Newspaper History

Month: October 2021

  • The World at Its Best

    From the Rock Island Argus, October 31, 1913. By Henry Howland.

    It’s a grand old world to be livin’ in when the grass begins to sprout;
    It’s the finest world that I’ve ever seen when the leaves are a-comin’ out;
    It’s a bully world in the fair June days when the colts kick up their heels;
    It’s a fine old world when the little chicks get to scratchin’ for their meals,
    And I’ll tell you, boys, it’s a good old world ‘long about this time o’ year,
    When the turkey’s fat and the ax is sharp and Thanksgivin’ day is near.

    It’s a fine old world when the spring work’s done and the crops begin to grow;
    It’s a grand old world when the days are short and the fields are white with snow;
    It’s a bully world in the summer time when you smell the sweet new hay;
    It’s a dandy world when you’ve sold your wheat and the profit’s put away,
    And I’ll tell you, boys, it’s a great old world when the girl you love the best
    Sits alone with you where the light is low, with her cheek agin your vest.

    It’s a splendid world when a fellow’s young and limber and full of vim
    And a good square meal is the finest thing that a body can show to him;
    It’s a great old world in the summer time and a fine old world in fall;
    It’s a bully world when you’ve saved so much that you don’t need to care at all;
    But I’ll tell you, boys, it’s the dearest world and the fairest and sweetest world
    When you look down into your young wife’s lap where your first little child is curled.

  • The Builders

    From The Tacoma Times, October 30, 1913. By Berton Braley.

    We fellows who fool with a pencil or pen
    May serve in a measure the leisure of men,
    May dream little dreams which we draw or we write,
    To give them a moment or hour of delight;
    But somehow, it’s little and useless we feel
    Compared to the builders in stone and in steel.

    We muddle around with our paints or our ink
    And talk about Art and the things that we think,
    And we fancy ourselves and the work that we do
    Which gladdens the eye for a moment or two,
    And if a few people should mention our name
    We think we are figures of glory and fame!

    Our visions are nothing but visions—that’s all,
    But the dreams of the builders are built in a wall;
    They are hammered in steel, they are mortared in stone,
    In tower and bridge and in buttress they’re shown,
    Say, what are we singers and painter folk worth
    Compared to the builders who conquer the earth!

  • The New Village Store

    From The Topeka State Journal, October 29, 1913. By Roy K. Moulton.

    The village store has changed a pile, or so it seems to me;
    It’s different in stock and style from what it used to be.
    The cracker barrel’s vanished now, the prunes are gone from sight,
    There’s nothing left around, I vow, to tempt your appetite.

    There’s no place left for us to sit, who used to haunt that store;
    Our wisdom and our native wit aren’t heard there any more.
    The place is all so spick and span and certified and smart,
    It’s simply broken up the clan and cracked each loafer’s heart.

    I know it’s making money fast since it has changed its ways;
    It never made much in the past, but those were good old days.
    It was the meeting place, the hub, in that glad time of yore;
    It was the forum of the club—and now it’s just a store.

  • Off for School

    From The Tacoma Times, October 28, 1913. By Berton Braley.

    Bill’s gone to college and I’m glad that he’s beginning it;
        He’s wanted to be going for a long, long spell
    For life’s a lively struggle and in order to be winning it
        A fellow’s education must be learned right well;
    Bill’s gone to college and I’m tickled he is going there.
        I didn’t have the chances which have come to him,
    And Bill is smart as blazes and he’ll surely make a showing there;
        He’s full of big ambitions to the very brim!

    Bill’s gone to college—but not a swell and fancy one
        With Greek and Latin classics and a lot like that,
    Bill’s gone to college, but not a nice Miss Nancy one
        Where they’d feed him up on “culchah” in a real swell frat;
    Bill’s college courses are not favored in society,
        They won’t turn him weary of the good brown loam,
    They’ll mold of him a farmer of the up-to-date variety,
        Who’ll make the farm a hummer when he gets back home!

    Bill’s gone to college, a college educational,
        To learn the farming business as a man should do,
    To get a sort of culture that is sensible and rational
        And not a classic “polish” and a swelled head, too;
    Bill’s gone to college—but the country isn’t losing him
        He isn’t going to listen to the city’s charm,
    The glamor of the city streets would scarcely be a song to him;
        Bill’s gone to college—where he’ll learn to farm!

  • Time Scoots

    From the Evening Star, October 27, 1913. By Walt Mason.

    Yesterday, it seems, we shivered, in the bleak December blast; and I’ve just this hour diskivered that the year is going fast! Soon again, yes, ere we know it, wintry blasts again will freeze painter, plumber, printer, poet and such citizens as these. Soon again we’ll hear men yawping in the bleak and cheerless dawn: “Go and do your Christmas shopping ere the final rush is on.” How the years go whizzing by us! When man thinks how fast they’ve walked, his remarks are scarcely pious, and the women folks are shocked. Yesterday, or day before it, I was young and full of pride; I’d achieve—I grimly swore it—mighty things before I died. And I’ve just been around the edges of the things I meant to do, just got started with my wedges on the trees I meant to hew; and already I am waxing old and withered, tired and lame, and I feel my grip relaxing, and I’ve sort o’ lost my aim. Man imagines he is youthful till he wakes some winter day, and the morning, cold and truthful, tells him he is old and gray. He has aged with all his neighbors, winter makes him understand; and he goes back to his labors with a tired and heavy hand.

