Those Honest Days of Yore

"They recall the pictures my fancy used to draw in the May morning of life, when as yet I only knew the world through books, and believed it to be all that poets had painted it; and they bring with them the flavour of those honest days of yore, in which, perhaps with equal fallacy, I am apt to think the world was more homebred, social, and joyous, than at present!"

-- Washington Irving, 1820

One of the great consolations for life in the present is the splendid vantage point it affords for eulogizing the past. Hindsight claims the privilege of selectivity; it casts a silvery glow over the things we choose to remember, and tactfully obscures those points that interfere with nostalgia.

How many of us, when conforming to modernity becomes onerous, have turned a longing eye to this watercolor vision of yesteryear? What would we not give to return to those harmonious days of sincere affection, beautiful dwellings, and verdant nature -- when men and women rose with the sun and retired after a well-ordered day of joyful labor to an ivy-covered cottage?

Delusional? Perhaps. But our race has earned the right to make its own version of the past -- earned it by enduring all the present days that once were. The gift history brings is the ability to speak to future generations, through oral tradition and written record; to transmit that which is best of ourselves and of our times so that it may be saved, and the rest, like a pain that has subsided, blessedly forgotten.

The past, like a fine wine, benefits from aging, that it may mellow and take on the elusive flavor we are seeking. 150 years seems a decent interval for the cellar. And there is no one left living to tell us what we do not wish to hear. Won't you join me in reliving the best of the 1850s? I chose New York City because that is where I am now -- it's enough to transmute time without worrying about place. Besides, I have a feeling New York City was (as some feel it is now) the place to be in 1850...