Trappers Laugh at "H. C. L."

1919

POINT A LA HACHE, La. — The high cost of living isn't worrying trappers along the lower coast. They are earning as much as $150 a week, because furs are bringing the highest prices ever known here. Muskrat pelts bring 90 cents each, and raccoon pelts $4. School boys who look after traps during their leisure hours are making about $3 a day.

Live For Today, Look Forward, Not Back to Past

1912

Heart to Heart Talks
By EDWIN A. NYE

LOOKING BACKWARD.

Do you remember the legend about that ancient Greek from whom Apollo took "the backward looking mind?"

All things became new.

The world was transformed to that Greek. For the first time he saw how beautiful was the world. Flowers he had not yet seen bloomed under his feet, new stars shone over his head and the changing moods of nature filled him with delight.

Why?

The change was not in the world but in the Greek. His mind had been turned backward to the happiness and the grief of the past. Now he looked outward and forward to the beauty and the joy all about him.

In our day is no Apollo to take away the backward looking mind, more's the pity.

But the symbolism holds.

Many of us need to have our mind reversed.

I know a woman who persists in looking backward and who always tells of a day when her people were rich and accustomed to many luxuries she is now denied. She is constantly deploring a situation she cannot help. She does not live save in a former day.

Worse than Lot's wife, who took a single look over her shoulder, she always faces backward.

I know a man whose constant theme of regret is the fact that he ever changed his business. He did well, he says, at the old place and was a fool to change. Certainly he is doing little good at his new place, largely for the reason that he is forever harking backward to the old.

He needs an Apollo.

Older persons are apt to foster the backward looking habit. Says grandpa from his chimney corner: "There are no days like the good old days. Now, when I was young" —

Poor grandpa!

He magnifies the past, minimizes the present and omits the future. He is dying, like some trees, at the top.

You cannot change the past, but you can discount the present and spoil the future by refusing to live in the one and to face the other.

To be successful, to stay young, to find happiness, cultivate the outward looking, forward looking mind.

Face the sun.

When you stand with your back to it the shadow is in front of you. When you face the sun the shadow is behind.

—The Janesville Daily Gazette, Janesville, WI, July 22, 1912, page 4.

Two Illinois Girls Capture Wall Street, Polishing Boots

1903

GIRLS CAPTURE WALL STREET.

The Forest Sisters of Champaign, Ill., Polish the Brokers' Boots.

The very newest get-rich-quick concern that ever struck New York was launched in Wall street recently by two pretty young girls from Champaign, Ill. Marie and Belle Forest, two sisters, one 18 years old, the other two years her senior, invaded the field just before the bulls and bears had begun to shout their wares on 'change. These two enterprising maidens, both attractive brunettes, with the red rose bloom of country on their cheeks and smiling mischievously, were busy all day distributing tickets bearing the following legend throughout Wall, Beaver, News and Broad streets:

"This entitles the holder to one shine at the Eagle tonsorial parlor, No. 71 Wall street, on Monday, March 2."

At first the brokers and kings of finance turned to them the real icy countenance. "Don't want any women canvassers," was the answer the Illinois girls had in the offices.

By and by it was learned that the maidens were endeavoring to earn an honest living by shining shoes, and that, too, with dainty white hands. Then "the street fell." Before noon a thousand tickets had been paid for at 10 cents each, and the question now is, how are Belle and Marie going to keep the contract?

What they offer is to shine for one day the boots of every customer who enters the barber shop at No. 71 Wall street. While Marie is at one foot Belle proposes shining up the other.

"I'll just tell you how it was," said the latter, as she spread out fifteen tickets, fanshape, for speedy purchase by gallant brokers in the consolidated exchange. "Marie and I just came from Champaign and we had a notion to start a manicure parlor here. Everybody seems to get rich in this place. We thought it would be easy to earn an honest living.

"But in about three weeks we had not found a thing to do, and our funds were on the last ebb. We were living then in West Twenty-ninth street, right in the Tenderloin district, and the things we saw there just fairly sickened us."

"'Marie,' I said one day, when we did not know whether to have dinner or breakfast, for we were having but one meal per day, 'I'll do any mortal thing rather than live like these women around here. Ill black boots.'

"'Well, just that,' Marie said, 'let's black boots,' and now you know it all. We're going to be on hand next Monday bright and early, practice up in the meantime, and I'll bet we make a lot. Just see the way they're buying tickets."

—Davenport Daily Republican, Davenport, Iowa, March 5, 1903, page 2.

Congressman Seeks Apartment at Swellest Hotel

1903

The salary of a member of congress is $416.66 2-3 a month. "Uncle Joe" Cannon, of Illinois, when it became apparent that he would be the next speaker of the house, relates the Baltimore Herald, thought it would be a good idea to move from his present comfortable but rather modest apartments to where "a little more dog," as he expressed it, "was put on." He went to the swellest hotel in town and asked to be shown some rooms. The gentlemanly clerk conducted him to the upper regions and unfolded to his vision a handsome suite.

"They look rather likely," said Mr. Cannon, "how much are they?"

"Four hundred dollars," was the reply.

"A year," persisted the chairman of the appropriations committee, who likes to be definite where figures are concerned.

"Oh, no, sir; $400 a month," explained the clerk.

Mr. Cannon appeared lost in reverie for a few moments. The clerk shifted meanwhile from one foot to another, and finally ventured: "What's the matter, Mr. Cannon?"

"Oh, nothing," said Uncle Joe, as he came back to life; "I'm just thinking."

"About what, Mr. Cannon?"

"What I'd do with the other $16.66 2-3."

—Davenport Daily Republican, Davenport, Iowa, March 4, 1903, page 5.