Don't Begrudge Praise

1895

Why is it that, even with the nearest and dearest, praise is so begrudged, while blame is so freely bestowed? In nine cases out of ten the former does infinitely more good and incites to far greater exertion than the latter. Nevertheless, as a rule, the fondest parent, the kindest teacher, the most faithful friend, often hesitates to praise, while seldom failing to censure when the occasion calls for it.

There is ever the feeling latent that the recipient will be unduly elated by any approbation bestowed, and parents and teachers sometimes hesitate on that account to express unstinted commendation, while brothers and sisters and even friends often at heart really begrudge the satisfaction and perhaps self complacency they might evoke by giving expression to the admiration they may honestly feel.

While flattery is ever profuse and easy to obtain, honest praise is a rare commodity, seldom given even when most deserved and grudgingly withheld when most needed. How often a child feels "there is no use trying" simply because his feeble efforts for the right obtain no recognition, while his faults are constantly recapitulated. — Exchange.

Your Baby and Mine

1929

By MYRTLE MEYER ELDRED

Undoubtedly one of the most noticeable changes which parents exhibit toward their children is in their new attitudes. We hear much of these today and they exemplify what the modern parent feels to be the child of a past generation.

We all know the attitudes of the past. If a parent has this attitude he can't shake it off. It inspires such letters as begin: "What the younger generation needs is a good whaling. That would teach them to have some respect for their elders. This namby-pamby attitude of the modern parent makes me sick." (That was a real letter, too). These attitudes grow out of the idea that a child owes a lifelong debt of gratitude and loving service for having been born. No matter what he does he can never repay this and so any attempt to be an individual and rebel against his parents' dictums earns for him the reputation of being an "ungrateful child."

The modern parent feels that, "Honor thy father and mother" puts upon them a real burden to make themselves worthy of being honored. Love and honor are something to be won. They do not accrue from any biological debt. We are trying sincerely and truly to recognize the child as an individual to be respected, and to have his own personality fostered. Making children the outlet for our own starved emotions has become the cardinal sin of motherhood. The "feathered nest" and "silver cord" type of mother is being exploited in literature and drama as the unconscious menace that she is. Our attitude is primarily to be unselfish. To think first for the good of the child and second about ourselves and what we think is due us.

The whole modern attitude summed up might be that the parent thinks of himself as merely an insignificant link in a racial chain. Life does not begin and end with him and his family. His children have duties to the future and the modern parent hopes to free him for these.

It would be worse than foolish to say that all problems are answered by these new attitudes. The modern parent may have swung too far in the direction of self-immolation on the altar of child supremacy, for it is typical of any revulsion to go too far in the opposite direction.

The severity of the past generation drove the child from home early and inspired him to stand on his own feet economically in order to be free from parental fetters. Today we make home so pleasant that the child remains there past the years when he should be becoming independent. As our ideal is an independent child, let us be tolerant of the past generation and its attitude. They achieved this ideal by means which we deplore, but they achieved it.

Let the past be tolerant of the present attitudes. They are at least unselfish ones. A combination of the two may be the right answer.

—The Daily Times Herald, Dallas, TX, Jan. 1, 1929, p. 6, second section.

Your Baby's First Vegetables and Fruits - 1938 Booklet

Your Baby's First Vegetables and Fruits - 1938 Booklet

Published by Libby, McNeill & Libby, 1938. 24 pages. Baby's world is a changing world. Doctors now direct baby's upbringing, with earlier feeding of vegetables. Vintage health/nutrition and parenting guide (in advertising form) for families long ago.

Groom's Brother Marries Bride's Sister

New York, 1912

Following the example of their brother and sister, Miss Beatrice Loope and Harold Warner, both of Liverpool were quietly married Saturday night at the home of the Rev. S. R. Ball, pastor of the Liverpool Methodist church. The bride's sister, Miss Nina Loope, and the groom's brother, Fred Warner, were married a year ago by the Rev. Mr. Ball. There was opposition to both marriages on the part of the parents of both couples.

—The Syracuse Herald, Syracuse, NY, June 10, 1912, p. 16.

Child Is Wiser Than Man

1910

His Instinct Often Is More Reliable Than the Wisdom of His Parents

The imposition of any form of restraint on the appetite of a child is a relic of barbarism, a blunder on the part of the parents and a sign of ignorance of the laws of nature. Not only is it true that the child is father to the man, but in certain directions he is man's superior in wisdom. The prevailing parental notions on the rearing of children are crude, archaic and altogether unworthy of enlightened twentieth century civilization.

