Mrs. L. H. Sigoumey of Hartford, Connecticut, was a prolific writer of books to improve the minds of children and their parents during the period prior to our Civil War. The quotation below from one of her most popular books might have been written today!
The universal opinion of those, who scrutinize the state of society in our country, is that in the treatment of the aged, there is a diminution of respect. Even the authority of parents, and teachers, seems to be borne with uneasiness, and to be early shaken off. Those, whose memory comprises two generations assert, that most palpably in these points, the former days were better than these.1