Boys Play Skittles With Skulls

1905

Numerous bones and skulls hare been recently dug up near the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers, and boys of the locality are playing skittles with them.

This will soon be stopped, as the human debris is to be carefully collected by the workmen who are excavating in the district.

The skulls and bones come from the old graveyard of the Abbey of St. Martin-des-Champs, which existed where the Commercial Conservatoire now stands. There was also another cemetery, that of St. Nicolas, in the same district, and it was built over in the eighteenth century. — Paris correspondence, London Telegraph.


Japanese Live By Rule

Their Diet and Habits Regulated Strictly Through a Thousand Years

An army officer, discussing recently with friends the surprising immunity from sickness of the Japanese troops as manifested in the present war, said that, while the first cause was doubtless the diet prescribed, the real reason was to be found in the way the dietary is adhered to.

The Anglo-Saxon fighting man might be told what to eat and what to eschew, but centuries of personal liberty in eating and drinking and the ordering of his daily regimen to suit himself had given him a certain independence. With the gallant little yellow man, however, the adherence to the instructions they receive on such matters was slave-like.

Their minutest personal actions had been regulated through a thousand years of feudal strife and dependence, which, taken with their peculiar temperament, had made them submissive to a degree unknown among the freer races, or races which, if not freer, had freer institutions, in which minute details of life were not so closely regulated.

Russia's Awakening

1904

In Russia it is the government only that sleeps. The people are awake and astir, says the author of "Greater Russia." They are making few demands and feeling a new freedom which is apparent every day in the absence of the former rigid repression, and in the frequent indulgence in license that is miscalled liberty.

One will sometimes see on the palace quay in St. Petersburg a line of people waiting for the steamer to take them to the islands. Along comes some high official who, instead of awaiting his turn, drives to the head of the line and crowds in ahead of the others. Formerly such an occurrence would have been received in silence as a matter of course, but now the people hiss and denounce the official, and police do not interfere.

If a street-car is delayed for a connection at some transfer-station, the passengers often become riotous and demand their fare back, or begin to pound on the door and even break windows until the police make the driver go ahead without waiting for the other car; and he is not allowed to stop again until he reaches his destination.

If an officer remonstrates with a street-car conductor for lack of courtesy to a passenger the crowd will at once interfere, and even the offended passenger turns on him. The officer is told to give his orders to Soldiers who have to obey, not to free men who do not, and not to interfere between men who are as good as he is.

These are trifling things in themselves, says the traveller, but to one who has long known Russia they are startling signs of a new spirit of freedom.

Words of Wisdom – Look For Happiness in Useful Work

1878

It is but poor eloquence which only shows that the orator can talk.

If what is said be not to the purpose a single word is already too much.

As nothing truly valuable can be obtained without industry, so there can be no persevering industry without a deep sense of the value of time.

The most common error of men and women is that of looking for happiness somewhere outside of useful work. It has never yet been found when thus sought, and never will be while the world stands; and the sooner the truth is learned, the better for everyone. If you doubt the proposition, go around among your friends and acquaintances and select those who have the most enjoyment through life. Are they idlers and pleasure-seekers, or are the earnest workers? We know what your answer will be. Of the miserable human beings it has been our fortune or misfortune to know, those were the most wretched who had retired from useful employment in order to enjoy themselves.

Truth will never die; the stars will grow dim, the sun will pale his glory, but truth will be ever young. Integrity, uprightness, honesty, love, goodness, these are all imperishable. No grave can ever entomb these immortal principles. They have been in prison, but they have been freer than before; those who enshrined them in their hearts have been burned at the stake, but out of their ashes other witnesses have arisen. No sea can drown, no storm can wreck, no abyss can swallow up the everlasting truth. You cannot kill goodness and integrity and righteousness; the way that is consistent with these must be a way everlasting.

Christmas to Life Termer Empty, Black, Day of Dreams of What Might Have Been

1922

(International News Service.)

STATE PENITENTIARY. JOLIET, ILL.. Dec. 25. — Christmas to a "lifer" behind prison walls — empty, black, a day saddened by memories of what was and dreams of what might have been.

True there's a special dinner, a movie perhaps, but what's that?

Friends, relatives, loved ones make Christmas. Without them the day is meaningless. So said two convicted murderers here today. They're in for life. To them, Christmas, like any other day, means only iron bars, bleak stone walls, wasted lives.

There's prisoner No. 8383. He's 24, a farmer boy. Never before has he eaten a Christmas dinner away from his mother's table.

Last August, crazed with bad liquor, he murdered his bride of four months. Three weeks ago he was brought here. He changed his name for a number.

His face is frank, open, boyish. His hands are nervous, twitching — twitching because their owner is just beginning to realize the enormity of the crime they committed.

"I never was in trouble before," he said, thinking back over many cheerful Christmas days spent at his home near Morris, Ill., and of four happy months with his young wife, "the only girl I ever went with."

"I was raised just as well as any boy in the country," he said. "I had a good education. I never drank before. Now everything is swept away. It's sad. When I think of it I almost go crazy."

"Christmas?" queried another "lifer" convicted in 1913 of murdering an actress in a Chicago hotel. "Well, it's just about like any other day."

His voice was weak, submissive. And he laughed, a hollow meaningless laugh. Six years in prison have made him that way.

Three possessions he has in the world — his life, which is useless to him unless he can gain his freedom: a small picture, a reproduction of a hotel cash book with which be once had a faint hope he might prove he was innocent of the crime of which he was declared guilty, and $170 in money, not enough to engage a good lawyer to handle his case.

Several years ago this prisoner, then a trusty, walked away from the prison farm. His sole idea was to earn enough money to prove his innocence. He was missing three years. In Seattle he made good. But one day he was recognized by a detective, picked up and brought back to Joliet. He had $170, saved from a salary never more than $2.50 a week.

All this he confided on condition that neither his name nor his number be made known.

"I don't want to beg for sympathy," he said, "if I only had a friend outside who would do something for me. But there is no one. I am getting old. Freedom is a wonderful thing."

Tears welled into his sad eyes. He wiped them away with the back of his hand.

Then he walked away to his cell, there to contemplate another black Christmas — only another day of memories and of dreams that never come true.

—The Lincoln Star, Lincoln, NE, Dec. 25, 1922, p. 7.

The Way Old Glory Goes (poetry)

1903

The Way Old Glory Goes

In sunlight or in stormy day,
With friendliness or foes.
The country's going just the way —
The way "Old Glory" goes.
Today — tomorrow — still she waves
Over earth's Freedom or our graves!

She arches earth — a rainbow's ray,
Or, when the storm-wind blows,
A beacon-blaze, she lights the way —
The way that freedom goes.
Today — tomorrow — still she waves
Over our glory or our graves.