Newspaper History

Category: Newspapers

This is the parent category for all individual newspapers.

  • From Wishing Land

    From The Birmingham Age Herald, July 28, 1914. By Robert Louis Stevenson.

    Dear lady, tapping at your door
        Some little verses stand,
    And beg on this auspicious day
        To come and kiss your hand.

    Their syllables all counted right,
        Their rhymes each in its place,
    Like birthday children at the door,
        They wait to see your face.

    Rise, lady, rise and let them in;
        Fresh from the fairy shore,
    They bring you things you wish to have,
        Each in its pinafore.

    For they have been to Wishing Land
        This morning in the dew,
    And all your dearest wishes bring—
        All granted—home to you.

    What these may be they would not tell
        And could not if they would;
    They take the packets sealed to you
        As trusty servants should.

    But there was one that looked like Love,
        And one that smelt of Health,
    And one that had a jingling sound—
        I fancy it was Wealth.

    Ah well, they are but wishes; still
        O lady fair, for you,
    I know that all you wish is kind,
        O pray it all come true.

  • Inspiration

    From the Omaha Daily Bee, July 27, 1914. By Bayoll Ne Trele.

    A summer wood,
        A vagrant breeze,
    A writing tablet
        On my knees;
    A rhythmic swaying
        Of the boughs,
    An anxious knitting
        Of my brows;
    A hundred things
        With meaning fraught,
    Yet not one single thought.

    A seat of rock,
        A rug of moss,
    A ceiling where
        Green branches toss;
    A bird voice calls
        From some far nook,
    A leaf spins downward
        To the brook.
    A crackling noise,
        A cow! I flee—
    The beast is headed straight for me.

    My seat of rock,
        My ceiling green
    Has just been changed—
        There’s a fence between;
    And on that rock
        Whence I did scud
    There stands the cow
        And chews her cud.
    With placid eye
        She looks me o’er,
    A-standing where
        I sat before,
    And seems to say
        O you high brow
    I wonder who’s
        The poet now.

  • Sporting Communication

    From the Evening Star, July 26, 1914. By Philander Johnson.

    Dear Editor:
    I wish to call attention to the fact
    That while in most respects your news is liberal an’ exact,
    There’s something you are missin’. I am wonderin’ how you could
    Be so indifferent to our influential neighborhood!
    You write about the contests on the turf or in the ring,
    But, up to now, your sportin’ page has never said a thing
    About the mighty battle where two giants was arrayed;
    I mean the game of checkers me an’ Ezry Slocum played.

    ’Twas him as sent the challenge. Leastways, he was heard to say
    That he could beat Si Perkins playin’ checkers any day.
    My last name bein’ Perkins an’ my fust name bein’ Si,
    Of course, I couldn’t pass the base insinuation by.
    Although our feelin’s was intense, our speech was never rude.
    We calmly met the gaze of the assembled multitude
    That stood on barrels an’ on crates an’ even on the shelves
    To see how me an’ Ezry Slocum would acquit ourselves.

    I made a swift attack an’ jumped him all along the line.
    I romped around his king row purty much like it was mine.
    Oh, you talk about your polo or your golf or your base ball!
    I want to say the game that we put up ‘ud beat ‘em all!
    I am writin’ to remind you that in this enlightened age
    The public will take notice, if your valued sportin’ page
    Neglects to mention who has riz up to fame so high—
    The Checker Cyclone; which the same is
                Yours sincerely,
                            Si.

  • Too Hot to Eat

    From the Harrisburg Telegraph, July 25, 1914. By Wing Dinger.

    Why is it that this time of year
        With such good things to eat,
    We’re stopped from eating all we want
        By the excessive heat.

    Take chicken corn pie, say, than which
        A better dish there’s not.
    But, gee, you can’t eat all you want,
        Because it is too hot.

    Fresh vegetables of all kinds
        Are thrown into the pot,
    But when they’re served, though we would like
        To eat them, it’s too hot.

    For months I’ve hungered for fresh things—
        Green corn and beans and such—
    They’re here now, but it is so hot
        I can’t eat very much.

  • The Alimony Lady

    From the Rock Island Argus, July 24, 1914. By Henry Howland.

    Oh, smiling lady, your jewels flash,
        Your furs are rich and your eyes are bright,
    With a lavish hand you are spending cash,
        You know no want and your heart is light;
    You look so glad and you seem so free
        From the cares that worrying people know
    That I wonder, seeing your ecstasy,
        Who was paying your bills a year ago.

    Perhaps he lingers alone somewhere,
        Or another may bring him gladness now;
    The lines that are drawn by the hand of Care
        May be deeply etched in his aching brow;
    Remorse may gnaw at his lonely heart,
        Or another may hear him whisper low;
    But you, made up with consummate art—
        Who was paying your bills a year ago?

