Newspaper History

Month: December 2021

  • The Red Cross Nurse

    From The Washington Herald, December 11, 1913. By Emma Frances Lee Smith.

    I have turned aside from the world and its pride
        The strength of my love to prove;
    I have set my pace to a wonderful race,
        With feet that are swift to move—
    Be it soon or late—to serve, or to wait—
        At the cry of the terrified.

    Through flood and flame, in the Master’s name,
        Comfort and help I bring;
    My mission blest is to offer rest
        And peace, to the suffering;
    I give no heed to rank or to creed;
        I look not askance at shame.

    On the wreck-strewn trail of the howling gale,
        I hasten with warmth and cheer;
    O’er the shrouded head of the mangled dead,
        I bend with a pitying tear;
    To famine’s white lip my cup I slip;
        I quiet the mourner’s wail.

    In the wake of the knell of hurtling shell,
        The clangor of crashing steel,
    My watch I keep where the wounded sleep,
        And the dead lie heel to heel;
    I speed the soul to its happy goal—
        A tireless sentinel.

    From East to West on my merciful quest,
        I follow the Red Cross far;
    Under Southern skies I have seen it rise;
        It glows ‘neath the Northern star;
    Its crimson sign is a badge divine,
        Mid the panoply of war.

  • The High Trail

    From The Seattle Star, December 10, 1913. By Berton Braley.

    I’m sick of your mobs and machinery,
        I’m weary of second-hand thrills;
    I’m tired of your two-by-four scenery,
        Your nice little valleys and hills;
    I want to see peaks that are bare again
        And ragged and rugged and high;
    To know the old tang in the air again,
        And the blue of the clear Western sky!

    Once more in each fiber and fold of me
        I feel the old wonderment brew;
    And again has the spell taken hold of me,
        The spell of the mountains I knew;
    So the city means nothing but slavery,
        And my heart is a load in my breast,
    And life will be stale and unsavory
        Till I stand on the hills of the West.

    Let the homebodies “hobo” and “rover” me;
        Poor plodders, they never can know
    How the fret for the hills has come over me
        And the fever that bids me to go
    Away from traditions gone moldering,
        Away from the paths overtired,
    To the place where the mountains are shouldering
        Right up to the Archways of God!

  • The Best Letter

    From the Omaha Daily Bee, December 9, 1913. By William F. Kirk.

    You may write a thousand letters to the maiden you adore,
    And declare in every letter that you love her more and more.
    You may praise her grace and beauty in a thousand glowing lines,
    And compare her eyes of azure with the brightest star that shines.
    If you had the pen of Byron you would use it every day
    In composing written worship to your sweetheart far away;
    But the letter far more welcome to an older, gentler breast
    Is the letter to your mother from the boy she loves the best.

    Youthful blood is fierce and flaming, and when writing to your love
    You will rave about your passion, swearing by the stars above;
    Vowing by the moon’s white splendor that the girlie you adore
    Is the one you’ll ever cherish as no maid was loved before.
    You will pen full many a promise on those pages white and dumb
    That you never can live up to in the married years to come.
    But a much more precious letter, bringing more and deeper bliss,
    Is the letter to your mother from the boy she cannot kiss.

    She will read it very often when the lights are soft and low,
    Sitting in the same old corner where she held you years ago,
    And regardless of its diction or its spelling or its style,
    And although its composition would provoke a critic’s smile,
    In her old and trembling fingers it becomes a work of art,
    Stained by tears of joy and sadness as she hugs it to her heart.
    Yes, the letter of all letters, look wherever you may roam,
    Is the letter to your mother from her boy away from home.

  • The Lost Auto

    From The Topeka State Journal, December 8, 1913. By Roy K. Moulton.

    Lying one day neath the auto,
        Sweating and soaked with oil;
    I worked at a cranky engine
        And my only reward was toil.

    I know not what I was saying,
        As I tinkered and wrenched and tore;
    I doubt not ’twas something quite savage,
        It may be I even swore.

    My patience gave out on that engine,
        With a hammer I hit it a thump
    That jarred loose some thingamadinkus
        And started it up at a jump.

    Before one could twinkle an eyelid,
        Before there was time for surprise,
    That car tore away down the highway,
        And I lay glaring up at the skies.

    I sprang up and madly I followed,
        But soon gave it up in disgust,
    For that runaway car quickly vanished
        In a thick snorting cyclone of dust.

    I sought it in byways and hedges,
        In highways and in busy streets;
    And, though I made thorough inquiries,
        With never a trace did I meet.

    Perhaps in some future existence,
        In worlds far beyond mortal’s ken,
    I shall once more make search for that auto,
        But I doubt if I find it then.

  • The Eagle

    From The Birmingham Age Herald, December 7, 1913. By Robert Browning.

    Dervish Ferishtah walked the woods one eve,
    And noted on a bough a raven’s nest
    Whereof each youngling gaped with callow beak
    Widened by want; for why? beneath the tree
    Dead lay the mother bird, “A piteous chance!
    How shall they ‘scape destruction?” sighed the sage
    —Or sage about to be, though simple still.
    Responsive to which doubt, sudden there swooped
    An eagle downward, and behold he bore
    (Great hearted) in his talons flesh wherewith
    He stayed their craving, then resought the sky.
    “Ah, foolish, foolish me!” the observer smiled,
    “Who toil and moil to eke out life, when lo,
    Providence cares for every hungry mouth!”
    To profit by which lesson, home went he,
    And certain days sat musing—neither meat
    Nor drink would purchase by his handiwork.
    Then—for his head swam and his limbs grew faint—
    Sleep overtook the unwise one, whom in dream
    God thus admonished: “Hast thou marked my deed?
    Which part assigned by Providence dost judge
    Was meant for man’s example? Should he play
    The helpless weakling, or the helpful strength
    That captures prey and saves the perishing?
    Sluggard, arise, work, eat, then feed who lack!”

