"Poor and Old and Only in Way," Song of Music Master Was Prophecy

1920

Years ago Carl Raymond, the old music master of Chicago, wrote a song by this name:

"I'm Poor and Old, and Only in the Way."

Today Raymond is poor and old and he says he's only in the way. His home is wherever he hangs his hat. He has had riches and fame; now he has but memories. Sometimes he plays the piano in a little restaurant on a Chicago avenue.

Just now he's in the county hospital — broke and friendless. Weakly reclining on a hospital bed, he repeated words from one of his songs:

As we walk down the street,
How, how often do we meet
Some poor old man whose life is naught but woes;
And with age his form is bent,
In his pockets not a cent,
And for shelter he does not know where to go.
With relations by the score
Who turn him from their door
And, sneering, in the street just pass him by;
If you ask why 'tis done,
He'll answer you and say:
"I'm poor and old and only in the way."

As the old fellow's voice died away he said sadly: "That's my life in a nutshell. I never thought when I wrote those words that some day I would apply them to myself."

Raymond was born eighty-one years ago in the shadow of Bunker Hill monument, the son of a banker. At 16 he enlisted in the Mexican War. After peace was declared he became an intermittent correspondent for the New York Herald. Then came the Civil War and he joined the colors again. In 1857 he came to Chicago. All this time he was writing songs — hundreds of them, including "Just One Girl," "There Are No Friends but the Old Friends" and "Passing Away Beyond the Clouds."

"But now I'm thru," he said sadly. "You see, I'm poor and old and only in the way."

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Aug. 7, 1920, p. 1.

The Russian Dance "Circling," No Speaking, No Smiling

1878

A Russian Dance

They have a peculiar kind of dance, conducted on the greens of country villages in Russia.

The dancers stand apart, a knot of young men here, a knot of maidens there, each sex by itself, and silent as a crowd of mutes. A piper breaks into a tune, a youth pulls off his cap, and challenges his girl with a wave and a bow. If the girl is willing she waves her handkerchief in token of assent, the youth advances, takes the corner of his handkerchief in his hand, and leads his lady, round and round. No word is spoken and no laugh is heard. Stiff with cards and rich with braids, the girl moves heavily by herself, going round and round, never allowing her partner to touch her hand.

The pipes go droning on for hours in the same sad key and measure; and the prize of merit in this "circling," as this dance is called, is given by the spectators to the lassie who, in all that summer revelry, has never spoken and never smiled.

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.

Mourning Customs Around the World

1874

The usages regarding mourning have varied much at different times and in different countries. Among the Jews, the duration of mourning for the dead was generally seven days, but sometimes protracted to thirty. It consisted in tearing the clothes, smiting the breast, weeping, going barefoot, cutting off the hair, etc., etc., etc.

Among the Greeks, the period of mourning was thirty days, except in Sparta, where it was limited to ten. Among the Romans, the color of mourning for both sexes, was black or dark blue, under the republic; but under the empire, the men only wore black, the women white. Men also wore this mourning a few days, women a year, when the relation was a very near one.

In modern Europe the ordinary color for mourning is black; in Turkey, violet; in China, white; in Egypt, yellow; in Ethiopia, brown. In Arabia the men wear no mourning. The women stain their hands and feet with indigo, which they suffer to remain for eight days, during which time they abstain from milk, on the ground that its color ill becomes their gloom.

In the Feejee islands, after the death of a chief, a general fast until evening is observed for ten or twenty days, the women burn their bodies, and fifty or one hundred fingers are amputated to hang above the dead man's tomb. The Sandwich Islanders paint the lower part of their faces, and knock out their fore teeth.

Custer's Father and The Horse Presented to Him

1878

Mrs. Custer has a room at Lansing full of relics of her late husband. His pet, a Scotch hound — a great creature into whose eyes he used to look and say to his wife that no one could doubt that animals had souls — is in possession of a Cleveland lady, but the other animal, who traveled with him always by flood and field, sometimes across the saddle and sometimes put into a box and forwarded from station to station, is in his father's possession, as is also the horse which he rode up to the time of his death and which carried him to the very scene of slaughter.

