Newspaper History

Category: Newspapers

This is the parent category for all individual newspapers.

  • The Best Letter

    From the Omaha Daily Bee, December 9, 1913. By William F. Kirk.

    You may write a thousand letters to the maiden you adore,
    And declare in every letter that you love her more and more.
    You may praise her grace and beauty in a thousand glowing lines,
    And compare her eyes of azure with the brightest star that shines.
    If you had the pen of Byron you would use it every day
    In composing written worship to your sweetheart far away;
    But the letter far more welcome to an older, gentler breast
    Is the letter to your mother from the boy she loves the best.

    Youthful blood is fierce and flaming, and when writing to your love
    You will rave about your passion, swearing by the stars above;
    Vowing by the moon’s white splendor that the girlie you adore
    Is the one you’ll ever cherish as no maid was loved before.
    You will pen full many a promise on those pages white and dumb
    That you never can live up to in the married years to come.
    But a much more precious letter, bringing more and deeper bliss,
    Is the letter to your mother from the boy she cannot kiss.

    She will read it very often when the lights are soft and low,
    Sitting in the same old corner where she held you years ago,
    And regardless of its diction or its spelling or its style,
    And although its composition would provoke a critic’s smile,
    In her old and trembling fingers it becomes a work of art,
    Stained by tears of joy and sadness as she hugs it to her heart.
    Yes, the letter of all letters, look wherever you may roam,
    Is the letter to your mother from her boy away from home.

  • The Lost Auto

    From The Topeka State Journal, December 8, 1913. By Roy K. Moulton.

    Lying one day neath the auto,
        Sweating and soaked with oil;
    I worked at a cranky engine
        And my only reward was toil.

    I know not what I was saying,
        As I tinkered and wrenched and tore;
    I doubt not ’twas something quite savage,
        It may be I even swore.

    My patience gave out on that engine,
        With a hammer I hit it a thump
    That jarred loose some thingamadinkus
        And started it up at a jump.

    Before one could twinkle an eyelid,
        Before there was time for surprise,
    That car tore away down the highway,
        And I lay glaring up at the skies.

    I sprang up and madly I followed,
        But soon gave it up in disgust,
    For that runaway car quickly vanished
        In a thick snorting cyclone of dust.

    I sought it in byways and hedges,
        In highways and in busy streets;
    And, though I made thorough inquiries,
        With never a trace did I meet.

    Perhaps in some future existence,
        In worlds far beyond mortal’s ken,
    I shall once more make search for that auto,
        But I doubt if I find it then.

  • The Eagle

    From The Birmingham Age Herald, December 7, 1913. By Robert Browning.

    Dervish Ferishtah walked the woods one eve,
    And noted on a bough a raven’s nest
    Whereof each youngling gaped with callow beak
    Widened by want; for why? beneath the tree
    Dead lay the mother bird, “A piteous chance!
    How shall they ‘scape destruction?” sighed the sage
    —Or sage about to be, though simple still.
    Responsive to which doubt, sudden there swooped
    An eagle downward, and behold he bore
    (Great hearted) in his talons flesh wherewith
    He stayed their craving, then resought the sky.
    “Ah, foolish, foolish me!” the observer smiled,
    “Who toil and moil to eke out life, when lo,
    Providence cares for every hungry mouth!”
    To profit by which lesson, home went he,
    And certain days sat musing—neither meat
    Nor drink would purchase by his handiwork.
    Then—for his head swam and his limbs grew faint—
    Sleep overtook the unwise one, whom in dream
    God thus admonished: “Hast thou marked my deed?
    Which part assigned by Providence dost judge
    Was meant for man’s example? Should he play
    The helpless weakling, or the helpful strength
    That captures prey and saves the perishing?
    Sluggard, arise, work, eat, then feed who lack!”

  • The Old Magic

    From The Topeka State Journal, December 6, 1913. By Berton Braley.

