Newspaper History

Month: February 2023

  • The Girl That Mother Was

    From the Newark Evening Star, February 18, 1915. By Nancy Byrd Turner.

    When we travel back in summer to the old house by the sea
    Where long ago my mother lived, a little girl like me,
    I have the strangest notion that she still is waiting there,
    A small child in a pinafore, with a ribbon in her hair.
    I hear her in the garden when I go to pick a rose;
    She follows me along the path on dancing tipsy-toes;
    I hear her in the hayloft when the hay is slippery sweet—
    A rustle now, a scurry now, a sound of scampering feet;
    Yet though I sit as still as still, she never comes to me,
    The funny little laughing girl my mother used to be.

    Sometimes I nearly catch her as she dodges here and there,
    Her white dress fluttering round a tree or flashing up a stair;
    Sometimes I almost put my hand upon her apron strings—
    Then just before my fingers close, she’s gone again like wings.
    A sudden laugh, a scrap of song, a football on the lawn,
    And yet, no matter how I run, forever up and gone!
    A fairy or a firefly could hardly flit so fast.
    When we come home in summer, I’ve given up at last.
    Then I lay my cheek on mother’s. If there’s only one for me,
    I’d rather have her, anyway, than the girl she used to be!

  • Servant Girl and Grocer’s Boy

    From the Albuquerque Morning Journal, February 17, 1915. By Joyce Kilmer.

    Her lips’ remark was, “Oh, you kid!”
    Her soul spoke thus (I know it did):

    “O King of realms of endless joy,
    My own, my golden grocer’s boy.

    “I am a princess forced to dwell
    Within a lonely kitchen cell.

    “While you go dashing through the land
    With loveliness on every hand,

    “Your whistle strikes my eager ears
    Like music of the choiring spheres.

    “The mighty earth grows faint and reels
    Beneath your thundering wagon wheels.

    “How keenly, perilously sweet
    To cling upon that swaying seat!

    “How happy she who by your side
    May share the splendors of that ride!

    “Ah, if you will not take my hand
    And bear me off across the land,

    “Then, traveler from Arcady,
    Remain a while and comfort me.

    “What other maiden can you find
    So young and delicate and kind?”

    Her lips’ remark was, “Oh, you kid!”
    Her soul spoke thus (I know it did).

  • Soldier, Soldier

    From The Birmingham Age Herald, February 16, 1915. By Rudyard Kipling.

    “Soldier, soldier, come from the wars,
        Why don’t you march with my true love?”
    “We’re fresh from off the ship an’ ‘e’s maybe give the slip,
        An’ you’d best go look for a new love.

    “New love! True love!
        Best go look for a new love:
    The dead they cannot rise, an’ you’d better dry your eyes,
        An’ you’d best go look for a new love.”

    “Soldier, soldier come from the wars,
        What did you see o’ my true love?”
    “I seed ‘im serve the Queen in a suit o’ rifle green,
        An’ you’d best go look for a new love.”

    “Soldier, soldier, come from the wars,
        Did ye see no more o’ my true love?”
    “I seed ‘im runnin’ by when the shots began to fly—
        But you’d best go look for a new love.”

    “Soldier, soldier, come from the wars,
        Did aught take ‘arm to my true love?”
    “I couldn’t see the fight, for the smoke it lay so white—
        An’ you’d best go look for a new love.”

    “Soldier, soldier, come from the wars,
        I’ll up an’ tend to my true love!”
    “‘E’s lying on the dead with a bullet through ‘is ‘ead,
        An’ you’d best go look for a new love.”

    “Soldier, soldier, come from the wars,
        I’ll down an’ die with my true love!”
    “The pit we dug’ll ‘ide ‘im an’ the twenty men beside ‘im—
        An’ you’d best go look for a new love.”

    “Soldier, soldier, come from the wars,
        Do you bring no sign from my true love?”
    “I bring a lock of ‘air that ‘e allus used to wear,
        An’ you’d best go look for a new love.”

    “Soldier, soldier, come from the wars,
        O then I know it’s true I’ve lost my true love!”
    “An’ I tell you truth again—when you’ve lost the feel o’ pain
        You’d best take me for your true love.”