  • The Old Magic

    From The Topeka State Journal, December 6, 1913. By Berton Braley.

    I left the sea behind, that I might dwell
        ‘Mid streets where millions hurry to and fro,
    Where surging crowds and roaring traffic swell
        The city’s vast enchantment that I know;
        But still the vagrant breezes whisper low
    Of rolling deeps and spaces wide and free,
        Of reef and shoal and derelict and floe,
    To mightier magic of the surging sea!

    I love the city and I love it well,
        Its gold and want, its happiness and woe;
    Sometimes it seems no glamour may excel
        The city’s vast enchantment that I know;
        But memory will never have it so—
    She brings again the days “that used to be.”
        Once more I feel, as in the long ago,
    The mightier magic of the surging sea.

    The city streets—what stories they could tell!
        Touched with the wonder of the passing show,
    The seething life, the loves and hates that spell
        The city’s vast enchantment that I know;
        The noise and haste, the myriad lights aglow,
    The plots and schemes, the mirth and mystery.
        And yet I hear, in all the winds that blow,
    The mightier magic of the surging sea.

    What thrill it gives, what dreams it can bestow
    The city’s vast enchantment that I know!
    But I must follow, when this calls to me,
    The mightier magic of the surging sea.

  • Scenic Embellishments

    From the Evening Star, December 5, 1913. By Philander Johnson.

    We’ve had some street improvements down to Pohick on the Crick.
    They filled the roadway up with pipes and covered it with brick.
    They finished it on Thursday and the thoroughfare looked fine.
    On Saturday they had a gang of working men in line
    Who said they had discovered that the pipes were all in wrong.
    They’d have to look ‘em over, though the job would not take long.
    When they had got one end of Main Street finished up with care
    The other end was marked for renovation and repair.

    Oh, the town is full of lanterns when the evening shadows fall.
    It looks as if preparing for a large and splendid ball.
    And where by day you used to drive along without a fear,
    You find the road blocked up by picks and shovels, far and near.
    A chasm runs along like a small canyon from the west.
    The dirt is piled in jagged lines to make a mountain crest.
    To drive a wagon has become a neat and risky trick—
    But we’re full of brand-new scenery at Pohick on the Crick.

  • The Farmer

    From The Tacoma Times, December 4, 1913. By Berton Braley.

    My hands are gnarled and horny,
        My face is seamed with sun,
    My path is sometimes thorny,
        My living grimly won
    By labor unremitting
        And hard and bitter toil;
    Forever I am pitting
        My strength against the soil.

    The city’s lights and glamor
        Are not for me to know,
    But neither is its clamor,
        Its squalor and its woe,
    Not mine its pleasure places,
        But mine the good brown loam,
    The air, the open spaces,
        The quiet peace of Home!

    And, though by all my labor,
        I win no mighty prize,
    I still can face my neighbor
        And look him in the eyes;
    I am no speculator
        Within the wheat-pit hurled;
    I am the wealth-creator
        Who helps to feed the world.

    One with the Empire-makers
        Who bring a better day,
    I till my thrifty acres
        And bow to no man’s sway;
    My gold might leap up faster
        Were I to crook the knee,
    But no man is my master
        And I am strong—and free!

  • Father

    From the Omaha Daily Bee, December 3, 1913. By Edmund Vance Cooke.

    He was not the kind of a father that you read about in books,
    He wasn’t long on language and he wasn’t strong on looks.
    He was not the sort of father that you hear about in plays.
    He was just a human father with a human father’s ways.

    No, he never balked at working, but when he was through it once,
    Right down to the grass was father, with the children doing stunts.
    All of us would pile up on him and he’d welcome all the pack,
    But I’m wondering after play time, did we stay there—on his back?

    Wasn’t strong on dissipation, said his “gambol on the green”
    Was to fill the platter faster than the kids could lick it clean.
    And the next best game he knew of was an equal one to beat;
    It was keeping leather covers up to the supply of feet.

    Always on the job was father, plugging steady like and strong,
    Never making any noise, but helping all his little world along.
    And to think! Lord! ain’t it funny you can see things years and years
    And yet never know you’ve seen them, till your eyes are blind with tears.

    Quit his job one day and left us, smiling as he went away;
    Eulogy seems all so foolish. What can anybody say?
    Seemed like even in his leaving he was saving someone bother,
    For the one word on the granite which lies over him is “Father.”

  • Today’s Girl

    From The Tacoma Times, December 2, 1913. By Berton Braley.

    We knock and criticize her,
    We scold, apostrophize her,
    We wish that she were wiser,
        More capable and kind;
    Her path we’re always stalking
    To criticize her talking,
    Her clothes, her way of walking,
        Her manners and her mind.

    We say, “Oh, highty-tighty!
    She’s frivolous and flighty
    And all her ways are mighty
        Undignified to see;
    She dances and she chatters,
    Our olden rules she shatters
    And laughs at serious matters
        With unabated glee.”

    We chide and we correct her,
    We shadow and detect her,
    We study and dissect her
        With all her smiles and tears;
    And find, on looking o’er her
    (And learning to adore her),
    She’s just like girls before her
        For twenty thousand years!