Students Take A Cow Up Two Flights

1900

Sensational Acts of Students of Mount Union College

Alliance, Ohio, Oct. 27. — At midnight last night 100 students of Mount Union college, robed in white and closely masked, obtained entrance to the ladies' hall by breaking in a window sash. President Riker's family cow, which had been captured, was then taken into the building and shoved and carried up two flights of stairs to the third story and securely tethered.

Then, amid cheers and songs, the students made their way to the college, overpowered the watchman and overturned the stoves and piano and threw all movable furniture out of the windows. The family were then serenaded, after which the white-robed figures made their way downtown and ended up the night's demonstration with a war dance on the public square.

It is expected that any action from the faculty as a result of demonstration will meet with concerted resistance.


Grandpa's An Ape?

At a dinner-party a young man was once talking rather foolishly about Darwin and his books, speaking very contemptuously of them, and be said to the Bishop of Winchester (Wilberforce): "My Lord, have you read Darwin's last book on the 'Descent of Man'?" "Yes, I have," said the Bishop; whereupon the young man continued: "What nonsense it is, talking of our being descended from apes! Besides, I can't see the difference it would make to me if my grandfather was an ape." "No," the bishop replied, "I don't see that it would; but it must have made an amazing difference to your grandmother!"


100 Years Ago

Just a hundred years ago last July the Frenchman Lebon made the first public demonstration of the use of gas for illuminating purposes.

"Missing Links" — Darwin Rested with a Cigarette

1895

At the age of 73 Darwin declared that a cigaret rested him more after hard labor than all else.

Spectacles were first used in the latter part of the thirteenth century.

The rare operation of amputation at the hip was recently performed at Cincinnati.

The first crop of tea grown in Natal was in the year 1881. To-day Natal tea is common.

Sixteen pints of the juice or sap which makes India rubber are frequently taken from one tree.

At the Bon Marche (cheap market), Paris, last year, 662 persons were arrested for kleptomania.

The climatic limit to the cultivation of wheat is not so much the cold of winter as the heat of summer.

In the Bank of England sixty folio volumes or ledgers are filled daily with writing in keeping the accounts.

The deepest well on our Atlantic coast is that at the silk works near Northampton, Mass.; depth, 3,700 feet.

The older the Christian, the newer he will find God's book.

Blushing – The Learned Darwin's Take on It

1874

The man who does not blush now and then is scarcely human. According to Darwin, blushing originated at a very late period in the long line of our descent. The learned thinker explains: "The relaxation of the small arteries of the surface, on which blushing depends, seems to have primarily resulted from earnest attention directed to the appearance of our own persons, especially of our faces, aided by habit, inheritance, and the ready flow of nerve-force along accustomed channels; and afterwards, to have been extended by the power of association to self-attention directed to moral conduct."

There are some men who lie brazenly, so repeatedly and so persistently in the very face of the truth, that the question may well be asked if they ever blush. Certainly they have no scruples in regard to moral conduct. The coarse animal must linger in these men, for their conscience is dead and they do not know the meaning of morality.

Darwin holds that it does not seem possible that any animal, until mental powers had been developed to an equal degree with those of man, would have been sensitive about its personal appearance or moral conduct. Hence it is his opinion that animals have not the power to blush. Impudent liars and braggarts, also, never blush, and so they are hardly human.


The Boy and the Nuts

A boy once found some nuts in a jar. Like all boys, he was fond of nuts, and was glad to hear that he might put his hand once in the jar, and have all the nuts he could then take out. He thrust his hand down the neck of the jar, and took hold of all the nuts he could. When his hand was quite full, he did his best to draw it out of the jar. But the neck of the jar was small, and his hand was so full of nuts, that he could not draw it out. He felt so sad, that tears fell from his eyes. His friend who stood near told him to let go half the nuts. He did so, and then drew out his hand with ease. We shall find it so in life: men lose all, if they try to get too much.


What is the difference between a tenant and the son of a widow? The tenant has to pay rents, but the son of a widow has not two parents.

A Bit of Dog-gerel (Poetry with Theme of Evolution)

1887

A BIT OF DOG-GEREL

We bought him when a puppy,
And we know he was a pug,
For he had the usual trademark
On his ugly little mug.

He had eyes the size of walnuts,
And his nose to heaven turned,
And his underjaw protruded
As if for flesh it yearned.

While his color it was off'll
And his face was black as tar,
And the moles upon his cheeklets
Were the same as puggies' are.

And we knew he was a "thorough"
When we watched him at his play,
For his monkey-like expression
Gave his origin away.

