The Myrtle Avenue Motor Accident

New York, 1895

Samuel E. Cozine, of Jamaica, denies that he heard the whistle blow as a warning to Mr. Ostrander, the driver of the Central American tea company's wagon, which the motor ran into and wrecked the other day. Mr. Cozine, who was driving two horses attached to a farm wagon, says the whistle blew to warn him, as the motor was coming swiftly down a steep grade, and he barely had time to pull out of the track. The tea wagon came suddenly on to the track from a side lane and was struck almost as soon as it reached the rails. He is certain that the driver of the tea wagon had no warning whatever.

—The Long Island Farmer, Jamaica, N.Y., Jan. 18, 1895, unknown page number.

Young Bride in Jail Warns Girls of Drug

1915

Tells of Ended Romance and Fight Against Morphine

And so, this story of the tragic ending of a happy romance and a forlorn fight against the use of drugs, is a story with a moral.

LOS ANGELES, Cal., Dec. 16. — A little wanderer in the gray land of drugs tossed and turned on a cot in a cell at the matron's department of the city jail.

"Never take the first dose," she sobbed. "It's grip is terrible."

She was Mrs. James Dellarocca, 19 years old, and a bride of but three months.

In a separate cell on the floor below was her husband, facing a charge of forgery.

But even in the torment of her soul, that "little wanderer" sobbed that her next fight against the use of morphine would be a successful one, and with tears rolling down her cheeks told the story of her life in the clutches of drug habit.

How She Started

"When did I start?" she sobbed. "Oh, that is the worst part of the story. It was a woman who started me — a woman who said she was my friend. That was about four months ago. I knew that she was 'queer' — that is, she was a drug user.

"One day I was very sick. I had been ill for several weeks. I was suffering terribly. Then this woman came to me and told me she could relieve my suffering. I knew what she meant and I refused.

"She kept right after me. I was in agony. She said I could take it once and then not again. Finally I gave in. The pain was numbed.

"Oh, it's the same old story from then on. I could not stop.

"I was compelled to increase the dose every day. Inside of a few weeks I was taking a grain and a half.

She Meets Jimmy

"Then I met Jimmy" — Dellarocca — "it was love at first sight. I loved him. He asked me to marry him. I was foolish and told him yes. He did not know I was taking morphine. I decided it was best to tell him before we were married and I did so — two days before.

"I remember he put his arm around me and said, 'Never mind, little girl, you and I will fight it out together, you'll be all right in a little while.'

"We were married and we started to fight. We begun saving our money so that I could be cured. I could not stop, tho. I would take a little each day. But we fought hard and we smiled as we fought, because we were going to win.

"Then his business went broke. Our money went fast. He could not bear to see me in agony without morphine. He would buy it altho it hurt him to do it and give it to me.

"I became worse. The fight seemed hopeless. I was taking 2 grains three or four times a day. Then we were arrested.

"I am glad I have been arrested. I will have another chance to fight morphine. They tell me I can be cured and I am going to try, oh, so hard, for Jimmy's sake and my sake.

"Oh, tell girls never to touch drugs. Tell them to run from it. Tell them to stop their ears every time it is mentioned. Please do, 'cause it may do some good."

The "little wanderer" declared that her husband was innocent of the charge of the forgery of counter signatures to nine $100 checks.

"I will stay by him until the end," she sobbed as she turned her face to the wall.

South Africa Not a Fairyland

1896

Robert Perry, a Chicago contractor, who has been spending two months in Johannesburg, South Africa, says:

"I want to warn Americans to keep away from that part of the world. There is nothing to go there for. The climate is unhealthful, living is exorbitantly high, and the people who are there are almost in a starving condition.

"Africans do all the work in the mines, which are all owned by Barnato and Rhodes. The place is a desert where scarcely anything grows, and there is a water famine most of the time. Every imaginable thing is taxed heavily. Even Pretoria's own paper has printed a warning to the world to keep away from the place. The people who have lived there ten, or fifteen years are away behind the times. When I told them about the motorcycle and the kinetoscope, they thought I was telling fairy tales, and would not believe me." — Detroit Free Press.

Poison in His Coffee

1914

Neighbor Runs Four Miles to Save Man From Wife's Mistake

Passaic, N. J., Jan. 23. — Stanley Ferra, of Lodi, ran four miles from Lodi to a silk mill at Dundee Lake to save the life of Fred Godolen, an employee of the silk company. He succeeded.

Mrs. Godolen in preparing her husband's luncheon, poured his coffee in a bottle that contained poison. When she discovered her mistake she ran to the house of Ferra, next door, and asked him to go to the mill and warn her husband.

Ferra would not rely on the telephone, so he ran all the way. There was enough poison in the bottle, Mrs. Godolen said, to kill ten persons.

The White Lady — Warning Death Phantom

1907

Warning Death Phantom of the Reigning House of Prussia

On the night before the battle of Saalfield Prince Louis of Prussia and his adjutant, Count Nostitz, were chatting in the Schloss Schwarzburg-Rudolfstadt. The prince was anticipating victory when he suddenly turned pale and rushed from the room, pursuing through the hall a shadowy white robed figure. The sentinel saw it also.

Next day Nostitz and the prince saw the white lady on a hill wringing her hands in despair as the Germans fell back. A few minutes later Louis was killed and Nostitz wounded. Nostitz told the story to his son, and the son to Unser Fritz.

The white lady's first appearance was when she was seen in the palace at Baireuth in 1486. She appeared eight or ten times in the next century. When the French officers were quartered in Baireuth she frightened them, in particular General d'Espagne, who, the day after he had seen her, pointed to a portrait on the wall and cried: "It is she! That means my death!" He was killed soon afterward.

The superstitious Napoleon wouldn't sleep in the castle, but the white lady went to see him elsewhere. She was seen before the death of the beautiful Queen Louise, of Frederick William III., of Frederick William IV., of Unser Fritz himself and of many other members of the reigning house of Prussia.