Newspaper History

Category: The Topeka State Journal

  • The Traitor

    From The Topeka State Journal, October 28, 1914. By Helen Hay Whitney.

    They lit for me no torches
        When I came home to die,
    For I had sinned against the land
        Where soon I low must lie.

    Black darkness hung about me;
        The dark woods knew my shame;
    The little lovely leaves drew back
        And shivered as I came.

    I, who had laughed and loved them,
        Who solved their secret streams,
    Forgetting honor, grasped for gain
        In barter with my dreams.

    From man I ask no quarter,
        No pardon for my birth;
    But O deep heart, betrayed and wronged,
        Forgive me, Mother Earth.

  • An Autumn Wail

    From The Topeka State Journal, October 22, 1914. By Roy K. Moulton.

    By gum, I hate to go to school;
    I’d almost rather be a fool.
    I got to set in there all day
    When I ort to go out and play.
    I think it is a doggone bluff
    To make us learn a lot of stuff
    Which we ain’t never goin’ to use,
    Just look at all the time we lose.
    Who cares if Nero burned up Rome,
    Or if the world is round or flat?
    I don’t, and I will tell you that.

    I have to get licked every day,
    It somehow seems to come that way.
    If some kid don’t perform the trick,
    The teacher does it with a stick.
    And when the teacher licks me bad
    I always get one more from dad.
    There’s nearly always somethin’ wrong
    Right from the first tap of the gong.
    There ain’t no peace for any kid
    Who goes to school as I have did.
    It makes me stubborn as a mewl,
    By gum, to have to go to school.

  • 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 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.

  • With Us Once Again

    From The Topeka State Journal, September 28, 1914. By Roy K. Moulton.

    Rah, Rah, Rah,
    Zip, Boom, Bah.
        Old familiar sound.
    See ‘em wince,
    Bring the splints,
        Call the doctors round.
    Mama’s boy,
    Pride and joy,
        Laid out in the fray;
    Five ribs broke,
    What a joke,
        Dandy work, Hurray!
    Kick their shins,
    Break their chins,
        Tie ‘em in a knot.
    Beat ‘em up,
    Eat ‘em up,
        Drag ‘em ‘round a lot.
    Smash the line;
    Gee! Thats fine.
        Let no man escape.
    Kill the ends,
    Make their friends
        Put on yards of crepe.
    Do your worst;
    Do it first;
        There’s no law to fear.
    Rah, Rah, Rah.
    Zip, Boom, Bah.
        Football season’s here.

  • The Prettiest One

    From The Topeka State Journal, September 25, 1914. By Roy K. Moulton.

    The purtiest woman that I ever see,
    I’ll tell you the truth, jest between you an’ me.
    She isn’t no dazzler, and some fellers might
    Not stop to look twice, but she’s my choice all right.
    She’s not so blamed strong for the thing they call style,
    She don’t wear her hair in a half-bushel pile.
    The beauty shops never make much off’n her.
    She don’t have her gowns made in Paris; no, sir!
    She don’t strut around like a peacock and pose.
    She don’t keep a-daubin’ white stuff on her nose.

    I have heard of the beauties of Spain and of France,
    But with me they would not stand a ghost of a chance.
    I have gazed upon paintings of world famous queens,
    And I’ve seen a good many made-up actorines,
    But the woman who used to bounce me on her knee;
    She’s the purtiest woman that I ever see.

  • The Cat

    From The Topeka State Journal, September 23, 1914. By Roy K. Moulton.

    Once upon a midnight dreary, as I pondered, weak and weary,
        Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
    While a short snooze I was snatching,
        Suddenly there came a scratching, and ’twas on my chamber door.
    “’Tis no visitor,” I muttered, “scratching at my chamber door.
        Just the cat and nothing more.”

    I knew what the cat expected, and I knew I was elected
        So I grabbed the noisy feline to perform my nightly chore.
    Down the cold stairway I hurried while the chilly breezelets scurried
        Round my shins and then I let him safely out the kitchen door.
    I had put him out so often that it really made me sore,
        Simply that and nothing more.

    Back to my hall room I ambled and into the bed I scrambled,
        When I heard a fearful wailing that I’d often heard before.
    ’Twas the same old caterwauling and the same old feline calling,
        As he vainly tried to get in at the self-same kitchen door.
    Then I hastened down the stairway and was chilled through to the core,
        Just to let him in once more.

  • The Peasant Soldier

    From The Topeka State Journal, September 22, 1914. By James J. Montague.

    He has no hope for conquest; he has no lust for power;
    His bosom does not burn to share in triumph’s glorious hour;
    He bears no hatred in his heart against his brother man;
    Unlearned he is in strategy or statesman’s scheme or plan.
    But when throughout the troubled land there rings the battle cry,
    Unknowing and unquestioning, he marches forth to die.

    No prizes are there to be gained for his too common kind;
    He wins no splendid spoils of war for those he leaves behind.
    Whatever glory there may be, the great ones of the earth
    Will never yield to his mean kin, all folk of peasant birth.
    But when he sees upon the hills the battle banners fly
    He marches calmly to his death—nor thinks to wonder why.

  • The Point of View

    From The Topeka State Journal, September 4, 1914. By Roy K. Moulton.

    Some years ago my father drove an ancient piebald mare,
    And when he met a motor car he’d scowl at it and glare.
    Would he turn out? No, not a bit. He’d try to hog the road.
    When they would ask him to give way he’d yell, “I’ve got a load!”
    His hatred for the gas machines was unrelenting, quite.
    It was a mania with him; he talked it day and night.
    He said that any feller who would drive one was a fool;
    For father was a backward man, who followed the old school.

    But things have changed since then a bit. Although for years he roared
    About the gol-dum devil carts, he’s gone and bought a Ford.
    He beats it round the countryside at thirty miles an hour,
    And when an old horse heaves in sight he crowds on all his power.
    He nearly busts with anger when he wants the right of way,
    And hollers, “For the love of Mike, lay over there, you jay!”
    He’s got the latest fol-de-rols, green goggles and the like;
    He is the greatest motor fiend who ambles down the pike.
    It’s just the same old story. Yes, indeed, it’s nothing new.
    The war of horse and car depends upon the point of view.