Newspaper History

Category: Newspapers

This is the parent category for all individual newspapers.

  • Wasted Firelight

    From The Topeka State Journal, October 16, 1914. By Fannie Stearns Davis.

    I lit the fire for you alone,
        And then you never came.
    The Others sat here, while the blown
        Red rapture of the flame

    Swept up the chimney to the night,
        They sat and looked at me.
    They found me fair by that firelight
        You never came to see.

    The Others love me more than you;
        Yet I was angry. I
    Knelt down beside the hearth and blew
        The brands to make them die.

    Love is a foolish, jealous thing.
        I would not have them share
    The flame that I set glorying
        For you, who do not care!

  • Gone

    From The Topeka State Journal, October 15, 1914.

    Gone with the mists and rains,
    Slipp’d from old mem’ry’s chains,
    Deep with the shadows blent
    Heaped is the cash we’ve spent.
    Sums that we lingered o’er,
    Bills that once made us sore,
    Things we were forced to buy,
    Charges that made us sigh,
    Gifts we could ill afford,
    Cash paid for bed and board,
    Cash for our petty needs,
    Cash for our festive feeds,
    Cash for a thousand things
    Gone on the swiftest wings.

    Whither it flies, or fares,
    Now that it’s gone, who cares?

  • The Calamatist

    From the Evening Star, October 14, 1914. By Philander Johnson.

        Oh, the man who utters warnings,
        He is busy nights and mornings!
    He is busy in the north and in the south!
        He reminds us of the evil
        That attends each moth or weevil,
    And is particularly eloquent on drouth.
        He will talk about the weather,
        He will get reports together
    From the musty, dusty data of the past,
        And he’ll have you a-tremble,
        Till your fears you can’t dissemble,
    Every time the sky is slightly overcast.
        He will take the saddest cases
        Of all history for the basis
    Of a wail which to the present he’ll apply.
        All the tragedy and sorrow
        Of the ages he will borrow
    And parade them with a melancholy sigh.
        We respect him while we fear him
        As we grimly pause to hear him
    Giving notice of a future very blue.
        Then we conquer our dejection
        By the pertinent reflection
    That the most of what he says does not come true.

  • Out of Reach

    From the Grand Forks Daily Herald, October 13, 1914. By Kate W. Hamilton.

    The grapes on the trellis are purple and sweet,
    They tempt little fingers and clambering feet.
    We will pick them all, there are plenty for each,
    But it’s strange how the finest grow just out of reach.

    But grandfather says—he’s old and wise—
    That the difference is not in the grapes, but our eyes.
    That the things within reach never please us so much
    As the things we can’t have, that are just beyond touch.

    There are beautiful grapes that we crush with our feet
    While we eagerly climb for others more sweet;
    That fruit within reach is the fruit for the day,
    And to pluck as you go is the sensible way.

    Oh, grandfather’s wise, for grandfather is old;
    But no matter how often we all have been told,
    At the vines every morning, it seems to us each
    That the very best grapes are the grapes out of reach.

  • The Coal Picker

    From The Topeka State Journal, October 12, 1914. By Amy Lowell.

    He perches in the slime, inert,
    Bedaubed with iridescent dirt.
    The oil upon the puddles dries
    To colours like a peacock’s eyes,
    And half-submerged tomato cans
    Shine scaly, as leviathans
    Oozily crawling through the mud.
    The ground is here and there bestud
    With lumps of only part-burned coal.
    His duty is to glean the whole,
    To pick them from the filth, each one,
    To hoard them for the hidden sun
    Which glows within each fiery core
    And waits to be made free once more.
    Their sharp and glistening edges cut
    His stiffened fingers. Through the smut
    Gleam red the wounds which will not shut.
    Wet through and shivering he kneels
    And digs the slippery coals; like eels
    They slide about. His force all spent,
    He counts his small accomplishment.
    A half-a-dozen clinker-coals
    Which still have fire in their souls.
    Fire! And in his thought there burns
    The topaz fire of votive urns.
    He sees it fling from hill to hill,
    And still consumed, is burning still.
    Higher and higher leaps the flame,
    The smoke an ever-shifting frame.
    He sees a Spanish Castle old,
    With silver steps and paths of gold.
    From myrtle bowers comes the splash
    Of fountains, and the emerald flash
    Of parrots in the orange trees,
    Whose blossoms pasture humming bees.
    He knows he feeds the urns whose smoke
    Bears visions, that his master-stroke
    Is out of dirt and misery
    To light the fire of poesy.
    He sees the glory, yet he knows
    That others cannot see his shows.
    To them his smoke is sightless, black,
    His votive vessels but a pack
    Of old discarded shards, his fire
    A peddler’s; still to him the pyre
    Is incensed, an enduring goal!
    He sighs and grubs another coal.

