Newspaper History

Month: March 2023

  • In Partibus

    From The Sun, March 21, 1915. By Rudyard Kipling.

    The buses run to Battersea,
        The buses run to Bow
    The buses run to Westbourne Grove
        And Notting Hill also;
    But I am sick of London town
        From Shepherd’s Bush to Bow.

    I see the smut upon my cuff
        And feel him on my nose;
    I cannot leave my window wide
        When gentle zephyr blows,
    Because he brings disgusting things
        And drops ’em on my clothes.

    The sky, a greasy soup-toureen,
        Shuts down atop my brow.
    Yes, I have sighed for London town
        And I have got it now:
    And half of it is fog and filth,
        And half is fog and row.

    And when I take my nightly prowl
        ’Tis passing good to meet
    The pious Briton lugging home
        His wife and daughter sweet,
    Through four packed miles of seething vice
        Thrust out upon the street.

    Earth holds no horror like to this
        In any land displayed,
    From Suez unto Sandy Hook,
        From Calais to Port Said;
    And ’twas to hide their heathendom
        The beastly fog was made.

    I cannot tell when dawn is near,
        Or when the day is done,
    Because I always see the gas
        And never see the sun,
    And now, methinks, I do not care
        A cuss for either one.

    But stay, there was an orange, or
        An aged egg its yolk;
    It might have been a Pears’ balloon
        Or Barnum’s latest joke;
    I took it for the sun and wept
        To watch it through the smoke.

    It’s oh to see the morn ablaze
        Above the mango-tope,
    When homeward through the dewy cane
        The little jackals lope,
    And half Bengal heaves into view,
        New washed—with sunlight soap.

    It’s oh for one deep whisky peg
        When Christmas winds are blowing,
    When all the men you ever knew,
        And all you’ve ceased from knowing,
    Are “entered for the Tournament,
        And everything that’s going.”

    But I consort with long-haired things
        In velvet collar-rolls,
    Who talk about the Aims of Art,
        And “theories” and “goals,”
    And moo and coo with women-folk
        About their blessed souls.

    But that they call “psychology”
        Is lack of liver pill,
    And all that blights their tender souls
        Is eating till they’re ill,
    And their chief way of winning goals
        Consists of sitting still.

    It’s oh to meet an Army man,
        Set up and trimmed and taut,
    Who does not spout hashed libraries
        Or think the next man’s thought,
    And walks as though he owned himself,
        And hogs his bristles short.

    Hear now, a voice across the seas
        To kin beyond my ken,
    If ye have ever filled an hour
        With stories from my pen,
    For pity’s sake send some one here
        To bring me news of men!

    The buses run to Islington,
        To Highgate and Soho,
    To Hammersmith and Kew therewith
        And Camberwell also,
    But I can only murmur “Bus!”
        From Shepherd’s Bush to Bow.

  • The Word of the Dust

    From the Rock Island Argus, March 20, 1915. By W. D. Nesbit.

    Bother to man, and to beast, and bird,
        Bother to grass and trees—
    This is my saying; this is my word;
        I have been all of these.
    Out of me, back of me, year by year,
        Journey the maids and men;
    Treading me, tossing me there and here—
        Then to my arms again.

    Look at me, laugh at me! Yet I hold
        Red of the rose’s heart,
    Red of the laughing lips, that, bold
        Smile with a maiden’s art.
    Helpless and void of a sign of life
        Here on the king’s highway—
    Still, I have babbled of love and strife;
        I was a king one day!

    Gray in the twilight, and white at dawn—
        Walk on me—me, a thing!
    What have I been in the days agone?
        Beggar, and priest, and king!
    I have been a flower, and brute, and bird,
        I have been maids and men.
    Spurn me, and—brother, you have my word—
        We shall change place again!

  • Her Gifts

    From the Grand Forks Daily Herald, March 19, 1915. By L. M. Montgomery.

    She gave not out of her golden store,
        For no golden store had she,
    And faithful love was her only wealth
        For a gracious ministry.
    But royal gifts to the world she gave
        With every quiet day,
    And many a heart was richer far
        Because she had passed that way.

    She gave of her truest sympathy
        To those who were worn and sad;
    She gave a song in a darksome place
        That made the listener glad.
    She gave a loving and tender word
        To a tired, discouraged soul,
    And lo, it rose in a newfound strength
        To win the wished for goal.

    She gave not out of her golden store,
        For no golden store had she.
    And never the voice of fame was heard
        To herald her ministry.
    But she gave the oil of joy for tears
        And sunshine to banish gloom,
    And beauty and sweetness beneath her steps
        Sprang rainbow-like to bloom.