"Children have bottled-up intelligence inside of them," to quote the language of Dr. Woods Hutchinson, and this tells them what is best for them to eat. It is an admirable provision of nature. One cannot overfeed them despite all the old superstitions to the contrary. A child who wishes to eat between meals should be permitted to do so, for his system requires the food. If he displays a craving for sweets, the craving should be gratified, because his appetite is guided by an infallible instinct.

The wisdom exhibited by nature in this matter, as explained by Dr. Hutchinson, leads one to wonder what function parents are intended to perform. If the child's instinct is to be relied upon in everything, then parental guidance becomes superfluous, and parents are of much less importance than they have imagined. — Rochester Democrat and Chronicle.

A Sensational Runaway

1896

A runaway couple were married on a railway train near Shelbyville, Ind., last week. The girl's parents opposed the match, and watched her closely to prevent her giving them the slip and getting married. The young man learned that the squire was to travel by a certain tram one day last week, and arranged with the girl to meet him at the station. He went to Columbus and got the license, met the girl at the station as the train came in, and the pair boarded it and were married by the squire before the train had gone many miles and before any stop was made where they could be intercepted by a telegram from the girl's parents. — New York Sun.


Lee Ephraim's Sevens

Certainly the figure seven has marked the career of Lee Ephraim, of Roanoke, Va., to an extraordinary extent. He was born in the year 1877, on the seventh day of the month and on the seventh month of the year and seventh hour of the day. He has seven letters in his surname and it requires seven letters to spell the name of the State in which he was born. He has lived in four cities, and the name of each one contained seven letters. He has seven sisters and brothers, and one time drew a valuable prize on the number 77. Oddly enough this prize was not $777. — New York Press.


Great Antlers

At a recent exhibition of antlers at Berlin the Emperor took two prizes, one for the best collection and one for the best single head.

Unwilling Brides

1896

If there is a person on earth entitled to sincere commiseration, it is an unwilling bride — a girl who has given her hand, without her heart, in marriage; and more especially is she to be pitied if her heart, unhappily, has been prepossessed by another. Can any prospect be more dreary than that which lies before such a bride? What has she to look forward to, what to expect, what to hope? Linked not for a day, but for life, to one with whom she has no sympathy — who is no more than a stranger, save that in law and in fact but not in soul, he is her husband!

Is it not dreadful to contemplate? How much more so to experience! It is natural and it is proper that parents should desire that their daughters should marry well, and it is reasonable that they should prefer for them husbands in comfortable circumstances.

But when it comes to the exercise of compulsion in the selection of a husband — to commanding a daughter to relinquish an engagement or an attachment on which her whole soul is fixed, and to marry a man towards whom she feels indifference or dislike — that is a very different matter.


Why Men Become Bald

Men become bald more frequently than women because of the closeness of the hats they wear, which keeps the head too hot, induces perspiration and weakens the hair. The boys of the famous Blue Coat school in London, who never wear hats, never become bald late in life.

Truthful Children

1900

Children are naturally truthful. Nature does not lie. Let nothing be done to alter this happy disposition. Cultivate in them the love of truth, candor, and the confession of error.

It is lamentable to think what fearful falsehoods are uttered to deter children, to keep them quiet, or to make them obedient. Threats of being taken by old men, and black men, and other like terrors, are resorted to by ignorant and foolish servants to frighten them, and make them lie still in bed. It is ascertained that death, fits, idiocy, or insanity have been the consequences of such inhumanity.

But, setting aside the probable chance of such calamities, there are other certain results. If the child discovers the falsehoods practiced upon him, he becomes boldly indifferent to the threats, is more disobedient and willful than ever, disbelieves all that is said to him, and, finding no respect for truth in others, has no regard for it himself.

Firmness in adhering to promises, or any particular line of discipline in relation to children, is of first importance.


Japan Consumes Much Rice

Japan is the largest consumer of rice in the world, the average being 300 pounds a person a year. The Americans use but four pounds per capita. Belgium uses more tobacco in proportion, than any other country, about 110 ounces per capita yearly, while Italy uses only twenty-two ounces.

Peculiar Chinese Parents and Daughters

1896

It is a disagreeable fact that Chinese parents are in the habit, in certain circumstances, of abandoning female infants to death by starvation, and it is one that an apologist for China would like to pass over in silence.

On the other hand, nothing is gained by exaggeration, and as far as my most limited experience allows me to speak, it is enormous exaggeration to talk as if Chinese mothers exposed their daughters habitually and without a second thought. At any rate, the people of Fair-Reply would repudiate the charge with amazement. "He han kai, tso mak kai fit?" "Is she a good one, why throw away?" they would ask.