  • You

    From the Albuquerque Morning Journal, October 11, 1914.

    If I could have my dearest wish fulfilled,
        And take my choice of all earth’s treasures, too,
    And ask from heaven whatso’er willed,
        I’d ask for you.

    No man I’d envy, neither low nor high,
        Nor king in castle old or palace new;
    I’d hold Golconda’s mines less rich than I,
        If I had you.

    Toil and privation, poverty and care
        Undaunted, I’d defy, nor future woo,
    Having my wife, no jewels else I’d wear,
        If she were you.

    Little I’d care how lovely she might be,
        How graced with every charm, how fond, how true,
    E’en though perfection, she’d be naught to me
        Were she not you.

    There is more charm for my true loving heart,
        In everything you think or say, or do,
    Than all the joys of heaven could e’er impart,
        Because it’s you.

  • The Twilight Witch

    From the Omaha Daily Bee, October 10, 1914. By Madison Cawein.

    The twilight witch comes with her stars
        And strews them through the blue;
    Then breathes below the sunset bars
        A breath of meadow rue;
    She trails her veil across the skies
        And mutters to the trees,
    And in the wood, with firefly eyes
        She wakes the mysteries.
    The twilight witch, with elf and fay,
    Is coming down the slumber way,
        Sleep, my dearie, sleep.

    The twilight witch, with crescent moon,
        Stoops in the wooded hill;
    She answers to the owlet’s tune,
        And to the whippoorwill.
    She leans above the reedy pool
        And wakes the drowsy frog,
    And with the toadstool, dim and cool,
        Rims gray the old dead log.
    The twilight witch comes stealing down
    To take you off to slumber town.
        Sleep, my dearie, sleep.

    The twilight witch, with wind-like tread,
        Has entered in the room;
    She steals around your trundle bed
        And whispers in the gloom;
    She says, “I brought my steed along,
        My faery steed of gleams,
    To bear you, like a breath of song,
        Into the land of dreams.
    I am the witch who takes your hand
    And leads you off to faeryland,
        The far-off land of sleep.”

  • Gone But Not Forgotten

    From The Birmingham Age Herald, October 9, 1914.

    I knew a certain citizen
        Who wouldn’t take a drink;
    He wouldn’t smoke, he wouldn’t swear,
        He wouldn’t even think
    Of many sorts of wickedness
        That other men commit;
    Among the ultra-pious folk
        He seemed to make a hit.

    His prayers to the throne of grace
        Uprose day after day,
    In church he joined the singing when
        The organ ‘gan to play.
    For years he led a model life,
        But when away he went
    The savings bank he’d organized
        Was left without a cent.

  • When the Wrath Fell

    From the Evening Star, October 8, 1914. By Philander Johnson.

    Nobody paid attention
        To the man who gathered wealth.
    Nobody paused to mention
        That his course was that of stealth,
    Till he offered some donations
        For the help of human kind,
    Then the fierce denunciations
        Sadly shook his peace of mind.

    They said his coin was tainted
        And his motives dark and deep,
    Till the pictures that they painted
        Caused him tears and loss of sleep.
    Nobody ever rapped him
        While he hoarded day by day,
    But, good gracious! How they slapped him
        When he gave the stuff away!

  • Insufficiency

    From the Evening Star, October 7, 1914. By Philander Johnson.

    If talk alone would do the trick,
        What vast improvements we would see!
    We’d save the sinful and the sick,
        And fill the world with honest glee.
    From every fault we would be freed,
        And midst the generous acclaim,
    Ambition and his brother Greed
        Would hide their heads in sorrowing shame.

    Gay banners would not be unfurled
        To glorify the march of Death.
    We would not see a struggling world
        Half stifled by the cannon’s breath.
    We’d make our resolutions high,
        And make them so that they would stick.
    Men would not curse nor women cry
        If talk alone would do the trick.