  • Song of the Fisherman

    From The Topeka State Journal, March 18, 1915. By E. B. Widger.

    There’s a sound that rings in my ears today
        And echoes in vague refrain;
    The ripple of water o’er smooth-washed clay
    Where the wall-eyed pike and the black bass play,
    That makes me yearn in a quiet way
        For the old home haunts again.

        Back to the old home haunts again,
            Back where the clear lake lies,
        Back through the wood where the blackbirds brood,
            Back to my rod and flies.

    I wish I could paddle my boat today
        Through water-logged grass and reeds
    Where the muskrat swims and the cattails sway
    And the air is cool and the mist is gray
    And the ripples dance in the same old way
        Under the tangled weeds.

        Back on the old oak log again
            Back by the crystal brook,
        Back to the bait and the silent wait,
            Back to my line and hook.

    I wish I could wade by the water’s edge
        Where the falling leaves drift by,
    Just to see in the shadow of the ledge
    Where dark forms glide like a woodman’s wedge
    Through drifted piles of dark marsh sedge,
        And hear the bittern cry.

        Back where the tadpoles shift and shirk,
            Back where bullfrogs sob,
        Back just to float in my leaky boat,
            Back to my dripping bob.

    Oh, it’s just like this on each rainy day;
        Always the same old pain
    That struggles and pulls in the same old way
    To take me off for a little stay
    By the water’s edge in the sticky clay,
        To the fish in the falling rain.

        Back to my long, black rubber boots,
            Back to my old patched coat,
        Back to my rod and breath of God,
            Home, and my leaky boat.

  • St. Patrick’s Day Without Shamrocks

    From The Sun, March 17, 1915.

    We sought them ‘neath the snowflakes
        And o’er all the frosty ground,
    But no leaflet like the shamrock
        On St. Patrick’s Day we found.
    And our hearts went back to Erin,
        To her dewy vales and hills,
    Where the shamrock twines and clusters
        O’er the fields and by the rills.

    Oh, no more, no more my country
        Shall thy loving daughter lay
    Her head upon thy bosom
        While she weeps her tears away;
    There the primrose and the daisy
        Bloom as in the days of old,
    And the violet comes in purple
        And the buttercup in gold.

    Kildare’s broad fields are fragrant
        With the shamrock’s breath today.
    Shamrocks bloom from Clare to Antrim,
        From Killarney to Lough Neagh;
    And they speak of Patrick’s preaching
        With a quiet, voiceless lore,
    And they breathe of faith and heaven
        All the trefoiled island o’er.

    Wandering listless by the Liffey,
        Stoop and pluck the shamrock green;
    What an emblem plain and simple
        Of the one true faith is seen;
    Of the Father and the Spirit
        Speaks the mystic triune leaf,
    Of the Son in anguish dying
        On the Cross in love and grief.

    Well humility may choose it
        For an emblem fair and meet,
    Close beside the poorest cabin
        It is pouring fragrance sweet.
    Modest is our darling shamrock,
        Useful, charitable, kind,
    Clothing mean, deserted places
        With its green leaves intertwined.

    Many a lesson thus it teaches,
        Many a wholesome thought recalls,
    Many a teardrop all unbidden
        To its cherished memory falls;
    Nor the green of Erin’s banner
        Still must stir the Irish heart,
    Which in Erin’s many sorrows
        Ever, ever must have part.

    Oh be true, be true to Erin,
        True to faith and true to God,
    To St. Patrick, His apostle,
        Who redeemed our native sod.
    Never more her mystic emblem
        In green Erin may you see,
    Let the faith it symbolizes
        Be the dearer unto thee.

  • Regret

    From the Grand Forks Daily Herald, March 16, 1915. By Henry Waldorf Francis.

    I am the brooding Ghost of words that should have been unspoken;
    I am the scourge of hearts that have the hearts of others broken;
    I am the lash of Conscience hurt by things past all undoing,
    Over the grave of other days bitter memories strewing!

    I am the biting aftermath of love and good neglected,
    I am the everlasting sting of better things rejected;
    I am the sharp, consuming grief unthought of in the breeding,
    Avenging wrath of all who give to Mercy’s voice no heeding!

    I am the Guest who comes unbid with voice forever chiding,
    Deep in the secret heart of man I am the long abiding;
    Would you avoid the pain of me, the mocking, cutting laughter,
    Pause ere you speak or act to ask if I may come thereafter!

  • Jimmy’s Hair Cut

    From the Harrisburg Telegraph, March 15, 1915.