    I left the sea behind, that I might dwell
        ‘Mid streets where millions hurry to and fro,
    Where surging crowds and roaring traffic swell
        The city’s vast enchantment that I know;
        But still the vagrant breezes whisper low
    Of rolling deeps and spaces wide and free,
        Of reef and shoal and derelict and floe,
    To mightier magic of the surging sea!

    I love the city and I love it well,
        Its gold and want, its happiness and woe;
    Sometimes it seems no glamour may excel
        The city’s vast enchantment that I know;
        But memory will never have it so—
    She brings again the days “that used to be.”
        Once more I feel, as in the long ago,
    The mightier magic of the surging sea.

    The city streets—what stories they could tell!
        Touched with the wonder of the passing show,
    The seething life, the loves and hates that spell
        The city’s vast enchantment that I know;
        The noise and haste, the myriad lights aglow,
    The plots and schemes, the mirth and mystery.
        And yet I hear, in all the winds that blow,
    The mightier magic of the surging sea.

    What thrill it gives, what dreams it can bestow
    The city’s vast enchantment that I know!
    But I must follow, when this calls to me,
    The mightier magic of the surging sea.

  • Scenic Embellishments

    From the Evening Star, December 5, 1913. By Philander Johnson.

    We’ve had some street improvements down to Pohick on the Crick.
    They filled the roadway up with pipes and covered it with brick.
    They finished it on Thursday and the thoroughfare looked fine.
    On Saturday they had a gang of working men in line
    Who said they had discovered that the pipes were all in wrong.
    They’d have to look ‘em over, though the job would not take long.
    When they had got one end of Main Street finished up with care
    The other end was marked for renovation and repair.

    Oh, the town is full of lanterns when the evening shadows fall.
    It looks as if preparing for a large and splendid ball.
    And where by day you used to drive along without a fear,
    You find the road blocked up by picks and shovels, far and near.
    A chasm runs along like a small canyon from the west.
    The dirt is piled in jagged lines to make a mountain crest.
    To drive a wagon has become a neat and risky trick—
    But we’re full of brand-new scenery at Pohick on the Crick.

  • The Farmer

    From The Tacoma Times, December 4, 1913. By Berton Braley.

    My hands are gnarled and horny,
        My face is seamed with sun,
    My path is sometimes thorny,
        My living grimly won
    By labor unremitting
        And hard and bitter toil;
    Forever I am pitting
        My strength against the soil.

    The city’s lights and glamor
        Are not for me to know,
    But neither is its clamor,
        Its squalor and its woe,
    Not mine its pleasure places,
        But mine the good brown loam,
    The air, the open spaces,
        The quiet peace of Home!

    And, though by all my labor,
        I win no mighty prize,
    I still can face my neighbor
        And look him in the eyes;
    I am no speculator
        Within the wheat-pit hurled;
    I am the wealth-creator
        Who helps to feed the world.

    One with the Empire-makers
        Who bring a better day,
    I till my thrifty acres
        And bow to no man’s sway;
    My gold might leap up faster
        Were I to crook the knee,
    But no man is my master
        And I am strong—and free!

  • Father

    From the Omaha Daily Bee, December 3, 1913. By Edmund Vance Cooke.

    He was not the kind of a father that you read about in books,
    He wasn’t long on language and he wasn’t strong on looks.
    He was not the sort of father that you hear about in plays.
    He was just a human father with a human father’s ways.

    No, he never balked at working, but when he was through it once,
    Right down to the grass was father, with the children doing stunts.
    All of us would pile up on him and he’d welcome all the pack,
    But I’m wondering after play time, did we stay there—on his back?

    Wasn’t strong on dissipation, said his “gambol on the green”
    Was to fill the platter faster than the kids could lick it clean.
    And the next best game he knew of was an equal one to beat;
    It was keeping leather covers up to the supply of feet.

