"Can you tell what that embroidery is made of?"
The woman working at the museum gestured to an elaborate scene of flowers in a vase mounted on the wall.
I, along with the children I accompanied, was confounded.
"Human hair."
When I looked again, I was sure it was true. The petals were all soft golds and browns, and upon closer examination I could make out the tiny individual strands.
The woman informed us that the wife and daughters that had lived in this house in the late-19th century would collect the loose hair from their hairbrushes and eventually create art with it.
After walking through the DeLong family's house at the Chapman Museum, largely untouched, I am amazed at just how much progress humankind has made in mere centuries.
The DeLongs lived before electricity was a major household fixture, and thus they lived by daylight and candlelight. I imagine the night is truly dark when the room cannot be illuminated with the flip of a switch.
Comparatively, the average American home consumes 911 kilowatthours per month, according to the Energy Information Administration.
To put that in context, Duke Energy maintains that one kWh provides enough energy to watch television for 10 hours.
The DeLong children, therefore, did not have a tablet or a TV to keep them numbingly occupied. They in fact had very little to keep them occupied, and often played musical instruments to entertain themselves.
Being a seasoned babysitter, I honestly cannot even draw up an image of today's young children tuning up and playing lyrically together.
The perception of children in society has been greatly altered; two centuries ago, they were forbidden to speak at the table unless spoken to. They were often not even permitted in the same room as their older counterparts. Ultimately, they were expected to act as miniature adults, a presumption that has long been abandoned.
Perhaps the most understated horror of the late 19th century is the heaps of clothing that most people endured day to day, often at least partially comprised of wool.
The bar of decency has been innumerably lowered; in the summertime it is far from unusual to see young girls scampering around in tank tops and cutoffs, and it is even more outlandish to think that they should be scolded for their impropriety.
There is an image in the museum of a few of the DeLongs on their trip to Egypt. The woman toward the left of the frame stands out, likely the wife, as she sits atop a camel donned in a dark, heavy dress and a feathery hat. The only skin that appears to be bare is her face.
The temperature in Cairo, Egypt as I write is 97 degrees Fahrenheit, and it is due to get hotter. I presume it was equally unbearable two hundred years ago, and the DeLongs were clad in black woolen outfits.
The fact of the matter is that humans have roamed the Earth for a short time. To see in plain view the advances we have made as a species is astounding.
So the next time you're hysterical because your phone died or complaining about the heat when you're wearing a T-shirt and shorts, remember our brothers and sisters from a couple centuries back. They almost certainly had it much worse.