The horse was purchased by some of Custer's brother officers and presented to Mrs. Custer, who gave it to her husband's aged father. The elder Custer is a feeble old man with snow-white hair, but not a day passes but that he mounts his "Artie's" steed — (Custer's middle name was Armstrong, abbreviated into "Artie") and takes a gallop along the road.

He talks of his dead son continually: "All my boys were good boys to me, but you know 'Artie' was my baby," he will say piteously. A great friend of Mrs. Custer, who brought her late husband's aged father from his Western home to West Point, to attend the burial, saw a pathetic little sight that will show how much the poor old man — old enough to have been Custer's grandfather — thinks of his dead hero.

One day she sought Mr. Custer in the barn, she found him in the stall devoted to his son's steed. He had come in from a ride, and having fed the animal, had gone to sleep with his arm thrown over the horse's neck, and his white, hair streaming over its glossy coat. There were tears, too, on his withered cheeks.

Ambulance Horse Sad To Be Replaced By Monstrous Motor Ambulance

Atlanta, 1913

Replaced by Motor Ambulance, "Faithful John" Dying of Grief

Faithful John awoke in his stall attached to Grady Hospital one morning not so long ago and began munching the customary breakfast of hay. As his eyes roved over the familiar interior of the stable they alighted upon a bulky intruder which looked as if it had come to stay. There was something suspicious about the monster-on-wheels that stood near Faithful John in the stables, and when he had finished his morning meal he began to inspect it and to meditate. In the midst of meditation there came a whirr and clang clang from the big gong at the far end of the stables. It was the emergency ambulance call.

Faithful John threw up his head, champed his bit and stamped and pawed the ground in eager anticipation. The stable attaches never did come quick enough for the loyal horse when the overhead gong summoned him to a wild dash across the streets. Faithful John awaited nervously, but no attache came to unloose him and lead him under the swinging harness.

Instead, a small, alert young man leaped to the seat of the suspicious monster who had come that morning, started a roar somewhere in its depths, clanged an unfamiliar gong and yelled a precautionary Lookout. The huge thing snorted and raged and chugged through the door of the stable, leaving a choking, blinding cloud of vapor behind.

John realized his doom. They were replacing him with one of the horseless devils he encountered every day on the streets — one of those things that whizz by with a snort and a roar. He had been a good horse and faithful and had never failed to answer the joyous summons from the big gong overhead. But now they were done with him, he was out-of-date and science had furnished something that could do more than he, and do it better and faster.

That was about a year ago. Ever since Grady's auto ambulance has performed the duties that once were performed, unassisted, by "Faithful John." The only runs he makes nowadays are when the machine ambulance is in the repair shop or on another call. And, although he dashes through the streets with the same avidity as of old he is breaking down with grief and his heart has been broken by the automobile.

He is 23 years old and has been in service for the hospital for seventeen of these. Dr. W. B. Summerall, superintendent of Grady, estimated yesterday that Faithful John had made as many as 25,000 runs and had covered fully as many as 50,000 miles, or more. In that time he is estimated to have saved as many as 100 lives or better. He is the fastest horse ever connected with the hospital or with any ambulance service in the city.

So far as can be ascertained, this horse's record outrivals the record of any heretofore brought to notice. Recently a fire horse in New York claimed a record of 15,000 runs. This was said to have been the highest ever attained.

Even though he becomes of no use whatever to the hospital Faithful John will be retained by Grady until his death. Then he will be buried with deserving honors and his grave will be somewhere in the fields where there are no roadways and where no rival automobiles can snort their noisy way to disturb his final slumbers as they disturbed his peace and happiness in life.

— The Atlanta Constitution, Atlanta, Georgia, April 13, 1913, page 2B.