    True love! New love!
        Best take ‘im for a new love.
    The dead they cannot rise, an’ you’d better dry your eyes,
        An’ you’d best take ‘im for your true love.

  • Cellar Sobs

    From the Omaha Daily Bee, February 15, 1915.

    Listen, friends, and you shall hear
    Of a story sad and drear,
    And you’ll shed a briny tear,
        That I know;
    For it maketh strong men weep,
    Gives them spooks and loss of sleep,
    Makes the nerves go creepy creep
        With its woe.

    Once there lived a maiden fair,
    Blue of eye and brown of hair,
    Tall she was, a height most rare,
        Monstrous big;
    For the state she went to work,
    Not to dawdle or to shirk,
    Nor to gossip or to smirk,
        But to dig.

    Faithfully she worked and well
    Did this long and lanky belle,
    That is why I hate to tell
        How she fared.
    For they chucked her in the cellar,
    Where she daily grew more yeller.
    Did she weep and wail and beller?
        No one cared!

    So she went from day to day
    Down the smelly hall and gray
    And met spectres on her way
        Black and grim;
    Odors, spider-webs and bats,
    Dust and damp, and weird black cats,
    Lizards, bugs and sewer rats,
        Lean and slim.

    Germs she swallowed by the peck,
    Big, fat, juicy germs, by heck!
    And became a nervous wreck
        Pale with fear.
    She who used to be a winner
    Thinner grew, ye gods, still thinner,
    Till you’d swear she had no dinner
        For a year.

    Well, at last the family’s pride
    Lay her down upon her side
    And one dreary night she died
        All alone.
    Came the state house rats in flocks
    And they chewed her dark brown locks,
    Ate her clothes e’en to her socks,
        Gnawed her bones.

    When the janitors appeared
    In the morn, a thing more weird
    Then they’d ever seen or heered
        Struck their sight;
    For the girl who once was Belle
    Sure enough had gone to hell,
    Bones alone were left to tell,
        Stark and white.

    So they gathered up the mess
    That once sported a blue dress
    And with fitting solemness
        Laid her low.
    They took out a few big stones
    From the floor and put her bones
    There, and with some sighs and moans
        Let her go.

    Now they say that it is true
    That at night time dressed in blue
    Does she walk the long hall through
        And she shrieks;
    And calls curses on the head
    Of the ones that made her dead,
    Gives them nightmares in their bed,
        Weeks and weeks.

    And so every wretched feller
    Who helped send her to the cellar
    Where that gruesome fate befell her
        Pays his due.
    For she’s taking out her spite
    And they’re seein’ things at night
    Long and hairy things that bite
        And that chew.

  • Psyche

    From The Birmingham Age Herald, February 14, 1915. By Bliss Carman.

    Tender as the wind of summer
        That wanders among the flowers,
    Down worldly aisles with enchanted smiles
        She leads the mysterious hours.

    This is immortal Psyche,
        The winged soul of man—
    Ardor unspent and innocent
        As when the world began.

    Out of the ancient silence
        Over the darkling earth,
    As streamers swim on the sunrise rim,
        She moves between sorrow and mirth.

    The impulse of things eternal,
        The transport hidden in clay,
    Like a dancing beam on a noonday stream
        She signals along the way.

    Her feet are poised over peril,
        Her eyes are familiar with death,
    Her radiant wings are daring things,
        Frail as the beat of a breath.

    Over the ocean of being,
        In her gay, incredible flight,
    See her float and run in the gold of the sun
        Down to the gates of night.

    The storm may darken above her,
        The surges thunder below,
    But on through a rift where the gold lights drift,
        Still she will dancing go.

    Treasuring things forgotten,
        As dreams and destinies fade;
    Spirit of truth and ageless youth
        She laughs and is not afraid.

  • Live and Let Live

    From The Birmingham Age Herald, February 13, 1915.

    If we were cured
        Of all our ills,
    The man would starve
        Who makes the pills.

  • Around the Hearth

    From The Birmingham Age Herald, February 12, 1915. By John Greenleaf Whittier.

