Newspaper History

Month: March 2023

  • The Heart of a Woman

    From the Rock Island Argus, March 31, 1915.

    Laughter and sunshine and story,
        Beauty and sweetness and trust;
    Courage and grandeur and glory,
        Shadow and darkness and dust—
    All things of light and of loving
        The heart of a woman contains,
    Grand virtues, great sweetness and sorrows,
        Peace, happiness, passion and pains.

    One moment it blooms like a garden
        With every sweet blossom life knows,
    A vale of the peace of the ages,
        A pathway through violet and rose—
    And then o’er the darkness and doubting
        The wings of a storm sweep the skies,
    And the garden is tossed in the tempest,
        And the vale in a dark ruin lies.

    One moment so pitiful, tender,
        And then all the rage and the hate
    Fill its beating with infinite shadows
        As it raves against infinite fate.
    One moment so true and so loving,
        So clinging and gentle and sweet,
    All the song of life sweeping its gamut,
        Every blossom of life in its beat.

    And yet, with all changing and travail,
        All sorrow and aching and cross,
    All sunshine today, then tomorrow
        Cast down in the grief of some loss;
    And yet with its battle and thunder,
        Its April of showers and shine,
    God give me the heart of a woman
        And take all the rest that is mine!

  • Bum

    From the Newark Evening Star, March 30, 1915. By W. D. Wegeforth.

    He’s a little dog, with a stubby tail, and a moth-eaten coat of tan,
    And his legs are short, of the wabbly sort; I doubt if they ever ran;
    And he howls at night, while in broad daylight he sleeps like a bloomin’ log,
    And he likes the feed of the gutter breed; he’s a most irregular dog.

    I call him Bum, and in total sum he’s all that his name implies,
    For he’s just a tramp with a highway stamp that culture cannot disguise;
    And his friends, I’ve found, in the streets abound, be they urchins or dogs or men;
    Yet he sticks to me with a fiendish glee, it is truly beyond my ken.

    I talk to him when I’m lonesome like and I’m sure that he understands
    When he looks at me so attentively and gently licks my hands;
    Then he rubs his nose on my tailored clothes, but I never say aught thereat,
    For the good Lord knows I can buy more clothes, but never a friend like that!

    So my good old pal, my irregular dog, my flea-bitten, stub-tailed friend,
    Has become a part of my very heart, to be cherished till life-time’s end;
    And on Judgement Day, if I take the way that leads where the righteous meet,
    If my dog is barred by the heavenly guard—we’ll both of us brave the heat.

  • Unappreciated Advantages

    From the Evening Star, March 29, 1915. By Philander Johnson.

    Now that we’ve got electric lights
        An’ trolley cars an’ such;
    An’ movies an’ a lot o’ sights
        That interest us much;
    Now that we’ve built the buildin’s tall,
        An’ streets in fine condition;
    We sit an’ dream an’ after all
        Jes’ want to go a-fishin’.

    Though mightily we are improved
        By many a new invention;
    By old-time impulses we’re moved
        To shun the world’s dissension.
    Amid the rattle and the glare
        We find ourselves a-wishin’
    To seek a lonesome spot somewhere
        An’ simply go a-fishin’.

  • The Cursing of Pertab Singh

    From The Sun, March 28, 1915. By F. W. Poole.

    The ryot crouched in his hut and moaned with his face to the plastered wall.
    He rent his rage and tore his hair and wept for his ruler’s fall.
    The children hushed their simple songs and whimpered and wailed with dread.
    Sir Pertab Singh, their prince, their king, had dared to touch the dead.

    The white sahibs had warned him though the slain was of their kin.
    They knew the awful laws of caste—to touch the dead is sin.
    “’Tis the son of a friend and comrade. His father is not here.”
    Sir Pertab gently bore the corpse and laid it on the bier.

    Five hundred priests of Brahma’s shrine awaited at the morn
    To make an ancient honored name a byword and a scorn.
    Calmly cool, Sir Pertab heard his fate all men might know—
    To be with outcast sweepers as the lowest of the low.

    “What care I for your paltry ban?” and as they paused he smiled.
    “If naught can soil me save your clan, then I am undefiled.
    Mine is a higher, nobler caste, of which you do not know,
    A caste as great as thine is mean—as high as thine is low.