Why indeed, when a girl of ten in good health and fairly bonny will always fetch $100; while each of the next five or six years will add $10 to her market value? So remembering that from the age of five she will be useful to gather bambu husks for fuel, mind the baby, feed the buffalo, and a year or two later cut fern, dig up pistachio nuts, and carry water, it will be seen that a healthy female child will be by no means an unprofitable investment.

But if the child be sickly, then it is different. The nasty little thing looks so red and helpless and repulsive. If it dies within doors its fractious spirit will remain there, and add another torment to the teeming world of imps that surround us. Better for all parties to deport the tiny spirit to some lonely spot, turn away quickly, and think of something else.

Charity might possibly accept some such revulsion of the maternal instincts in explanation; and the anthropologist will remember "Nature," that "holy thing," and the case of the rabbits once so aptly cited in this connection. — Blackwood's Magazine.

Daddy's Bedtime Story — "Where the Bad Boy Found His Manners"

1911

The Bad Boy in the Ditch

"He was really a naughty, ill mannered boy," began daddy. "His parents were wealthy, and they left him to the care of servants, who did not know how to make a good boy of him. The result was that he was impudent to the servants and cruel to dogs and cats and insisted on having his own way always. I shall tell you how he learned a good lesson.

"It happened in the summer time. One day this naughty boy, whose name was Dick, was standing at the gate of his father's house when another boy came there. He was a poor boy — you could tell that by his old clothing — but his shirt waist and his knickerbockers were clean and neat, and his face shone with good nature as well as soap and water. You could tell by looking at him that he was a jolly fellow. He carried in his hand a tin can full of ripe, juicy blackberries, and he asked Dick to buy them.

" 'Go away from here,' said Dick, with a frown, 'or I shall set the dog on you. We don't need your berries. We have everything we want!'

" 'If you have, please give me a drink of water,' said the poor boy. But Dick threatened again to set the dog on him, so he went away whistling.

"Then Dick said to himself: 'Those blackberries looked good. I think I will go and get some for myself.' He went out of the gate and down the road to a place where he knew the blackberries grew. The bushes were on the far side of a wide ditch, which was filled with mud. Dick was too lazy to find a good place to cross, so he tried to jump the ditch.

"He landed right in the middle in mud up to his waist When he tried to get out he found that he was stuck fast and could not free himself. Then he called for help. But it was a lonely spot, and for a long time he heard no answer. Then he heard a voice saying, 'Who's there?'

"Then Dick called again as loudly as he could, and soon he saw at the side of the ditch the poor boy whom he had treated so rudely. 'Hello!' said the boy. 'How did you get in there?'

" 'I fell in,' said Dick. 'Please help me out?'

" 'All right,' said the other boy. And he lay down at the side of the ditch, not minding the mud on his clothing, and reached out his hand to Dick. He was a strong boy, so he soon was able to get Dick out. Dick thanked him and went home to be cleaned off.

"The next day when the poor boy came around again to try to sell his berries Dick was very nice to him. 'Where did you find your manners?' asked the boy. 'In the ditch,' said Dick."

Some Burdensome Names

1914

Perhaps the most burdensome name ever given to a child was to the daughter of Arthur Pepper in 1882. It comprised one name for every letter of the alphabet, in this way: Anna Bertha Cecilia Diana Emily Fanny Gertrude Hypatia Inez Jane Kate Louise Maud Nora Ophelia Quince Rebecca Starkey Teresa Ulysis Venus Winifred Xenophon Yetty Zeno, P of course provided in the surname, Pepper.

Hundreds of examples of this poor form of parental wit occur in the entries for the past few years Noah's Ark Smith, Sardine Box, Jolly Death, Judas Iscariot Brown, One-too-Many Johnson, Not-Wanted Smith, Bovril Simpson, Merry Christmas Figgett, Odious Heaton, Anno Domini Davis, are the names of children probably living who will have to bear them through life, unless they wash themselves clean with subterfuge.

There was for a long time a curiosity in nomenclature on the Australian pension list. His name was "Through-much-tribulation-we-enter-the-Kingdom-of-Heaven Smith." But the officials of the Pension department very pardonably abbreviated him into Tribby Smith."

