Newspaper History

Month: April 2021

  • Other Pebbles

    From the Evening Star, April 30, 1913.
    By Walt Mason.

    Don’t think you’re the only old boy that is lonely, discouraged, down-hearted, world-beaten and blue; the world’s pretty roomy, and others are gloomy and galled by their troubles as deeply as you. But others are braver; their souls have the savor of courage undaunted, the courage that wins; when effort seems futile and Fortune is brutal, they take what she hands them and greet her with grins. So Fortune grows weary of swatting these cheery unquenchable fellows who will not repine; these smiling humdingers she takes by the fingers and leads them to regions of roses and wine. But you sit a-brooding, your eyeballs protruding, your whiskers awash in a fourflusher’s tears, you look, while you’re straining your innards complaining, a statue of grief from your heels to your ears. Dame Fortune will spy you, and if she comes nigh you she’ll hand you a brickbat instead of a rose; she hasn’t much kindness for men who have blindness for everything here but their own private woes. So cut out the grouching and mourning and slouching, and show you’re a scrapper named Scrapperovitch; go forth to your labors like stout-hearted neighbors, and soon you’ll be happy and sassy and rich.

  • Sad Case of Travers Green

    From The Birmingham Age-Herald, April 29, 1913.
 

 When Travers Green was feeling gay
 He lightly sought some cabaret
 And when “Fleurette” began to dance
 He’d give a connoisseur’s glance,
 As if to all the world to say,
 “I know what’s what in a cabaret.”
 
 Anon he sipped the sparkling wine,
 Where countless lights were wont to shine;
 His dress was faultless to behold,
 His manners easy, yet not bold,
 And had you but observed hime there,
 You would have thought him free from care.
 
 Alas! Alack for Travers Green!
 No more in gilded haunts is seen;
 His dad who used his bills to pay
 For motors, clubs and cabaret,
 And costly clothes and chorus girls
 And many, many merry whirls
 
 Has cut poor Travers off without
 The wherewithal to roam about;
 And since this youth has never toiled,
 Nor felt his hands by labor soiled,
 What lies before I cannot say,
 But he dines no more in a cabaret.

  • Ownership

    From the Rock Island Argus, April 28, 1913.
 By S. E. Kiser.
 

 This glad world was not made for me,
     The brook would sing upon its way,
 The fragrant blossoms grace the tree,
     The squirrels in the branches play,
 If I should sink to nothingness,
     And never know again or care;
 But being here, I may possess
     All that is good and sweet and fair.
 
 I may be gladdened by the song
     With which the lark begins the day;
 To me the woodland joys belong,
     The blossoms that bestrew my way;
 The beauty of the towering cliff
     I may behold with ecstasy;
 I see and hear—what matter if
     This fair world was not made for me?

  • Cry of the Dreamer

    From the Omaha Daily Bee, April 27, 1913.
 By John Boyle O’Reilly.
 

 I am tired of planning and toiling
     In the crowded hives of men;
 Heartweary of building and spoiling,
     And spoiling and building again.
 And I long for the dear old river,
     Where I dreamed my youth away,
 For a dreamer lives forever
     And a toiler dies in a day.
 
 I am sick of the showy seeming,
     Of a life that is half a lie;
 Of the faces lined with scheming
     In the throng that hurries by,
 From the sleepless thoughts of endeavor
     I would go where the children play;
 For a dreamer lives forever,
     And a thinker dies in a day.
 
 I can feel no pride but pity,
     For the burdens the rich endure;
 There is nothing sweet in the city
     But the patient lives of the poor.
 Oh, the little hands too skillful
     And the child mind choked with weeds!
 The daughter’s heart grown willful,
     And the father’s heart that bleeds!
 
 No, no! From the street’s rude bustle
     From trophies of mart and stage,
 I would fly to the wood’s low rustle
     And the meadow’s kindly page.
 Let me dream as of yore by the river
     And be loved for the dream alway;
 For a dreamer lives forever,
     And a thinker dies in a day.

  • In a Rose Garden

    From The Birmingham Age-Herald, April 26, 1913.
 By John Bennett.
 

A hundred years from now, dear heart,
     We will not care at all.
 It will not matter then a whit,
     The honey or the gall.
 The summer days that we have known
 Will all forgotten be and flown;
 The garden will be overgrown
     Where now the roses fall.
 
 A hundred years from now, dear heart,
     We will not mind the pain.
 The throbbing, crimson tide of life
     Will not have left a stain.
 The song we sing together, dear,
 The dream we dream together here,
 Will mean no more than means a tear
     Amid the summer rain.
 
 A hundred years from now, dear heart,
     The grief will all be o’er;
 The sea of care will surge in vain
     Upon a careless shore.
 These glasses we turn down today,
 Here at the parting of the way,
 We shall be wineless then as they,
     And will not mind it more.
 
 A hundred years from now, dear heart,
     We’ll neither know nor care
 What came of all life’s bitterness,
     Or followed love’s despair.
 Then fill the glasses up again
 And kiss me through the rose leaf rain;
 We’ll build one castle more in Spain
     And dream one more dream there.

