Well — I know how to make a pretty cap with bits of ribbon and needlework, but what good is something like that if no one bothers with a cap anymore? I can embroider a handkerchief in four or five patterns I learned by heart but what's the use when it's only "throwaway" handkerchiefs now?

I can read and make music quite deftly and everyone gets their music from their little devices or the open air now, and I can dance and waltz and no one dances anymore.

So really, how is it that one doesn't feel useless when I know so many things but a hundred years later they're all for nothing?