It is not surprising that the names of Dickens' characters — odd though they are — should be found in real life, for it was from life that many of them were taken. Some, as we know, were copied from the names over shop doors, etc, but this was not the novelist's only source of selection. Among his papers John Forster found carefully drawn up lists of names, with the source from which he obtained them and the longest lists were those drawn from the "Privy Council Education Lists." Some of the names thus noted are too extravagant for anything but reality — Jolly Stick, Bill Marigold, George Muzzle, William Why, Robert Gospel, Robin Scrubbam, Sarah Goldsacks, Catherine Two, Sophia Doomsday, Rosetta Dust, Sally Gimblett!

Words of Wisdom for Bachelors

1906

Candy catches more girls than poetry.

Half the time a girl gets engaged just for practice.

A man could be very fond of his sister if she were somebody else's.

There is money in most any occupation except the one you are in.

A man can keep a fair share of his popularity by not running for office.

It's very improper to do an improper thing you are going to get caught at.

A very rich widow can get very stout without any one daring to call her fat.

If a man did the things he tells his sons to do he would think he was a milk-sop.

What a woman likes about spooning in the moonlight is the way it doesn't hurt her complexion.

It takes a widow an awful long time to learn what she knew before her husband died.

You will always find that when a girl will admit her shoe pinches her it's over the instep.

A woman would be much crosser than she is if she weren't so busy trying to keep her husband from getting cross.

When a man tries to build a chicken house himself to save money it's a sign he is going to be broke for the next three years.

If a woman can't think of anything else to be miserable about she will go away from home so as to worry over the children.

Babies have very strong constitutions not to have spasms over every new language the women folk discover to talk to them.

A girl seems to have an awful easy time making a man think he wants to marry her, when she is the one that is doing the wanting.

There is hardly anything that tickles a woman so much as to have you remember her boy's name when you just happened to guess it. — From "Reflections of a Bachelor," in the New York Press.

Disinheriting Sons

1906

A Suggestion for the Chastening and Improvement of Rich Parents

The idea occurs to me that one of the laws most urgently needed would make it impossible for a son to inherit even a cent from his parents. Of course the female progeny of a man would have to be excepted from such an arrangement. Such legislation would oblige the indulgent father to give his son a common sense education, cultivate in him a sense of healthy independence. Secondly, the young man who, under the present dispensation, has more money than sense or conception of his ethical obligations to society would find his path less slippery and would have the rough corners of his self-conceit rounded out. Thirdly, parents would find life much easier and would get a chance to cross the Styx in a natural way, not accelerated by the heartache due to the behavior of their children; and fourthly, the proposition would act as a very convenient regulator for the distribution of the national wealth.

Let every man continue making all the money he can — the more the better. He may also spend it in whatever manner he pleases; but after his demise the money he has accumulated should revert to the State, except that part necessary in order to keep the wife of the deceased and the female members of his family in the degree of comfort enjoyed by them during the life of the individual concerned. In the case of the daughters of a man so deceased their share should also revert to the State at the time of their marriage; the benefits of their father's estate, however, should be assured them in case certain conditions should make matrimony an undesirable state. The widow should be subject to the same conditions — remarriage should cause her to forfeit all claims to her former husband's estate. In her case, however, the portion due should be subject to no other conditions. The last named arrangement would prevent a good many of the old man's darling marriages, and would cause a decided decrease in moral iniquity of a very obnoxious character.

This proposition naturally sounds radical enough to be called Spartan, yet such a law, while placing no curb on personal ambition, would rob thousands of misguided parents of the only pleasure they really have — that of slaving for an ungrateful posterity. A suggestion like this could, of course, only come from Sans Galette et Sans Famille, in the New York Sun.

An Editor Who Loves Babies

1877

We love babies, and also anybody else who loves babies. No man has music in hiss soul who doesn't love babies. Babies were made to be loved, especially girl babies — when they grow up.

A man isn't worth "shucks" who doesn't love babies, and the same rule applies to a woman. A baby is a spring day in winter, a hot-house in summer, a ray of sunshine in a dark day; and if it is a healthy, good-natured baby, and if it's yours, it's a bushel of sunshine, no matter how cold the weather.

A man cannot be a hopeless case as long as he loves babies — one at a time. We love babies all over, no matter how dirty they are. Babies were born to be dirty. Our love for babies is only bounded by the number of babies in the world.

We also have sorrowful feelings for mothers who have no babies. Women always look down-hearted who have no babies; and men who have none always grumble, and drink, and stay out nights, trying to get music into their souls; but they can't come by it. Babies are babies, and nothing can take their place. — Atchison Patriot.