And this origin of species
Is a very funny thing,
When the grandson of a monkey
Can be such a cunning thing.

LATER.

He's developed to a bulldog,
Evolution has begun,
And we fear he'll be a terr-ie-or
Before his race is run.

But there's one small consolation:
It is, that now he's ug-
Lier, if that were possible,
Than when he was a pug.

—Detroit Free Press.

Frightening the Monkeys – Troubles in Africa With Monkeys

1878

The inhabitants of Kabylia, Northern Africa, are much troubled by the depredations of monkeys, who in countless numbers infest the hilly forests. The unfortunate farmers or market gardeners who live on the mountain slopes wage a continual war against these marauders, which is foredoomed, however, to endless failure; for the inhabitants were Darwinites long before Mr. Darwin was heard of; and they dare not for their life kill one of the creatures regarded by them as their ancestors.

So the monkeys increase and multiply without the chance of becoming thinned off by any fatal battue. The only thing that can be done to guard against their attacks is to frighten them away, and this is effected by some very cunning and curious devices. It is found that occasionally, after a successful raid upon some garden, a few of the less hardened offenders are overcome by the plenteousness of their feast.

The potent juice of the grapes or of the figs gets the better of their reason or of their bodily activity, and they remain stretched on the ground, to be captured by the furious proprietor, when a mild but insidious punishment is inflicted upon the prisoners. Their necks are hung with small bells or rattles, and they are turned loose at the forest edge, when the panic created by their appearance is such as to frighten all their kinsfolk and acquaintances away into the depths of the wood. If bells cannot be procured another process has been invented — that of clothing the captured ape in a stout waistcoat of red stuff and then letting him run.

The effect is magical, and long after the ostracized animal has died or got free from his slavish badge the depredators hold aloof from the dangerous district.

Humor Out of the Mouths of Babes

1910

Out of the Mouths of Babes

Margie's mother was sowing some seeds and explaining how they would come up plants.
"Oh, yes!" exclaimed Margie, "they go to bed babes and get up grown people."

Teacher -- "In this sentence, 'The sick boy loves his medicine,' what part of speech is 'loves'?"
Small Boy -- "Please, ma'am, it's the part that ain't so."

Little Fred had been reading about Darwin and one day he said: "Grandpa, I want to ask you something."
"Well, what is it, Fred," queried the old gentleman.
"When you were a monkey," said the small student, "did you have a tail?"

Stern Parent (bringing out the strap) -- "Now, Tommy, I suppose you know why I am going to whip you, don't you?"
Little Tommy -- "Yes, sir. You are going to whip me because I am so small. If I was as big as the man next door you wouldn't dare lay a finger on me."

-The Des Moines News, Des Moines, Iowa, February 13, 1910, page 11.

Found The Missing Link

Boston Traveler Claims to Have Discovered Darwin's Ape Man.

Charles J. Frewen of Boston, an extensive traveler, is an ardent believe in the theory of Darwin. Recent investigations on his part in Africa have convinced him that men originally sprang from what is now known as the ape. He is registered at the Windsor and is on his way to the Phillippines to study the natives of that archipelago and the conditions under which they live. He says:

"I have just come from Africa, where I studied all types of human beings. Some of the negroes there are very akin to the ape. They dwell in the Congo forests of central Africa in the western section. These ape-like people do not seem to dwell in organized communities, but hang about the edges of the forest. They speak a sort of dialect that is of the most crude form. Some of them are not really black, but have a skin of dirty yellowish-brown hue. Their bodies are covered over with a yellow down. Their intellect is not developed and their morals are on a parallel with those of the lower animals.

"Human instinct are prominent, of course, as they are human, but their stage of development is so low that they border on the edge of the brute world. It seems, however, that as time advanced that these primitive people have intermingled with superior tribes and, where intellectual advancement has been attained, the characteristics of these apelike people will crop out a following generations.

"Where or not this section of Africa is the cradle of the human race I am not prepared to say. Certain it is, however that these primitive people are the nearest to the ape of any on earth." – Denver News.

--The Sioux County Bee, Rock Valley, Iowa, June 26, 1903, page 1 (doesn't actually look like a page 1.)

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Lecturing at the Royal institution on the retardation of the earth's motion, Prof. George H. Darwin said the time would come when the length of a day would be prolonged to fifty-five of the present days -- "a very leisurely age to live in," he interpolated -- and when the moon's journey around the earth would occupy fifty-five days.

--The Racine Journal, Racine, Wisconsin, July 14, 1903, page 7.