From the Evening Capital News, December 13, 1916.
Category: Newspapers
This is the parent category for all individual newspapers.
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Improved Facilities
From the Evening Star, July 31, 1915. By Philander Johnson.
Inventive genius undertook
To make our labors lighter.
The oldtime way mankind forsook
For methods much politer.
With speech and print we made in vain
Our protests and predictions,
So now a cannon’s mouth we train
To utter our convictions.Unto the future of the race
We turned with deep reflection,
And bade eugenics take the place
Of natural selection.
Such problems are dismissed offhand
With confident elation.
You simply press a button and
Exterminate a nation. -
Every Mother’s Duty
From the Omaha Daily Bee, July 30, 1915. By Ella Wheeler Wilcox.
When God had formed the Universe He thought
Of all the marvels therein to be wrought,
And to his aid then Motherhood was brought.“My lesser self, the feminine of Me,
She will go forth throughout all time,” quoth He,
“And make my world what I would have it be,“For I am weary, having labored so,
And for a cycle of repose would go
Into that silence which but God may know.“Therefore I leave the rounding of my plan
To Motherhood, and that which I began
Let woman finish in perfecting man.“She is the soil, the human Mother Earth;
She is the sun that calls the seed to earth;
She is the gardener who knows its worth.“From Me all seed of any kind must spring.
Divine the growth such seed and soil will bring.
For all is Me, and I am everything.”Thus having spoken to Himself aloud,
His glorious face upon His breast He bowed,
And sought repose behind a wall of cloud.Come forth, O God! Though great Thy thought and good
In shaping woman for true Motherhood,
Lord, speak again; she has not understood.The centuries pass; the cycles roll along—
The earth is peopled with a mighty throng;
Yet men are fighting and the world goes wrong.Lord, speak again, ere yet it be too late—
Unloved, unwanted souls come through earth’s gate;
The unborn child is given a dower of hate.Thy world progresses in all ways save one.
In Motherhood, for which it was begun,
Lord, Lord, behold how little has been done.True Motherhood is not alone to breed
The human race; it Is to know and heed
Its holiest purpose and its highest need.Lord, speak again, so woman shall be inspired
With the full meaning of that mighty word—
True Motherhood. She has not rightly heard. -
Propinquity
From the Omaha Daily Bee, July 29, 1915. By David.
I’d love to be sweet sleep, were you a dream;
I’d gladly be the milk, were you the cream;
I’d wish to be an oak, were you a vine;
Were you a lemon, I would be the rind;
Dark sorrow would I be, were you a sigh;
Were you the ointment, then me for the fly;
I’d be a waiter if you were the tips;
Were you a kiss, then mine should be the lips;
Were you the ocean, I would be its roar;
I’d be an apple, if you were the core;
Were you a pen, I then would be the ink;
I’d be a parching thirst, were you a drink;
Were you a needle, I would be the thread;
I’d be the butter if you were the bread;
Me Simple Simon, if you were the pie;
Were you a diamond, I would be the dye;
Or I would be a muff, were you the fur;
Were you a chestnut, I would be the burr;
If you were Wall Street, I would be New York;
I’d turn into a knife, were you a fork;
Were you the sunshine, I would be a flower;
H2O for mine, were you a shower;
Were you a drummer, I would be the drum;
And so it goes ad infinitum.
So all through life we’d never need to part,
But journey hand in hand, and heart to heart,
Though of all varied forms we find in life,
I’d rather be myself, were you my wife. -
The Two Mysteries
From The Detroit Times, July 28, 1915. By Mary Mapes Dodge.
We know not what it is, dear, this sleep so deep and still;
The folded hands, the awful calm, the cheek so pale and chill;
The lids that will not lift again, though we may call and call;
The strange, white solitude of peace that settles over all.We know not what it means, dear, this desolate heart pain;
This dread to take our daily way, and walk in it again;
We know not to what other sphere the loved who leave us go,
Nor why we’re left to wonder still, nor why we do not know.But this we know: our loved and dead, if they should come this day—
Should come and ask us, “What is life?” not one of us could say.
Life is a mystery as deep as ever death can be;
Yet, oh, how dear it is to us, this life we live and see!Then might they say—these vanished ones—and blessed is the thought:
“So death is sweet to us, beloved; though we may show you naught;
We may not to the quick reveal the mystery of death.