    “A caste that was old and honored ere your upstart creed began—
    The caste of a loyal soldier. The creed of an honest man
    Who serves men less with a weakling word, and more with a well wrought deed—
    Who lives for the good of his kin and kind, and dies for his country’s need.

    “The caste of a man—his word a law which he obeys the first—
    Of one who well to serve the best will ever dare the worst—
    Who stands unawed by a host in arms, nor quails at a parting breath—
    Walks straight and true with a friend unto—and beyond—the gates of death.”

    The high priests gasped in wonderment, the vast throng gazed in awe
    That the will of a man was strong to stand in the face of an iron law.
    The pillars of caste that a realm had reared to shadow a man and king
    Wavered and crumbled and disappeared—and left Sir Pertab Singh.

  • Dealt

    From The Birmingham Age Herald, March 27, 1915. By Charles Miller.

    Life is a game of whist; from unseen sources
        The cards are shuffled and the hands are dealt.
    Blind our efforts to control the forces
        That, though unseen, are no less strongly felt.

    I do not like the way the cards are shuffled,
        But still I like the game and want to play.
    Thus through the long, long night will I, unruffled,
        Play what I get until the break of day.

  • Only a Dad

    From the Rock Island Argus, March 26, 1915.

    Only a dad with a tired face
    Coming home from the daily race,
    Bringing little of gold or fame
    To show how well he has played the game,
    But glad in his heart that his own rejoice
    To see him come and to hear his voice.

    Only a dad, of a brood of four,
    One of ten million men or more,
    Plodding along in the daily strife,
    Bearing the whips and scorns of life
    With never a whimper of pain or hate
    For the sake of those who at home await.

    Only a dad, neither rich nor proud,
    Merely one of the surging crowd,
    Toiling, striving from day to day,
    Facing whatever may come his way;
    Silent, whenever the harsh condemn,
    And bearing it all for the love of them.

    Only a dad, but he gives his all
    To smooth the way for children small,
    Doing, with courage stern and grim,
    The deeds that his father did for him;
    This is the line that for him I pen.
    Only a dad, but the best of men.

  • The Joys of the Road

    From the Albuquerque Morning Journal, March 25, 1915. By Bliss Carman.

    Now the joys of the road are chiefly these,
    A crimson touch on the hardwood trees;

    A vagrant morning wide and blue,
    In early fall, when the wind walks, too;

    A shadowy highway cool and brown,
    Alluring up and enticing down;

    From ripply water to dappled swamp,
    From purple glory to scarlet pomp;

    The outward eye, the quiet will,
    And the striding heart from hill to hill.

    An idle moon, a bubbling spring,
    The sea in the pine-tops murmuring;

    A scrap of gossip at the ferry,
    A comrade neither glum nor merry;

    Asking nothing, revealing naught,
    But minting the words from a fund of thought.

    These are the joys of the open road,
    For him who travels without a load.

  • Zeke Perkins’ New Machine

    From the Rock Island Argus, March 24, 1915.

    Old Zeke Perkins sold his hogs the other day,
    And the gosh-durned fool threw his money right away.
    Rode into town sitting right on a board,
    And he came ridin’ home in a darned little Ford.
    When he came to the house and got to the gate,
    He shut down the throttle and he put on the brake,
    He grabbed for the reins, got the throttle instead,
    And the gol darned Ford kept a chugging ahead.

    Old Zeke Perkins bought an automobile,
    Old Zeke Perkins’ whiskers were red.
    Old Zeke Perkins lost the combination
    And the darn little Ford kept chugging right ahead.

    Zeke jerked on the levers and he turned off the gas,
    He kicked at the pedals and he broke out the glass,
    He cut all the wires, and he pulled off the top,
    But the gosh darned Ford it just wouldn’t stop.
    He pulled out his knife and he smiled so serene,
    Cut a hole in the tank, drained out the gasoline.
    He pulled out his gun, shot the tires full of lead,
    But the gol darned Ford kept chugging right ahead.

    Went right through the fence and up through the lane;
    Mirandy saw him coming and she like to went insane,
    She ran out ahead, then she stopped to see,
    And the Ford struck her squarely where the bustle ought to be.
    She reached out her arm as she went in the air,
    Just as Zeke went by she grabbed him by the hair;
    She bounced on the seat, landed down in the bed,
    And the gol darned Ford kept chugging right ahead.