  • Old Blood and Young

    From The Sun, October 26, 1913.

    I can’t see why it is, my son,
        That you and I can not agree;
    The things that you consider fun
        Seem utter foolishness to me.

    Why is it that you fail to feel
        That folly should be bravely spurned?
    The pleasures that to you appeal
        Leave me serene and unconcerned.

    You seem to be so very blind
        To things that clearly I perceive;
    I give you warning, but to find
        That you must see ere you believe.

    I let no passion urge or sway,
        I hold myself in firm control,
    But, deaf to all that I can say,
        You lightly jeopardize your soul.

    Why is it that you will not heed?
        Why can’t you see what I behold?
    I wonder if it is, indeed,
        Because you’re young and I am old.

  • Only a Hobo

    From the Omaha Daily Bee, October 25, 1913. By Robert F. Shutes.

    Only a hobo, dusty and tired,
        Sitting by the railroad track;
    No friends or relations to care for him now,
        His wardrobe contained in a sack;
    Sadly he thinks of days gone by,
        Of home and wife so dear,
    Of the dear little one they have laid away
        And his grief is hard to bear.

    Where is his wife? Perhaps you ask
        As you watch him beside the track;
    She left one day with a traveling man—
        Of course she never came back.
    Wildly he searched for the erring one
        Till hope and money were gone,
    Then took to the road, a common tramp,
        The search he still carried on.

    At last he found her, deserted, alone,
        Dying of sickness and want;
    The wolf of hunger looked in at the door,
        Famished, eager and gaunt.
    Quickly he knelt by the pallet of straw
        And raised her poor, tired head;
    She murmured softly, “Dear Jack, forgive!”
        Then the erring one was dead.

    Sadly he turned next day from her grave,
        No hope, no friends and no home;
    No wife or children to love him now,
        He must wander through life all alone.
    Back to the track he found his way,
        All pride and ambition were dead;
    Wearily he travels his lonely way
        Begging his daily bread.

    No word of censure e’er passed his lips
        Of the woman he loved so true;
    His anger was all for the traveling man—
        I honor him for it, don’t you?
    If ever a man deserved a crown
        ’Tis that hobo, meek and mild,
    Who loved and lost the woman he loved—
        The mother of his child.

  • Longings

    From The Birmingham Age Herald, October 24, 1913. By Charles Kingsley.

    Oh! That we two were Maying
        Down the stream of the soft spring breeze;
    Like children with violets playing
        In the shade of the whispering trees.

    Oh! That we two sat dreaming
        On the sward of some sheep trimmed down,
    Watching the white mists streaming
        Over river and mead and town.

    Oh! That we two lay sleeping
        In our rest in the churchyard sod;
    With our limbs at rest on the quiet earth’s breast
        And our souls at home with God.

  • Get and Give

    From The Sun, October 23, 1913. By McLandburgh Wilson.

        Said Get to Give,
        “You could not live
    If it were not for me;
        I first must fill
        The purse you spill;
    Am I not Charity?”

        Said Give to Get,
        “I lead you yet,
    Blind fool, do you not see
        The alms you strew
        Were given you
    In greater charity?”

  • Wages, Five Dollars

    From the Rock Island Argus, October 22, 1913. By Herbert Kauffman.

    Thus it is down in Beelzebub’s books:
    “August the seventeenth—Isabel Brooks;
    Home in the country; folks decent but poor;
    Character excellent; morals still pure;
    Came to the city today and found work;
    Wages five dollars; department store clerk.”

    Wages five dollars! To last seven days!
    Three for a miserable hall room she pays;
    Two nickels daily the street car receives;
    One dollar forty for eating;—that leaves?
    One forty has quite a long way to reach:
    Twenty-one banquets at seven cents each!

    There! Every penny of wages has been spent,
    Squandered for feasting and riding and rent.
    Spendthrift! She does not remember Life’s ills.
    How in the world will she pay doctor bills?
    What if she’s furloughed? (There’s always a chance);
    Isabel ought to save up in advance.

    Hold! We’ve not mentioned her clothes; she must wear
    Dresses, hats, shoes, stockings, ribbons for hair—
    How will she get them? Suppose that we stop;
    Perhaps it’s as well if we let the thing drop.
    You good math’matician may figure it out;
    It’s a matter of figures or figure, no doubt.

    Carry this picture, it’s better, I’m sure;
    “Character excellent; morals still pure.”
    What else is written, we won’t try to see;
    Beelzebub thinks much the same as we.
    Why, as I live! There’s a tear in his eye!
    What can make Beelzebub cry?

    Surely the devil is feeling his age.
    Look what he’s writing on Isabel’s page:
    “Virtue’s a luxury hard to afford
    When a girl hasn’t money enough for her board.”