Ye can not tell us, if ye would, the mystery of breath.”The child who enters life comes not with knowledge or intent,
So all who enter death must go as little children sent.
Nothing is known. But nearing God, what has the soul to dread?
And as life is to the living, so death is to the dead. -
The Ultimate Consumer
From the Evening Public Ledger, July 27, 1915.
Light, in ballast, a thousand ships
Come streaming through our harbor gate;
Then, laden down at busy slips,
Go out again with stores of freight
Bound over sea to the buyer great,
Who always calls for more and more,
Whose greed not all the world may sate,
The ultimate consumer—War.Ships that come from the Seven Seas,
Some that move with stately gait;
Some that loiter in any breeze,
Lured by Wartime’s double rate.
Mocking all at the hand of fate,
Seeking share in the wondrous store,
They come to serve, let who berate,
The ultimate consumer—War.Battered hulks once forced aside
By vessels of a later date;
Proud and scornful of wind and tide
And foes that under the ocean wait,
Again they pass, but sans the state
That marked their going in days of yore;
Servants now of the king of hate,
The ultimate consumer—War.Captain, the risk of the trip is great
And none may tell when a gun will roar;
But you are serving, despite the strait
The ultimate consumer—War. -
Vintage
From the New York Tribune, July 26, 1915. By Amy Lowell.
I will mix me a drink of stars—
Large stars with polychrome needles,
Small stars jetting maroon and crimson,
Cool, quiet, green stars.
I will tear them out of the sky,
And squeeze them over an old silver cup,
And I will pour the cold scorn of my Beloved into it,
So that my drink shall be bubbled with ice.It will leap and scratch
As I swallow it down;
And I shall feel it as a serpent of fire,
Coiling and twisting in my belly.
His snortings will rise to my head,
And I shall be hot, and laugh,
Forgetting that I have ever known a woman. -
Friends
From The Birmingham Age Herald, July 25, 1915. By Allen Griffin Johnson.
Old friend, we’ve journeyed far and wide.
O’er rugged hills and hollows;
With yearning hearts, at eventide,
We’ve watched the homing swallows;
We’ve known that bitter grief and dole
That cry unheard to heaven,
Like some poor, hell-bound, tortured soul,
Condemned and unforgiven.Through Sin’s fair vale, near Sorrow’s mart,
We’ve wandered free and joyous,
Where, hidden by the Tempter’s art,
Death waited to destroy us;
We’ve drunk life’s bitter and its sweet,
Have seen our castles tumbled
In ruins at our weary feet,
Yet smiled, nor even grumbled.Our blood has sanguined many a field,
Though courage ne’er departed,
Nor foeman forced us yet to yield,
Nor either grown faint hearted;
We’ve known the peace of eventide,
When day’s hard fight had ended,
And sunset’s crimson glory died,
As earth and sky were blended.Then, too, the bliss of sweet repose,
When real cares and seeming;
Depart, and life’s stream gently flows
To slumber’s land of Dreaming;
We’ve felt the fury of the blasts,
And known the calm succeeding,
Far sweeter for the storm that’s past—
A lesson worth the heeding.We’ve known the warmth of Summer’s sun,
The blight of Winter’s weather,
And when, at last, our race is run,
We’ll leave the track—together;
Aye, hand and hand, as in the past,
We’ll journey o’er the river;
Together e’en unto the last—
Friends now and friends forever. -
The Quest
From the Evening Star, July 24, 1915. By Philander Johnson.
The Dove of Peace exclaimed one day:
“Conditions fill me with dismay,
I will disguise myself and seek
The quiet dear to one so meek.”On land she hoped, afar from strife,
To lead a simple barnyard life,
But shuddered with incessant dread
As cannon rattled overhead.She trimmed new plumage and in state
The eagle sought to imitate,
Until an airship hurried by
And sent her trembling from the sky.Then as a sea gull forth she flew
Where waves were still and skies were blue
Until a shock disturbed the scene
Caused by a reckless submarine.And so she turns on weary wing,
Still hopeful that her wandering
On land or in the sky or sea
May find some spot from terror free.