Last-Day Wonders by Editor

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Dec 4, 1879

Last-Day Wonders.

By Editor

MANY stories have been told of amusing incidents occasioned by the wonderful progress of this century. Railroads and telegraphs have in turn taxed the credulity of those not acquainted with their principles. The latest is the telephone. The story hails from a mining town in California.

A Chinaman wished to speak to a friend in another town, and had him called to the telephone office for that purpose. Chinaman No. 2 knew his friend was not in that house, nor in that town, yet he recognized his voice speaking to him. A moment he looked in wonder, and then ran from the house, crying, "Too muchee devil!"

He who has lived barely half a century can realize the wonderful improvements of the age. They whose memories do not carry them back half that time cannot have any just idea of the change that has been wrought, or how people lived without the modern improvements.

The articles now being published in the SIGNS on the "United States in Prophecy," have given some of the evidences of the marvelous growth and progress of this country. These articles are all worthy of careful consideration.

We were much struck with a remark made by Sojourner Truth, the last time we heard her. She was speaking of the condition of the country as far back in time as her memory reached, which was about one hundred years. Not only all the improvements and inventions but all the great cities have sprung up in her day. In her own quaint style she said, "What was there in this country a hundred years ago? Nothing but me!"

It is even so; there is little in this country which she could recognize, of one hundred years ago, except herself. How reasonable it appears that this nation occupies an important and prominent place in prophecy, as it confessedly does in the current history of the world, though it is but a youth among the nations.