Oops

"No," said the smart boy-baby, when the pretty young woman wanted to kiss him. "But why not?" asked she. "O, I am too little to kiss you; papa will kiss you, papa kisses all the big girls." He was permitted to play with his toys.


Somebody, Meet Nobody

Nobody likes to be nobody; but everybody is pleased to think himself somebody. And everybody is somebody; but when anybody thinks himself somebody, he generally thinks everybody else is nobody.

Miserable Homes – Let Home Be Home Indeed

1874

What a mistake some good people make when they maintain, within the home circle, the rigid rule and decorum which becomes irksome even during committee meeting; when parents and children assemble at the table in solemn silence, and finish the meal within the prescribed minutes; and the late arrival at the breakfast table is scowled at, reprimanded, and remarked upon by mother and father, aunt and uncle, until the more punctual juniors come to regard him as a black sheep.

Oh, horrid home, where the little boys are never seen without their school books, or the little girl without a towel to hem; where ma no more dares to buy a rattle for the baby without mentioning the expenditure to pa, than anybody dares to throw open the parlor shutters or tuck up the curtains, or even at the table to have more of this dish or less of that.

The small boy who hates fat is not accommodated, as Jack Sprat's wife was, by anybody. The tall girl, who naturally likes pudding, has her triangular wedge, and no more; while the eldest son, outgrowing his liking for the dish, is reproved for the leaving of a piece on his plate.

Order and good housekeeping are charming, but the good order of a person, and the regular supply of rations necessary in a workhouse, are not suitable for home. Home is no home unless as far as reason will allow, the taste and wishes of the youngest child are consulted; unless there is freedom of word and action, speech and love, and good will without measure.

When I was a child home was the place where the wicked ceased from troubling, and the weary were at rest. Everything was always forgiven there. There was no awful rod behind the door, no domestic dungeon under the roof. I do not think I grew up a worse woman because I was not whipped, or put to bed without my supper for dressing the bed-post in grandmother's best lace cap, or making paper dolls, against orders, in the front parlor — because life was not made a burden to me by forcing fat into my unwilling mouth, and sugar candy forbidden as though it was poison.

I could shed tears over the wretched homeless children of the house where discipline, as strict as that of the army, is maintained, though their fare is costly and the dress perfect, and their future prospects as to an inheritance final. They are more to be pitied than the children of any poor man, who clusters about their parents' knee without any fear of chiding; who are encouraged to tell their troubles, and kindly lead away from follies; and who will not, in later days, remember "pa" as the old gentleman who flogged them, and "ma" as the old lady who kept the keys, and boxed their ears for them, but think of them with that respect and reverence due by a child to its parents. — The Household.

The School Room

1874

The ringing notes of the school bell at 9 o'clock in the morning echo through every village and hamlet in the land. With books and lunch basket, children, little and large, hasten their response to its call. They gather in rooms of every size and of every grade of comfort, from the log cabin chinked with mud to the elegant and costly structure of brick furnished with apparatus and meeting every physical want.

However, the school-rooms may differ, the course of study is essentially the same in them all. The "three R's, reading, riting, and rithmetic," are the corner stones now, as they were in the olden time, of a good education, and teachers of every grade of culture and experience are drilling the juvenile mind in fractions, interest, and square root, in spelling and reading, in grammar and geography.

The school committee, the trustees, and the teachers are supposed by most parents to be quite competent to take entire charge of the children committed to their care, and when once school taxes are paid, books purchased, and the children entered, the parents are quite ready to throw all further responsibility upon the proper authorities.

Little do most of them trouble themselves about the teacher, whether or not he is competent mentally, morally for the task he has undertaken, for have not the school committee decided that, and who shall appeal from their decision? So the teacher is left quite to himself in his little empire, and without sympathy or co-operation on the part of parents discharges his duties and receives his pay.

In the old days when "boarding round" was the fashion it was not easy for the teacher and the parents to remain unacquainted, but now it is by no means an uncommon circumstance for them never to meet. "Have you been in the school lately?" we ask frequently. "No," is the invariable reply, "I'm intending to go, but haven't got there yet."

Now we believe that intelligent co-operation between parents and teachers is essential to the best results in education, and that every parent should, as far as possible, note the daily progress of his child in his studies, that he should assure the teacher of his cordial and earnest sympathy and support in the arduous labors of the school-room, and by his own occasional presence there, show his interest in the progress of the school.

