THEN AND NOW

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Said Aaron 1400, a mediÆval boy,
“I’ll tell you what I’d like so well to know:
How far the moon is from us, the sun’s diameter,
And how one may predict the rain and snow!
I’d like to know the reason for the lightning in the sky,
What makes the ocean tides to rise and fall,
Why, when you let a body drop, it quickly falls to earth,
And if the world we live on can really be a ball!
Oh, I’d go to school and study every minute in the day;
For all such curious knowledge how I’d strive!
If I could only know these things”—he gave a troubled sigh,—
“I’d really be the happiest boy alive!”
But Willie 1900 said (a present-century lad),
“I wish I’d lived five hundred years ago;
This spending time in school-rooms—oh, I wouldn’t have to do,
For then these things they didn’t have to know!
It’s a nuisance reading history—they didn’t have much then,
And as for science—my! ’twas jolly fun,
For there wasn’t electricity or sound for boys to learn,—
The discoverers weren’t born—or hardly one!
I’d like to live as boys did ten hundred years ago,
’Cause they had nothing else to do but play!
If there wasn’t anything to learn, or more than they had then,
My! wouldn’t I be happy every day!”

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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