How "All Men Are Born Equal"

1905

The woman born beautiful doesn't bother to educate her intelligence, is spoiled by flattery, is unable to hold the men she attracts; the woman born homely is driven to develop her character and her mind, and so more than overcomes her handicap as against her pretty sister.

The man born clever loses because he wins too easily and has no incentive to that sustained effort which alone achieves success; the man born "slow" develops patience, assiduity, balance and, best of all, tenacity.

It comes near to being a universal rule that strong points and weak ones just about offset each other in any human being at the start, and that the development is a matter for the man himself to determine. And there is no fatal handicap except the disposition to regard one's handicap as fatal. — Saturday Evening Post.


Use Pipes of Pure Gold

There is an endless variety of substances of which pipes are made. In China the stems are of bamboo. In India leather stems are used, in Persia sweet jasmine, in Asia Minor cherry wood. In the Philippine Islands a richer material is available, for the natives hollow out sold nuggets which they find in the torrent beds, and use them as pipe bowls.

Blind Boy's Wonderful Feats

1905

Pennsylvania Youth Gets Along Very Well Without Sight

Young Stephen Mellinger of Denver, Pa., does things remarkable in one who moves, as he does, in continual darkness. His senses of touch and hearing are very keen. He works in the field. He sows, uses the rake and spade, helps harvest the crops, milks, climbs trees, and, what is still more remarkable, drives spirited horses and rides a bicycle.

The boy is as bright, and cheerful as any of his associates. He is able to harness a horse unaided and to drive several miles to the village, where the household supplies are obtained. Every morning it is his duty to hitch a horse to a milk wagon and drive a mile to Denver village. In this drive he is compelled to cross railroad tracks at two points.

Spirited horses are his delight, and two belonging to his father which are too wild for the average man to handle with safety are used by him without a thought of danger. It is unwise for others than he to approach these animals. The young man does not work, ride or walk in a hesitating manner, after the usual fashion of the blind. He takes a fast horse out on the road and gallops at full speed, turning out for vehicles and other horses and rounding sharp corners without pulling up. On his wheel he rides as if possessed of full sight, and can be seen alone miles from his home.

Armless Judge Going to Europe to Aid Crippled

1915
Click Photo for Bigger

There He Will Arrange Plans to Help Allies' Maimed

Photo Caption: With only his mechanical arm — designed by himself — Judge Quentin D. Corley dresses and shaves himself, handles his own food, writes his own opinions and handles his own records in the County Court of Dallas County, Texas. He drives an auto, bowls, plays billiards, carries bundles and even helps his wife with the housework.

Over in Europe there are many armless men who feel they are hopelessly helpless. So the Dallas judge is going abroad to do what he can to aid war victims "for humanity's sake," as told in another column on this page.

The top picture shows Judge Corley completing his dressing operations. A contrivance, attached to a suit case, permits him to put on his collar and tie. With an almost similar machine he shaves himself. Below is a photograph of the judge bowling.

DALLAS, Texas, Dec. 16. — Quentin D. Corley, the "armless judge" of this city, will soon take up the burden of the maimed in the European conflict. On Dec. 22 he will leave for Washington, D. C., to confer with an official whose name is not known and who had told the Belgium ambassador to America that Judge Corley, the armless, does the work of a man in everyday life.

It is expected that the judge will sign a contract with the Allies to teach armless soldiers to be happy and to be useful.

The judge says any work he may do will be for the sake of humanity and not for money. "I shall only accept the same salary. I am getting now, and expenses," he says. "If they see fit to honor me if I do their men a service, I shall be glad of that, too."

Story of the Judge's Career

Judge Corley's story is a strange one. He was of a roving disposition when young, and took no qualms at satisfying it as a guest of the railroads. He was riding thru New York State on a freight train when a burly brakeman's head showed over the far end of the car. He slipped and fell as he tried to flee. The trainmen picked him up a poor, mangled youth. One arm was gone at the shoulder and the other just above the elbow.

As he lay in the hospital fighting for life, he began figuring how he would use that life once he was out again.

"I strove to invent and picture in my mind a mechanical hand, but of course I could not get anything but the open and shut movement; no one has," he says. "Then I thought that if I made an arm with an elbow joint in it, and so rigid that it would have both lateral and perpendicular movement, I had the problem solved."

A youth of 23, seemingly handicapped for all time and yet doomed by a healthy body to live a long life, Corley came home to his parents in Dallas with only his idea of a mechanical arm — and a deathless ambition to conquer the terrible odds against him.

