Life In The Fast Lane

This is the age of High Pressure. Men eat faster, drink faster, talk faster than they did in our younger days and in order to be consistent in all points, they die faster. It is to be feared that the invention of the telegraph will give an additional go-ahead impulse to humanity, equal to that imparted by the rush of steam. If so, Progress only knows where we shall land.

Sound familiar? This article appeared in the Raleigh Register in 1850. It was published in The Connector, newsletter of Tar River Connections Genealogical Society, in the Spring 1998 issue.