Ah, the past, that warm and cordial land, where one Was so contented, so snug, and limitlessly happy, though one cannot remember just why. The past is the best of all places, no doubt about it, much superior to the present and, in the view of most people nowadays, certainly much to “be preferred to the future. If one is old enough for the past to be longer than the likely future — regrettably, I qualify here — the tendency is to return fairly often to those thrilling days of yesteryear.

“Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear” comes, of course, from the dramatic prologue of the Lone Ranger radio show. A properly cynical person, listening to that prologue, might have remarked that those thrilling days of the masked rider’s yesteryear included the absence of indoor plumbing, lots of gonorrhea and other jolly diseases to go around, no anesthesia for surgery, and many another nightmare that comes under the rubric of simple country living.