    Shut in from all the world without,
    We sat the clean winged hearth about,
    Content to let the north wind roar
    In baffled rage at pane and door
    While the red logs before us beat
    The frost line back with tropic heat;
    And ever, when a louder blast
    Shook beam and rafter as it passed,
    The merrier up its roaring draught
    The great throat of the chimney laughed.

    The house dog on his paws outspread
    Laid to the fire his drowsy head,
    The cat’s dark silhouette on the wall
    A couchant tiger’s seemed to fall;
    And, for the winter fireside meet,
    Between the andirons’ straddling feet,
    A mug of cider simmering slow,
    The apples sputtered in a row,
    And close at hand, the basket stood
    With nuts from brown October’s wood.

  • The Lord’s Still Runnin’ Things

    From the Rock Island Argus, February 11, 1915. By The Bentztown Bard.

    Lots of complainin’ wherever you go
    Of people not gettin’ the kind of a show
    They think life owes ‘em, while others cry
    The best things always keep passin’ ‘em by,
    And this isn’t right, and that’s all wrong,
    But down in my heart there’s an old, sweet song
    That brings me the lesson, mid all it sings,
    That the Lord in his heaven’s still runnin’ things.

    I wouldn’t go crazy with grief and care
    Even if things went a little square—
    As all things will in their time and place—
    For I’ve always found there’s the same old grace
    And beauty and comfort in loss and pain,
    As there is in moments of triumph and gain—
    In the feelin’ and trust and believin’ that rings
    Through the thought that the Lord is still runnin’ things.

    I pity the sorrowful, God knows that,
    And to those who suffer I doff my hat;
    And I try to be tender to those whose cross
    Is heavy to bear in this world of loss;
    But I can’t believe, as I list to the song
    Of the sweet old faith, that a thing goes wrong
    Without some blessin’ that ere long brings
    The thought that the Lord is still runnin’ things.

  • Mysteries

    From The Topeka State Journal, February 10, 1915. By Edmund Vance Cooke.

    Twenty bad men in the bar one night,
        Each one shoving his foot on the rail;
    None of them sober and most of them tight,
    Every one cussing to kick up a fight,
        Each one a devil and swinging his tail;
    Most of them dead when the scrap was done—
    Nobody knew how the row had begun!

    A squally day and a celluloid boat,
        Launched on a river of gasoline;
    “As freaky a craft as was ever afloat,”
    The captain swore in his husky throat,
        “With her firebox next to her magazine.”
    He lighted his pipe and tossed his match—
    Now how could the conflagration catch?

    Generals, admirals, emperors, kings,
        And babes from the cradle trained to kill;
    Davids swinging Goliath slings,
    Navies filled with eagle wings,
        Nations of armies, life a drill.
    Courtiers cunning in wild excuse—
    What a surprise when the war broke loose!

  • Little Brown Hands

    From the Grand Forks Daily Herald, February 9, 1915.

    They drive home the cows from the pasture
    Up thro’ the long, shady lane,
    Where the quail whistles loud in the wheat field
    That is yellow with ripening grain.

    They find in the thick, waving grasses
    Where the scarlet-lipped strawberry grows;
    They gather the earliest snowdrops
    And the first crimson buds of the rose.

    They toss the hay in the meadow,
    They gather the elder-bloom white;
    They find where the dusky grapes purple
    In the soft-tinted October light.

    They know where the apples hang ripest
    And are sweeter than Italy’s wines;
    They know where the fruit hangs thickest
    On the long, thorny blackberry vines.

    They gather the delicate seaweeds,
    And build tiny castles of sand;
    They pick up the beautiful seashells,
    Fairy barks, that have drifted to land.

    They wave from the tall, rocking tree-tops,
    Where the oriole’s hammock-nest swings;
    And at night time are folded in slumber
    By a song that a fond mother sings.

    Those who toil bravely are strongest,
    The humble and poor become great;
    And from those brown-handed children
    Shall grow mighty rulers of state.

    The pen of the author and statesman,
    The noble and wise of our land—
    The sword and the chisel and palette
    Shall be held in the little brown hand.