a Chinaman snoring on the other side of the world, and noses that can smell the coffee and fried potatoes in the tavern on the Moon.
People will sleeep with their eyes open and keep their mouths shut during the entire meal.
In a more contemplative mood, she had also written this on the back page of the same book:
I sat alone with my conscience
In a place where time had ceased,
And I looked at my former being
In the land where the years increased.
And I thought of my former thinking
Of the Judgement Day to be;
But sitting alone with my conscience
Seemed judgement enough to me.
Dragonfly's Dance 
You must be logged in to post a comment.