Chicago Women Who Swim

1901

The white marble swimming pool of the Chicago Woman's Athletic club is one of the most largely patronized places in that town now that warm weather is approaching. During the morning hours the bath is in constant use, and here may be seen many of the leaders of Chicago's swell set, arrayed in gorgeous spring style bathing gowns, doing aquatic "stunts" copied from the mermaids. The most skillful of all these fair swimmers is Miss Stella Amick, the swimming instructor. At some time during every morning the women pupils all sit around the edge of the pool with their feet hanging in the water and watch Miss Amick while she performs tricks which would make even the fishes stare, if there were any there.

Among her accomplishments is her ability to float on her side, which, it is said, not one person in a hundred can do. She can entirely submerge herself and walk on the bottom of the pool One of her diving specialties is called the sea lion," because, instead of pointing her hands over her head in the usual manner, she keeps her arms the side. And when it comes to somersault in the water she can outdo even the small boy on terra firma. Among her more humorous performances is her imitation of a starfish, when her arms and legs revolve in rapid succession about her body, and her imitation of a bicycle scorcher, only the head in strained position being out of the water, while the pedaling motions are made by climbing, as were, through the water.

Woman and the Pin

1910

It was in a deductive way that the captain found out that Ethel Clare Le Neve, the supposed accomplice of Dr. Crippen, was a girl though she was dressed in boy's togs. She had applied a missing trouser's button with a safety pin. The method was entirely feminine, says the Cleveland Leader. A boy would have borrowed a marline spike or a nail, or whittled a wooden peg.

This dramatic use of the safety pin again focuses the attention on woman's marvelous capacity as a pinster. Give her a hat pin and she can affright a footpad or lure olives from a long-necked bottle, with equal ease. She makes it decorative, too, and deadly. In a crowded street car it is as fearsome a weapon as the cries of a Malay running a-muck.

But her chief record is made with the common or garden pin. She fastens buttons or shoes with it and when baby swallows the rattle, harpoons it out with a pin. If a tornado blows and the shingles are threatened she crawls out on the roof and pins them down.

Writers of those fascinating summer stories in which a man and a lovely girl are cast away on a South sea island miss the chance of their lives when they do not provide the heroine with a paper of pins as her salvage from the wreck.

No Monopoly of Brains

1905

Hopeful Sign That Proves This the Age of Opportunity

One of the most hopeful signs of the times is the apparent decay of the breed of so-called great men — those mighty personalities that in former times stood out like a solitary tree in a vast prairie.

The reason for it, of course, is the distinction of all those old-time monopolies of brains which stunted all human beings except a few who, by chance rather than by superiority of fibre, grew and developed. There are thousands, literally thousands, of men now living who, if they had lived a century or so ago and had done a work similar to which they are doing without any very sonorous fanfare upon the trumpets of fame, would have been the talk of the world and the main topic of history.

And how many of the so-called great achievements of so-called great statesmen, soldiers and thinkers of former times would be impossible to-day, because those achievements depended chiefly upon the ignorance and incapacity of the overwhelming mass of the men of their day!

Truly, this is the age of opportunity. — Saturday Evening Post.

Blind Boy's Wonderful Feats

1905

Pennsylvania Youth Gets Along Very Well Without Sight

Young Stephen Mellinger of Denver, Pa., does things remarkable in one who moves, as he does, in continual darkness. His senses of touch and hearing are very keen. He works in the field. He sows, uses the rake and spade, helps harvest the crops, milks, climbs trees, and, what is still more remarkable, drives spirited horses and rides a bicycle.

The boy is as bright, and cheerful as any of his associates. He is able to harness a horse unaided and to drive several miles to the village, where the household supplies are obtained. Every morning it is his duty to hitch a horse to a milk wagon and drive a mile to Denver village. In this drive he is compelled to cross railroad tracks at two points.

Spirited horses are his delight, and two belonging to his father which are too wild for the average man to handle with safety are used by him without a thought of danger. It is unwise for others than he to approach these animals. The young man does not work, ride or walk in a hesitating manner, after the usual fashion of the blind. He takes a fast horse out on the road and gallops at full speed, turning out for vehicles and other horses and rounding sharp corners without pulling up. On his wheel he rides as if possessed of full sight, and can be seen alone miles from his home.

The Body Perfectly Obeys Your Rapid Brain

1922

YOUR POWERS

Lulu M. Cargill, clerk in the New York post office, takes from Nina E. Holmes of Detroit the title of "champion letter sorter of the world."

Miss Holmes attracted attention by sorting 20,610 letters in eight hours, or nearly 43 a minute. Miss Cargill sorts 30,215 letters in eight hours, which is better than one a second. And she sorted the first 23,500 letters without pause. Then she stopped for a cup of tea. Sorting a letter means picking it up, reading the address, recalling the postal route to reach the address, then tossing the letter into the proper bag.

Miss Cargill is 26 years old. She has been a postal clerk only three years.

Miss Cargill, you reflect, must have wonderful co-ordination of body and mind. A brain that works with lightning swiftness has automatically perfect teamwork with a body that perfectly obeys her rapid brain.

The body is a collection of machines, each trying to work cooperatively for the good of all. It is a more perfect system of government than man has been able to devise.

Miss Cargill, judging from her work, has what scientists would call "an extraordinary well-balanced system of endocrine glands."

In the so-called "efficient" person, the body glands speed up when needed and slow down when the energy of the body is required by the other glands.

In a boy who is growing too rapidly, as a result of abnormal activity by the pituitary gland in the brain, the other glands slow down and surrender part of their share of the body's energy. With most of his energy devoted to growing, the lad is apt to be otherwise languid.

Or, for example, you suddenly are in danger, which requires a quick use of reserve energy. The word is telegraphed through the blood. The message is sent out by the adrenal glands, which stand guard as a mobilizer of reserve energy. Other glands slow down, as if saying, "If the adrenals fail in this emergency, we all perish."

The heart responds to the adrenals and rushes blood to the arms or other parts of the body that have to meet the danger. This rush of blood is why "the face goes white" in a time of peril.

The crisis met and conquered, the blood rushes back to normal distribution through the body. The other glands "come to life." The sudden change makes the person, calm in or, half-collapse "after it's all over."

—The Bridgeport Telegram, Bridgeport, Connecticut, Sept. 26, 1922, p. 3.