2-Year-Old Child Declared Intoxicated, Also Parents

1909

Baby Drunk; Also Parents

CHICAGO — The 2-year-old son of Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Doyle was declared to be intoxicated when taken to the City Relief Hospital by the police. Doyle and his wife were arrested at Clark and Lake streets, Chicago. The woman, intoxicated, had fallen asleep on the sidewalk and her husband was on the curbing in the same condition, the child was clinging to his neck. The parents were locked up at the Harrison street station, and after the child was cared for at the hospital it was placed in the care of the police matron. Doyle gave his age as 26, but could not tell where he lived.

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Oct. 9, 1909, p. 1.


Drinks Iodine for Cider

LOS ANGELES, Cal., Oct. 7 — The filing of a death notice disclosed a peculiar case of accidental poisoning. Mrs. Katherine F. Lynch of New York, a guest at a hotel, went to the pantry of her apartment last Sunday to take a drink of cider and in the darkness drank iodine. She died 24 hours later.


Had 4 Wives; 35 Children

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah — A. Milton Musser, 70 years old, assistant historian of the Mormon Church and one of the early pioneers of Utah, died, following an operation for intestinal trouble. He had four wives and was the father of thirty-five children.

Mars First Aid to Cupid; Parents Split Them...For A Time

Ohio, 1917

Mars First Aid to Cupid

Couple Parted by Parents Are Reunited in Marriage When Man Becomes Officer.

Gates Mills, OH. — The whole world loves a fighter — not a lover. That's the way the adage goes now. Second Lieut. Charles S. Bailey of the Ohio Field artillery and Addie Schmunk, eighteen, daughter of Robert J. Schmunk, motorcar magnate, have found it out.

Two years ago the young folks, very much in love with each other, defied stern parents and were married in the office of a justice of the peace. The parents, however, were not to be outdone. They had the marriage annulled and broke a couple of hearts for the time being.

But since that time Bailey has been graduated from Ohio university and has been made an officer in the artillery and he's going away to France, and that changes things. They have been married again. The first affair was rather lonely and only two witnesses besides the contracting parties were present. The second event was one of the social events of the season in this little city.

—New Oxford Item, New Oxford, PA, Aug. 23, 1917.


The Bride and the Cynic

"Yes," said the bride of a week. "Jack tells me everything he knows, and I tell him everything I know."
"Indeed!" rejoined her ex-rival, who had been left at the post. "The silence when you are together must be oppressive."

Fearfully Foxy (and other very lame antique jokes)

Fearfully Foxy

1916

"I work a foxy scheme on my boy. He'd rather wash the dishes than wash his hands, so I let him wash the dishes."
"What's the foxy part?"
"Why, he gets his hands clean." — Louisville Courier-Journal.


Very Promising

"Jones strikes me as a very promising young man."
"He strikes me that way too. But be never pays it back." — California Pelican


Talent is that which is in a man's power. Genius is that in whose power a man is. — Lowell.


Mutual Worry

Mrs. Call—"It's too bad of you. Ethel, to worry your mamma so." Ethel aged five, tearfully, "Oh, well, Mrs. Call. If you'd live with mamma as long as I have you'd know which of us was to blame." — St. Paul Pioneer Press


Poor Jack

Clara—Jack intends to have all his own way when we are married. Clara's Mamma—Then why do you want to marry him? Clara—To relieve his mind of a false impression.


Poor Man

"Is the man your sister is goin' to marry rich?" "Naw. Every time the marriage is mentioned pa says, 'Poor man!'" — Houston Post

—Stevens Point Daily Journal, Stevens Point, Wisconsin, July 29, 1916, page 3.

Boy, Aged 6, Falls 6 Stories Unhurt

1920

NEW YORK, N. Y. - Although he had fallen from the roof of a six-story tenement house and escaped injury, all that scared 6-year-old Tommy Burke was the appearance of a policeman whom excited women summoned after they saw Tommy strike several clothes lines.

Tommy and other boys played tag on his way down.

Out on the roof, Tommy ran too near the edge and fell off. He spun through space and landed in a deep pile of snow in the yard. Although he looked dazed for a few minutes, he brushed the snow from his clothes and looked for a place to get out of the yard.

Dr. Wheedon of the New York Hospital said Tommy was absolutely intact. Tommy commented, "Gee! Wait'll me mudder sees me suit!"

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, March 27, 1920, page 2.


To Dumb Forgetfulness a Prey

GREENFIELD, Ind. — Caleb Moncrief, farmer, has always denied that he is absent-minded, but he has a taxi bill as proof to the contrary. After completing his business here, Moncrief drove home, forgetting he had taken his wife to town with him. she followed in a taxi.

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, March 27, 1920, page 1.