Newspaper History

Month: July 2023

  • When I Am Laid Below the Hill

    From the Albuquerque Morning Journal, July 21, 1915. By Anonymous.

    When I am laid below the hill,
        I pray you, friend, that you will not
    Increase my virtues, if you will,
        Nor let my faults be all forgot.
    But think of me as with you yet,
        The good and bad there is of me,
    For truly I shall not forget
        In whatsoever place I be.

    Nor tears, nor sighs, that I am dead,
        But rather that you sing and smile
    And tell some favored jest, instead,
        As though I heard you all the while.
    For I shall hear you, and shall see
        And know if you be blithe or sad,
    For I shall keep and hold with me
        The golden moments we have had.

    But will you miss me? Aye, forsooth,
        The very thing I’d have you do,
    For in that stranger land, in truth,
        I also shall be missing you.
    Yet life is such a goodly thing,
        Blent of the bitter and the sweet,
    That I would rather we could cling
        To all the gladness we may meet.

    When I am laid below the hill,
        Go back as though I walked with you,
    And sing our brave old ballads still,
        And laugh as we were wont to do.
    Across the little gap that bars
        I shall take this fair memory,
    And you the other side the stars
        Will then still be the friend of me.

  • If You Could Know

    From the Rock Island Argus, July 20, 1915. By Mabel A. Bunnell.

    If you could know the half of all I yearn to be to you, dear heart!
    Each day that dawns I struggle to be strong and do my part,
    Yet when at last the night comes softly down I humbly pray—
    “Lord, grant me still to prove my tender love just one more day!”

    Just one more day to strive to rise above small troubles, petty care,
    That my cramped soul may break its earth-forged bonds, at last to dare.
    To face the future and to gladly live, with courage new,
    Loyal, and cheerful, facing toward the light for truth and you.

    And yet, I feel, in spite of all the heights which I can never scale,
    In spite of all the many tests in which I daily fail,
    That my deep love—more deep and pure and strong than I can ever show—
    You somehow, through my failure, doubts and fears, will come to know.

    The dreary clouds can’t hide the sun for aye; it glimmers through,
    The sweet, wet violet, struggling through dead leaves, still show its blue.
    And so I trust, though oft I strike Love’s chord with clumsy hand,
    You’ll feel the melody I tried to play and understand.

  • The Immune

    From the Evening Public Ledger, July 19, 1913. By Grantland Rice.

    They saw him charge from trench to trench,
    Through pools of gore and deadly stench.

    They heard him plunge on with a jeer
    When shrapnel took away an ear.

    And when the famous Forty-twos
    Began to drop, with lighted fuse,

    They saw him in his careless pride
    Rise up and kick them to one side.

    And in some wild charge on the line,
    Where chills assail the human spine,

    They saw him face a bayonet
    And yawning, light a cigarette.

    Where deadly mortars scattered gore
    He gave three cheers—and called for more.

    The captains called in wonderment,
    “Who can this hero be?”

    “I used to umpire,” he replied—
    “This stuff is pie for me.”

  • Nobility

    From the Newark Evening Star, July 19, 1915. By Alice Cary.

    True worth is in being, not seeming—
        In doing each day that goes by
    Some little good—not in dreaming
        Of great things to do by and by.
    For whatever men say in blindness,
        And in spite of the fancies of youth,
    There’s nothing so kingly as kindness,
        There’s nothing so royal as truth.

    We get back our meet as we measure—
        We cannot do wrong and feel right.
    Nor can we give pain and gain pleasure,
        For justice avenges each slight.
    The air for the wing of the sparrow,
        The bush for the robin and wren,
    But always the path that is narrow
        And straight for the children of men.

    ’Tis not in the pages of story
        The heart of its ills to beguile,
    Though he who makes courtship to glory
        Gives all that he hath for her smile.
    For when from her heights he has won her,
        Alas! It is only to prove
    That nothing’s so sacred as honor,
        And nothing’s so royal as love!

    We cannot make bargains for blisses,
        Nor catch them like fishes in nets;
    And sometimes the thing our life misses
        Helps more than the thing which it gets.
    For good lieth not in pursuing,
        Nor gaining of great nor of small,
    But just in the being, and doing
        As we would be done by, is all.

    Through envy, through malice, through hating,
        Against the world, early and late,
    No jot of our courage abating—
        Our part is to work and to wait.
    And slight is the sting of his trouble
        Whose winnings are less than his worth;
    For he who is honest is noble,
        Whatever his fortunes or birth.

  • The Talisman

    From the Richmond Times Dispatch, July 18, 1915. By Henry van Dyke.