    Always on the job was father, plugging steady like and strong,
    Never making any noise, but helping all his little world along.
    And to think! Lord! ain’t it funny you can see things years and years
    And yet never know you’ve seen them, till your eyes are blind with tears.

    Quit his job one day and left us, smiling as he went away;
    Eulogy seems all so foolish. What can anybody say?
    Seemed like even in his leaving he was saving someone bother,
    For the one word on the granite which lies over him is “Father.”

  • Today’s Girl

    From The Tacoma Times, December 2, 1913. By Berton Braley.

    We knock and criticize her,
    We scold, apostrophize her,
    We wish that she were wiser,
        More capable and kind;
    Her path we’re always stalking
    To criticize her talking,
    Her clothes, her way of walking,
        Her manners and her mind.

    We say, “Oh, highty-tighty!
    She’s frivolous and flighty
    And all her ways are mighty
        Undignified to see;
    She dances and she chatters,
    Our olden rules she shatters
    And laughs at serious matters
        With unabated glee.”

    We chide and we correct her,
    We shadow and detect her,
    We study and dissect her
        With all her smiles and tears;
    And find, on looking o’er her
    (And learning to adore her),
    She’s just like girls before her
        For twenty thousand years!

  • Taboo

    From The Tacoma Times, December 1, 1913. By Berton Braley.

    You mustn’t make fun of the Irish,
        You mustn’t get fresh with the Jew,
    There’s always a fuss if you jest at the Russ,
        And to jape at the Dutch is taboo.
    You must’t play jokes on the English,
        For they are a haughty clan—
    But here is a mutt who’s a good-natured butt,
        The Patient Amer-i-can!

    Hands off the polyglot races;
        You mustn’t offend them at all,
    For they fly in a rage when burlesqued on the stage
        And threaten to burn down the hall.
    So dare not to laugh at the German,
        The Swede or I-tal-i-an,
    But laugh all you like at this good-natured Ike,
        The Patient Amer-i-can!

    He doesn’t get choked up with choler,
        But cheerfully shells out his pelf
    To pay for some play where they prove him a jay
        And bid him to laugh at himself.
    He’d joke at his grave if fate let him,
        And yet—if you’re needing a man—
    A regular friend who will stick to the end,
        You try the Amer-i-can!

  • Little Boy We Used to Know

    From The Birmingham Age Herald, November 30, 1913. By Judd Mortimer Lewis.

    The little boy whom we used to know,
    Who came to us when the day burned low,
    Who left his swing and his bat and ball
    Who left his playmates and games and all
    To come and stand by our easy-chair,
    To stand before us with yellow hair,
    On sturdy legs—with his feet apart,
    Before he snuggled against our heart.
    Where is he now with his romp and squeal,
    With his little hurts that a kiss would heal?

    We heard him say his “I lay me down,”
    And we pressed our lips to his tousled crown,
    Then his father tiptoed across the gloom
    And sat him down in the farther room,
    While his mother stayed by his side to croon
    A soft bye-low to a world-old tune
    While he drifted out into Slumberland;
    Then we stood and gazed at him, hand in hand,
    And—looking backward to where he lay—
    It seems ’twas then that he went away.

    It seems that he never came back at all
    To the rubber cat and the bouncing ball,
    To the old rope swing and the games he knew.
    A genie touched him—he grew and grew!
    From the room where our baby had sunk to sleep
    A youth came forth. And his voice is deep
    And his eyes are honest, and he his strong!
    And while still echoes the bye-low song,
    His lips say “Mother!” and then laugh “Dad!”
    And we are frightened—but we are glad!

    Sometimes we stand in the little room
    By the little bed in the evening’s gloom;
    And we miss the faltering “lay me down,”
    And we’d give the world for the tousled crown
    To kiss once more! Oh, Boy! Grown tall,
    We are frightened for you at the thought of all
    The dangers that wait your unwary feet!
    And grieving—for heartaches you’re bound to meet!
    But we are proud for the dear world’s sake
    Because of the man you are going to make.