    Jimmy’s had a hair cut!
        How the folks all stare!
    It’s so short you see his skin
        Showing through his hair.
    ‘Twasn’t what he had before,
        Cut all round a bowl;
    It was in that barber store
        By the candy pole.

    Jimmy’s had a hair cut!
        We were there to see,
    Looking through the window pane—
        All the boys with me.
    He was worried there alone,
        Trying hard to grin,
    On a kind of great big throne,
        Wrapped up to his chin.

    Jimmy’s had a hair cut!
        Course it scared him some.
    All those shears and cups and things
        Sort of struck him dumb.
    Jimmy’s mother saved a curl—
        She feels bad, I know,
    That he wasn’t born a girl,
        And could let it grow.

    Jimmy’s had a hair cut—
        My! It made him proud!
    Walking out, while all of us
        Followed in a crowd.
    He got pretty rich that day,
        ‘Fore he went to bed;
    He made every fellow pay
        Just to smell his head.

  • The Father of Mischief

    From The Sun, March 14, 1915. By Alfred J. Hough.

    Men don’t believe in a devil now as their fathers used to do;
    They’ve forced the door of the broadest creed to let his Majesty through.
    There is not a print of his cloven foot, of a fiery dart from his bow
    To be found in earth or air today, for the world has voted so.
    But who is it mixing the fatal draught that palsies heart and brain,
    And loads the bier of each passing year with ten hundred thousand slain?
    Who blights the bloom of the land today with the fiery breath of hell
    If the devil isn’t and never was? Won’t somebody rise and tell?

    Who dogs the steps of the toiling saint and digs the pits for his feet?
    Who sows the tares in the field, wherever God sows His wheat?
    The devil is voted not to be, and of course, the thing is true;
    But who is doing the kind of work the devil alone should do?
    We are told he does not go about as a roaring lion now;
    But whom shall we hold responsible for the everlasting row
    To be heard in Home, in Church and State to the earth’s remotest bound,
    If the devil by a unanimous vote is nowhere to be found?

    Won’t somebody step to the front forthwith and make his bow and show
    How the frauds and the crimes of a single day spring up? We want to know.
    The devil was fairly voted out, and of course, the devil’s gone;
    But simple people would like to know who carries his business on.

  • My Ships

    From the Grand Forks Daily Herald, March 13, 1915. By Jack Carter.

    I am sitting alone in the gloaming
    With the firelight flickering low,
    And the sky so dark and lowering
    Is tinged by the sun’s red glow,
    And the many ships that I freighted,
    With hopes too bright to last
    How they haunt me, haunt me, haunt me,
    Those wrecks of the lone dead past.

    There’s the ship that I launched at twenty—
    It was laden with thoughts sublime.
    I would plan out the lives of nations,
    When my life reached its summer time.
    I would see that all strife and warfare,
    And oppressions be swept from the deck.
    Alas, for the dreary eventide,
    My ship came home a wreck.

    Then I sent out another vessel,
    And the cargo it carried was love.
    There was home and a wife and children,
    And the bliss was from heaven above.
    But the joys could not last forever
    And the storm clouds rose on her lea.
    She ran on the rocks, they crushed her,
    And she sank down into the sea.

    Once more I sent out a vessel,
    It was trim from stem to stern.
    It went for to bring me riches,
    And with orders to never return
    Till ’twas full of all precious substance,
    And its wake left a golden track.
    A crash, and t’was gone forever.
    Not even a plank came back.

    But there’s one came back from the shadows
    Out of all my ships just one—
    Shall I tell you the cargo it brought me?
    It was only the deeds I had done
    For the troubled, the suffering, the outcast;
    I’d forgotten them all long ago.
    The whisper from lips just passing,
    And the sad, sad tale of woe.

    A life to the one who had fallen,
    A striving to ease the pain.
    Just bread cast out on the waters,
    And it all came back again.
    And you never can buy this vessel.
    The wealth of the whole wide world
    Cannot pilot it out of the harbor
    For its sails and its flag are furled.

  • Lame Ducks

    From the Evening Star, March 12, 1915. By Philander Johnson.

    Everybody has some fancy he’s compelled to toss aside,
    Some little plan for profit or some little point of pride;
    Some fond romance that flourished only just to fade away,
    As a sigh of disappointment stilled the laughter once so gay.
    Everybody has to feel that he is slighted, more or less,
    And we’re all lame ducks together, if we only would confess.

    The present may seem pleasant, but the pleasure doesn’t last;
    The triumph of the moment swiftly fades into the past;
    The glory that is ended makes the darkness seem more dense
    That is hung about the future like a barrier of suspense.
    Everybody has some hope that he is struggling still to clutch;
    We are all lame ducks together, though we may not say as much.