    You do not wail o’er the cost of things,
        Whatever your fancy craves you take;
    Your hands are laden with flashing rings
        And your fingers never from toiling ache;
    You give no thought to the ones who shrink
        Where a chill creeps in when the mad winds blow;
    Your furs are soft and your cheeks are pink;
        Who was paying your bills a year ago?

    Oh, lady fair, in another year
        You may wonder how, in your careless pride
    You forgot to pause and declined to hear
        The helpless who in their sadness cried;
    You may sit alone where the light is dim
        And mourn the fate that has brought you low,
    As you think sometimes with a pang of him
        Who was paying your bills a year ago.

  • Kindness

    From the Rock Island Argus, July 23, 1914.

    His head was bald and wrinkles hung
        In folds beneath his chin;
    But, fancying his look was young,
        He drew his waist-band in.

    His shoulders drooped, his step was slow,
        His sight was growing dim;
    He thought the knowledge of it, though,
        Belonged alone to him.

    I did not tell him that I knew,
        Nor hint that I could see;
    It may be that some morning you
        Will be as kind to me.

  • The Buoy Bell

    From the Newark Evening Star, July 22, 1914. By Chart Pitt.

    The buoy-bell’s lone challenge wakes a dream of long ago,
    When the happy sound of church bells rang out across the snow.
    It sounds its sullen warning, o’er the murmur of the reef,
    Where heartless tides are sobbing, like a lost-soul grief.
    There was song and happy laughter, and the glint of love-lit eyes,
    Now listless snow is falling from the steel-gray Arctic skies.
    The angry surf is booming on the stubborn rock-bound shore,
    While the memory ship is drifting to the happy days of yore.

    The Northern wolf is calling from the headland’s wind-swept height.
    Hark! He sounds the call of hunger, to curse the Arctic night.
    The time-worn year is dying and the new waits at the door,
    The beacon light is blinking from the shadows of the shore.
    The mystic North is sleeping ‘neath the blanket of the snows,
    But weary hearts are dreaming of the fragrant Southern rose.
    The wild surf sounds its challenge and the shore flings back reply—
    The world is bound in chains of war, ‘neath the dreary Arctic sky.

  • Waiting

    From The Birmingham Age Herald, July 21, 1914. By John Burroughs.

    Serene, I fold my hands and wait,
        Nor care for wind, or tide, or sea;
    I rave no more ‘gainst time or fate,
        For lo! my own shall come to me.

    I stay my haste, I make delays,
        For what avails this eager pace?
    I stand amid the eternal ways,
        And what is mine shall know my face.

    Asleep, awake, by night or day,
        The friends I seek are seeking me;
    No wind can drive my bark astray,
        Nor change the tides of destiny.

    What matter if I stand alone?
        I wait with joy the coming years;
    My heart shall reap where it has sown,
        And garner up its fruit of tears.

    The waters know their own and draw
        The brook that springs in yonder height;
    So flows the good with equal law
        Unto the soul of pure delight.

    The stars come nightly to the sky;
        The tidal wave unto the sea;
    Nor time, nor space, nor deep, nor high
        Can keep my own away from me.

  • Song

    From the Newark Evening Star, July 20, 1914. By William Shenstone.

    I told my nymph, I told her true,
    My fields were small, my flocks were few;
    While faltering accents spoke my fear
    That Flavia might not prove sincere.

    Of crops destroyed by vernal cold,
    And vagrant sheep that left my fold—
    Of these she heard, yet bore to hear:
    And is not Flavia then sincere?

    How, changed by Fortune’s fickle wind,
    The friends I loved became unkind,
    She heard, and shed a generous tear;
    And is not Flavia then sincere?

    How, if she deigned my love to bless,
    My Flavia must not hope for dress—
    This, too, she heard, and smiled to hear.
    And Flavia, sure, must be sincere.

    Go shear your flocks, ye jovial swains!
    Go reap the plenty of your plains;
    Despoiled of all which you revere,
    I know my Flavia’s love sincere.

  • A Backyard Ballade

    From The Times Dispatch, July 19, 1914. By J. H. Greene.

    A gray expanse of weathered wall
        I view from my lone window seat,
    Whose other windows, one and all,
        So empty, lifeless and effete,
    Above a yard burnt up with heat,
        Fill me with fancies saturnine—
    When something makes my gloom retreat—
        White lingerie upon a line!

    Light, laughing laces flirt and fall,
        And stockings, wind-filled to the feet,
    Dance tangoes at an airy ball
        To music that the breezes beat.
    Oh, swirling skirts so indiscreet,
        You dance away black moods of mine!
    Encore, oh hurricane, I entreat,
        This lingerie upon a line!

    Oh, dance from dawn to even fall,
        Wind-woman, zephyr-souled and sweet!
    What sarabands are at your call?
        Where did you learn that ballet suite?
    Yours is an art of the elite,
        Oh, silken, swinging columbine,
    Abstracted of all sex conceit—
        Just lingerie upon a line!

    But disillusion comes complete—
        When something surely masculine
    Is added to that silken cheat
        Of lingerie upon a line!