    What is Fortune, what is Fame?
    Futile gold and phantom name,
    Riches buried in a cave,
    Glory written on a grave.

    What is Friendship? Something deep
    That the heart can spend and keep:
    Wealth that greatens while we give,
    Praise that heartens us to live.

    Come, my friend, and let us prove
    Life’s true talisman is love!
    By this charm we shall elude
    Poverty and solitude.

  • The Will to Climb

    From the Grand Forks Daily Herald, July 17, 1915. By Ella Wheeler Wilcox.

    Once as I toiled along the world’s rough road,
    I longed to lift each fellow pilgrim’s load.
    I yearned to smooth all obstacles away
    And make the journey one glad holiday.
    Now that so much of life’s long path is trod,
    I better know the purposes of God.
    As I come nearer to the final goal,
    I grasp the meaning of the Over-Soul.
    This is the message as it comes to me:
    Do well the task thy Maker set for thee.
    Cheer the despairing—ease his load a bit,
    Or teach him how he best may carry it,
    But do not lift it wholly, lest at length
    Thy too great kindness rob him of his strength.
    He wrongs his brother who performs his part,
    Wake thou the sleeping Angel in each heart;
    Inspire the doubting soul to search and find,
    Then go thy way, nor wait for those behind.
    Who tries may follow, and the goal attain;
    Perpetual effort is the price of gain.
    The gods make room upon the heights sublime,
    Only for those who have the will to climb.

  • Altogether Different

    From the Omaha Daily Bee, July 16, 1915. By Philander Johnson.

    They bid us laugh at trouble and to chase dull care away,
    For trouble will grow greater if you nurse it day by day.
    But I couldn’t laugh at trouble and I couldn’t banish care
    When fate turned out a grievance as my own especial share.
    I’ve smiled at the material for customary glee:
    The cook who burned the biscuit seemed a mirthful sprite to me.
    The small boy with a stomach ache—how he has made me grin;
    How I’ve chuckled at the teacher who sat down upon a pin.
    But when the biscuit that was burned at breakfast met my gaze,
    My feelings sought expression in a dozen different ways.
    The small boy with the pain, when once I met him face to face,
    Evoked my sympathy and left of laughter not a trace.
    Of joy the situation showed a most convincing lack
    When I sustained a puncture by a pin or by a tack.
    That smiles will banish sorrow all philosophy has shown;
    But it’s hard to laugh at trouble if the trouble is your own.

  • Truths of History—No. 4

    From the Richmond Times Dispatch, July 15, 1915.

    When barons bold at Runnymede
        Laid down the law to England’s King,
    The Magna Charta there decreed
        Was not meant liberty to bring.

    Of course, the barons spread this tale,
    But they did that to cop the kale.

    The fact is barons in that day
        Had found their purses waxing slim,
    And made the King agree to pay
        Whene’er they turned a trick for him.

    The other rules they did indite
    Were meant to make the thing sound right.

  • Imaginary Destruction

    From the Evening Star, July 14, 1915. By Philander Johnson.

    If all the men who talk of fish
        Were fishermen for sure,
    If fact were equal to the wish
        That stoutly doth endure,
    If all the men who sit and write
        Of fish, in verse so fine,
    Had sought the waters that invite
        The patient hook and line,
    If all the tackle that is made
        And every year turned loose
    ‘Mongst sporting goods to be displayed,
        Were put to active use,
    The situation could be told
        In language quite succinct:
    The fishing yarns would all be old;
        The fish would be extinct.

  • The Chambered Nautilus

    From The Birmingham Age Herald, July 13, 1915. By Oliver Wendell Holmes.

    This is the ship of pearl which, poets feign,
    Sails the unshadowed main,
    The venturesome bark that flings
    On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings
    In gulfs enchanted, where the siren sings,
    And coral reefs lie bare,
    Where the cold sea maids rise to sun their streaming hair.

    Its web of living gauze no more unfurl;
    Wrecked is the ship of pearl!
    And every chamber cell
    Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell,
    As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell,
    Before thee lies revealed,
    Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed!

    Year after year beheld the silent toil
    That spread its lustrous coil;
    Still, as the spiral grew,
    He left the past year’s dwelling archway through,
    Built up its idle door,
    Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more.

    Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee,
    Child of the wandering sea,
    Cast from her lap, forlorn!
    From thy dead lips a clearer note is born
    Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn!
    While on mine ear it rings,
    Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings—

    Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
    As the swift seasons roll!
    Leave thy low-vaulted past!
    Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
    Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
    Till thou at length art free,
    Leaving thine outgrown shell by life’s unresting sea!