How His Plans Worked Out

For four years he studied law with all the mental force of his brilliant mind, and at night he spent hours upon the plan for his mechanical arm. When completed, it was a steel hook made of two steel flanges, which opened and shut on cogs, a little handle which turned them being worked by his teeth. In this way he gripped things tightly, and with the hook he could handle almost anything he could lift.

From then on it was easy. He soon learned to write and then passed the bar examination. He began to practice law and to practice the use of his arm, and study means by which he could use it. His progress was wonderful. He invented other machines, to be used in dressing and sport, until today he can do almost anything a normal being desires to do.

He has a desire bordering on passion to aid the soldiers who have lost both arms in battle. There were more than ten thousand of them in the Allies' armies alone at last count.

Wants to Make Them Useful

"I know I can teach them to use my inventions within a short time, and I want to do it," he says. "I want them to get away from the terrible feeling that they are burdens upon the state and upon their families. If they'll put these men in my hands I can teach a thousand in three months to use this arm and take their places in life and seek happiness."

His friends say he can do it, too. He has pupils all over Texas who are learning from him the secrets. They invariably make good when he turns them loose.

Judge Corley has the inventions he uses patented, but does not sell them. "I have them for humanity," he says.

The plan on which the Belgian ambassador is said to want Judge Corley to work will be a school under his supervision, at which armless men will be equipped and trained by him. It will take him to Europe about four years, if the war continues a year or so longer.

—Saturday Blade, Chicago, Dec. 18, 1915, p. 5.

A Cross On His Back

1899

There is a story of an envious tailor current with the French peasantry. He fancied that his neighbor, who received a pension for the loss of an arm incurred while fighting for his country, was better off than himself. Both men went to pay their rent on the same day.

"That's a lucky man," said the tailor to the landlord. "He gets well paid for his arm."

"But who would be willing to part with an arm, even if he were paid for it?" said the landlord.

"I would," declared the tailor.

"You!" cried the landlord. "Why, man, you wouldn't be willing to bear anything of the sort, no matter how much you were paid for it."

"I wish some one would try me."

"Now, see here," said the landlord, who had studied human nature, "I'll tell you what, if you'll wear even so much as a chalk-mark on your back I'll remit your rent as long as you wear it on your coat so it can be seen, the condition being that you tell no one why it is there."

"Agreed," said the tailor, eagerly. "That's an easy way to pay rent!"

So the chalk-mark in the form of a cross was made on the back of his coat, and the delighted tailor sallied forth upon the street.

Strangers and acquaintances hailed him to tell him of the mark on his back. Jokes were made at his expense, children laughed and pointed at him, and his wife annoyed him with questions, and with conjugal familiarity told him he was a fool. The usually amiable man grew surly and morose; he shunned men, women and children, and frequented back streets. Before the week was up the tailor found himself embroiled in a quarrel with his best friend, his wife had threatened to leave his house, and he considered himself miserable and ill-used.

Finally, one night he took off his coat and rubbed out the chalk-mark and said, "There! I would not wear that cross on my back another week, no, not if I could have all the money there is in Paris!" — Youth's Companion.

Peg Leg Foils Texan's Attempt at Suicide

1920

Wooden Prop Sticks in River Bank and Stops His Plunge

Is Sued for Fish Slain in His Mad Scramble to Swim Out

SHIRO, Texas, Feb. 26. — John Relmer's peg leg not only prevented him from ending his life here, but landed him in jail on a charge of wanton destruction of private property. Relmer is 40 years old, and has been wearing a wooden leg of the peg variety for twenty-one years. Lately his physical disability has prevented him from earning a comfortable living on the farms or in this little town. He had had a hard winter of it and to add to his misfortunes he took the "flu."

Finally he decided he would end it all.

Relmer decided it would be easier to go via the water route. He knew of such a pleasant place where the blue waters were deep and the banks mossy and shady. It was in the field of J. G. Anderson, a prosperous farmer and fish breeder.

But here's the strange part of the story. When Relmer made up his mind, he at once hobbled over to the place he had selected to end it all. He wrote a little note and laid it on the bank, telling the people why he drowned himself. Then he leaped toward the still, blue water, peg leg and all. That blasted peg leg stuck in the bank of the stream and Relmer's troubles began to double!

Before he could wrench the peg out of the soft bank he had changed his mind about dying. He decided he would begin life anew, provided he could get out. He finally pulled the peg out of the mud, but found the bank so steep he could not climb it. There was nothing to do but swim across to the other side.

