-^-^ 5^"^. ^^ X'^^^^/ ,^^^ "^^ • ^>:' -^^ < o 4 o -^-^^^ :'^ P4C I' TAventieth C e n t u r y M u s i n gf s Being Things Thought Out By M. Clay Burbridge Done Into a Book by The Roy- crofters, at Their Shop, which is in East Aurora, Erie County, New York, April, mcmxiii. Copyright, 1913 By M. Clay Burbridge ^ A C\ f\ Ck TO MY COLONIAL GRANDFATHER Captain iWplesi ^tanbisif) AS A TRIBUTE TO HIS HEROIC SERVICE AND UNSELFISH DEVOTION TO THE CAUSE OF LIBERTY M. C. B. His Granddaughter of THE Ninth Generation FOREWORD Mlfc^HERE is just one objection to this book, # C\ and that is the title. ^^^^ Twentieth' Century Musings is hardly appropriate. It should have been ** Twenty- Second/' or *' Twenty-Fifth Century Musings." ^^ The author of this book is ahead of her time. She is an exceptional thinker, and does not represent this century, but all centuries. What this woman knows now, may be known to all, two hundred years from now. Truth is immortal. It is classic; and the classic is the thing that never grows old. Here we find portable wisdom, nuggets of fact and sentiment fused. The proverb, the epigram, the orphic saying, have come down to us from the days of Solomon. Socrates made the world vastly his debtor by such homely commonsense sayings as this : ** Do too much for a boy and he will never do much for himself." Here is a sentiment that Plato puts into the mouth of Socrates, with the youth Alcibiades in mind. It is one of the things eternally true that has to be reiterated, restated, emphasized again and again.