    He steered for the shed, but just missed the hole,
    Struck an old pig and you ought to see it roll,
    Out through the yard then they landed in a heap,
    In a big muddy pool ‘bout six feet deep.
    Zeke grabbed Mirandy and waded for the shore;
    He was glad that it stopped and wouldn’t go no more.
    He pricked up his ears then he looked back and said,
    “Why, the gol darned Ford is chugging right ahead.”

  • Sweet Timothy; or Saved by the Secretary

    From The Sun, March 23, 1915. By Arthur Guiterman.

    A BALLAD OF THE UNITED STATES NAVY

    If I were a young middy in love with a girl, I would marry her if it broke up the whole navy. I would let nothing like that stand between me and the girl I loved.
    —Secretary Josephus Daniels

    It was just eight bells or about half past,
        And our tea was in the process of solution,
    When they piped all hands to the maintopmast
        For to solemnize a naval execution.

    An’ we heard the horns of the Horse Marines
        An’ their boots drumming hollow on the planking
    As they marched up a youth in his early teens
        With manacles an’ fetter locks a-clanking.

    Oh, they dragged him up, and I felt real bad
        When I saw ’twas little Timothy the ensign,
    An’ I knew that they meant for to hang the lad,
        A proceeding what there wasn’t any sense in.

    And our captain stern to the prisoner said,
        “You will shortly be suspended from a gibbet,
    For you’ve gone an’ went and a gal you’ve wed,
        Which the articles especially prohibit!”

    Oh, his gal runs up, so pale an’ sweet
        (And she was a ravin’, tearin’ beauty!)
    An’ she swooned for grief at the captain’s feet,
        But he only muttered, “Seamen, do your duty!”

    Oh, I wept big tears till my blouse was soaked,
        For they tied a halter round the middy’s wishbone,
    An’ the poor boy gulped, an’ the poor boy choked
        As he might have been a-swallerin’ a fishbone.

    Now we heard a shout an’ a whistle toot,
        And orders come to anchor an’ to reef us;
    An’ a man come aboard in a broadcloth suit
        Which I seen was the eminent Josephus.

    Oh, he stepped right up to the boy (poor chap!)
        And sez he, “You’re a credit to the nation!
    An’ you shan’t be hanged by no gold lace cap
        For the breakin’ of a stupid regulation!

    “For if I loved a gal an’ the gal loved me
        I’d marry her in Afriky or Siam
    If it wrecked every ship in the hull navee—
        For that’s the sort of prairie chicken I am!

    “An’ you shall cruise with your bride, you shall
        Afar on the ocean wavy,
    For I’ll make you a Lord High Admiral
        If there’s any such position in the navy!”

  • Where is the Flag of England?

    From The Birmingham Age Herald, March 22, 1915. By James E. Coyle.

    Let the winds of the world make answer!
        North, south, and east and west;
    “Wherever there’s wealth to covet,
        Or land that can be possessed;
    Wherever are savage races
        To cozen, coerce and scare,
    Ye shall find the vaunted ensign:
        For the English flag is there!

    Aye, it waves o’er the blazing hovels
        Whence African victims fly,
    To be shot by explosive bullets,
        Or to wretchedly starve and die;
    And where the beachcomber harries
        The isles of the Southern sea,
    At the peak of his hellish vessels,
        ’Tis the English flag flies free.

    The Maori full oft have cursed it
        With his bitterest dying breath;
    And the Arab has hissed his hatred
        As he spits at its folds in death.
    The hapless fellah has feared it
        On Tel-el-Kebir’s parched plain,
    And the Zulu’s blood has stained it
        With a deep indelible stain.

    It has floated o’er scenes of pillage
        And has flaunted o’er deeds of shame;
    It has waved o’er the fell marauder
        As he ravished with sword and flame;
    It has looked upon ruthless slaughter,
        And massacres dire and grim;
    It has heard the shrieks of the victims
        Drown even the Jingo hymn.

    Where is the flag of England?
        Seek the lands where the natives rot;
    Where decay and assured extinction
        Must soon be the peoples’ lot.
    Go, search for the once glad islands,
        Where diseases and death are rife,
    And the greed of a callous commerce
        Now fattens on human life!

    Where is the flag of England?
        Go, sail where rich galleons come
    With shoddy and “loaded” cottons,
        And beer, and Bibles and rum!
    Go too, where brute force has triumphed,
        And hypocrisy makes its lair;
    And your question will find its answer,
        For the flag of England is there.