Here's more trouble, real trouble, was added to Relmer's burdens. With that peg leg as he swam across the stream he clubbed several of Mr. Anderson's fine fish to death. They were his breeding fish and he had paid a fancy price for them. When he found the dead fish with their head and bodies beaten up and the note Relmer left on the bank he discovered what killed his fish. Anderson had Relmer arrested.

"He should have more sense than to try to drown himself in my fish pond," said Anderson. "Even if he had succeeded it would have injured my fish. He should have tried a rope and a limb."

"I didn't intend to kill the fish," said Relmer, "but I'm glad I'm alive."

Armless Man Commits Robbery With Gun Between His Toes

1903

HOLDS GUN WITH HIS TOES

Armless Wonder Cowes Roomful of Men By a Threat to Shoot.

Butte, Mont., March 4 — The most sensational and novel holdup known in the West was perpetrated when Chas. Payne, an armless man, entered the California club at the corner of Main and Broadway and with a 44-calibre revolver held between the toes of his right foot compelled a faro dealer Richards to return him $5 which he had lost during the night.

There were only a few players in the room at the time and they made a rush for the doors when Payne swung his gun into action. Richards begged him not to shoot and Payne said that all he wanted was the return of $5 which he had lost. It was cheerfully restored to him and he hopped out of the club while keeping the dealer covered with his gun. The robbery was not reported to the police till in the afternoon and after Payne had been arrested for taking a shot at another man in a boarding house on West Mercury street later in the day.

He resisted arrest and tried to cut the officers with a razor which he held between his toes. He was overpowered, disarmed and taken to jail. Payne was formerly a vaudeville performer, but has been out of engagements for more than a year because of dissipation and he is said to have been crazed with drink at the time of the robbery and shooting.

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

Victim of Infantile Paralysis Makes Living by Sewing Quilts

Oshkosh, Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, 1912

CRIPPLE PIECES QUILTS IN ORDER TO MAKE A LIVELIHOOD

Former Resident Does Exacting Work at Oshkosh on a Sewing Machine Though he is Denied the Use of His Limbs

Oscar Lewis, a cripple residing on Ashland avenue, Oshkosh, has adopted a novel way of earning a livelihood. The Lewis boy is a victim of infantile paralysis, as a result of which he is a cripple from the waist down. He left Fond du Lac five years ago, and just recently specimens of his work have been sent here to show what he can accomplish though denied the use of all his faculties.

The boy makes quilts, and all of the work done on them is on a sewing machine which he operates with his hands. A stick is attached to the pedal and operated by hand because of his affliction. One quilt which was sent to this city is now the property of Mrs. William Forest, residing on Rees street. The quilt is pieced and is made up of 2,003 pieces; the work being done in the most creditable manner.

Lewis was taken ill with infantile paralysis fifteen months ago while at work in the Rueping tannery in this city. He is 32 years of age and is a nephew of John Mensch, 115 West Johnson street, this city.

—The Daily Commonwealth, Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, December 17, 1912, page 5.

Comment: He's 32 years old and is called a boy in the article. Sounds kind of insensitive. Not to mention the cripple-this and cripple-that.

Civil War Veteran Starves to Death

1912

TOO PROUD TO BEG; STARVES TO DEATH

By the United Press Associations.

Chicago, Ill., Dec. 17.—Harry West, 70, a veteran of the civil war, was found starved to death in a little room in a lodging house today. In his hand was clasped a button of the Grand Army of the Republic. He had been too proud to ask help.


YOUTHFUL SKATER DIES IN LAKE WINNEBAGO

Menasha, Wis., Dec. 17.—Paul Marx 11 years old, was drowned in Lake Winnebago when he skated into an air hole. Nothing was known of the accident until twenty-four hours later when a boy companion who was with the Marx boy at the time notified Mr. and Mrs. Marx. The body has been recovered.


CRIPPLE DROWNS

Necedah, Wis., Dec. 17. — Charles McGuire a cripple, 17 years old, was drowned through the ice on the Yellow river. He was pushing himself about the ice on a sled and it is supposed crashed through thin ice.

—The Daily Commonwealth, Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, December 17, 1912, page 1.

An Invalid All His Life

The death of Frank Millard occurred at the home of his sister, Mrs. Al Bath on Sharon street, Shelby. The deceased has been an invalid all his life, having been paralyzed since birth. He never walked and never was able to sit up and still with this affliction he was cheerful and never complained of his lot although he stated that life had been a long journey for him. He was aged 52 years and was born in Crawford county near Auburn Center. All his life he has lived with his sister, Mrs. Al Bath, who was assisted by another sister, Miss Rebecca Millard, in caring for their invalid brother.

--The Mansfield News, Mansfield, Ohio, April 21, 1909, page 5.