Genre:

Poetry

Subjects:

Progress, Technology, Railways, Telegraphy, Photography, Spiritualism

    Recalls the 'days when we wore straps', when 'Most of all our rising men / Puling in their nurses' laps', 'Railways were a wonder new' and 'Telegraphic wires were not', and instead there were slow stage-coaches and news deliveries. Adds that this was a time when india-rubber was expensive and gutta-percha unknown, and 'Science had not yet to bear / Brought the Sun's pictorial rays'. Neither were 'Spirits, under tables heard', which then would have 'been thought too absurd'.