  • The Boy That Never Was

    From The Birmingham Age-Herald, April 25, 1913.
 

 He never wrote upon the walls,
     He never did a window break,
 Through him the cat ne’er lifted squalls
     So loud they might the dead awake.
 His little sister never felt
     A strand of hair pulled from her crown,
 Upon her cheek no blows were dealt,
     He ne’er was known to push her down.
 His mother’s days were free from care,
     His father never used the strap,
 I’m sure you’ll not find anywhere
     So well behaved a little chap.
 
 You ask me what his name could be
     And where this youngster doth reside?
 I can not answer that. You see,
     I have a secret to confide:
 Imagination fondly drew
     The type of boy these lines describe,
 Too free from faults to be quite true
     To life and all the boyhood tribe.
 And maybe it were better so,
     That none exists so wondrous good,
 For if he did, I almost know
     We’d scarcely love him as we should.

  • It Pays to Talk

    From the Rock Island Argus, April 24, 1913.
 By S. E. Kiser.
 

 Sim Watson’s stock of wit was small,
 But he let on he knew it all;
     He held his head up mighty high;
     The word he spoke the most was “I;”
 He had a large amount of gall,
     And never let a chance go by
 Whenever he was in a crowd
 To make his conversation loud.
 
 You’d hear his voice above the rest
 He’d strut and he’d stick out his chest
     He never “guessed,” he always KNEW;
     Or, leastwise, he pretended to;
 He always seemed to worry lest
     He might be hidden from the view;
 When taller men than Sim were there
 You’d see him standin’ on a chair.
 
 We all knew his talk was guff,
 That he was puttin’ up a bluff,
     And yet, somehow, we kind of got
     To thinkin’ that he knew a lot;
 The jokes he told were old and tough—
     Most of them tales that we’d forgot—
 But still we’d laugh at what he said,
 And so his reputation spread.
 
 Well, as I see the case today,
 Sim taught a lesson, anyway;
     Your stock of knowledge may be small,
     But don’t stand back against the wall
 And listen to what others say.
     Speak up and claim to know it all;
 Most people will believe you do—
 The wiser ones are mighty few.

  • The Value of Hope

    From the Rock Island Argus, April 23, 1913.
 By S. E. Kiser.
 

 How drear a place the world would be
     If all who fail to win success
 Permitted all the rest to see
     The evidence of their distress!
 How fortunate it is that men
     So often hide the griefs they bear
 So often still try bravely when
     Their breasts are laden with despair.
 
 How few men ever would achieve
     The victories that are so sweet
 If each should let the world perceive
     Whenever he had met defeat!
 How few men would be deemed sublime
     By those whose hearts are moved to song
 If each sat grumbling every time
     His heart ached or his plans went wrong.
 
 How little there would be to praise
     How much to keep us plunged in gloom
 If each but waited all his days
     To hear the dreadful crack of doom!
 ’Tis well that men conceal despair
     When stubborn fate has used them ill;
 Why not, if you have woes to bear,
     Assist by seeming hopeful still?

  • I Remember

    From the Bisbee Daily Review, April 22, 1913.
 

 I remember, I remember
     When courtin’ Sal I went;
 The parlor where so many
     Delightful hours were spent;
 The good old horsehair sofy,
     The crayon portraits, too,
 Which stared so impolitely
     As crayon portraits do;
 The whatnot in the corner,
     Filled up with ancient junk,
 The stuffed owl on the mantle,
     Who listened to the bunk.
 I peddled just like you did,
     When courtin’ of your gal,
 And life was simply heaven
     When I was courtin’ Sal.
 I remember, I remember
     How I marched up the aisle.
 The knot tied by the pastor
     Has held for quite a while.
 The horsehair sofy’s missing,
     They crayon portraits, too.
 We’re living in apartments,
     With modern stuff clear through.
 The stuffed owl is not with us
     Perched up above the grate;
 We have no corner what-nots,
     For we are up to date.
 I remember, I remember
     I married Sal you bet.
 The landlord and collectors
     Will not let me forget.

  • Lady’s Slippers

    From the Perth Amboy Evening News, April 21, 1913.
 

 Deep hidden in the green of woods,
     Where rain of sunlight, sifting through
 The woven layers of the leaves
     Makes diamonds of the dew,
 There is a secret nook I know
     Where yellow lady’s slippers grow.
 
 And I have seen from day to day
     (Though new ones come to take the place)
 How soon they seem to wear away
     And lose their first day’s grace.
 And I have often mourned that they
     Should be so quick to fade away.
 
 It’s strange I never guessed this thing
     Before, but now I know,
 Because I found a fairy ring
     Beside the place they grow—
 The moss, which is the fairies’ lawn,
     With toadstools that they sit upon.
 
 The fairies put the flowers there
     Of course. They never grew by chance.
 At midnight each one takes a pair—
     They wear the slippers when they dance.
 And with the peeping of the sun
     They hang them on their stalks and run.