Wanted It Out Anyway

1895

My friend, the major, tells me some good stories about the gallant men who inhabit the marine barracks at Charlestown. The latest incident involves a brave sergeant who was going the rounds one night to see that all the lights were out in the barracks rooms. Coming to a room where he thought he saw a lamp shining, he roared, "Put out that light there!"

"It's the moon, sergeant!" replied one of the soldiers.

Not hearing very well, the sergeant cried in return: "I don't care what it is! Put it out!" — Boston Globe.


Worry

Worry annually kills more people than work, for worry fatigues the nerves, but it is useless to tell people of nervous temperaments not to worry. One should strive, however, to avoid all things that tend to disturb the nerves. Throw away a pen that scratches and a pencil that has a bit of hard lead in its make up. Discard a needle that "squeaks" and a basin that leaks. Use sharp tools and wear soft garments. Oil the hinges of the rheumatic door and fasten the creaking blind. — Philadelphia Ledger.


Out of Sight

Mrs. Witherby — I think I shall have my new bonnet trimmed with bats' wings.
Witherby — Don't they come high?
Mrs. Witherby — Yes, my dear, the kind of bats you know about come very high. — New York Herald.

Cites Folly of Worrying

1917

Retired Business Man Offers Some Good, Homely Philosophy Based on Long Experience

A retired business man now living in a soldiers' home writes the following letter to a friend in the dry goods market, and its homely philosophy and confidence will be found refreshing:

"Since I saw you I have entered on my seventy-seventh year. My experience has taught me the folly of worrying over events I cannot control. I have much reason for gratitude, as I have been allowed to live long. My lines are cast in pleasant places, and that is more than many a millionaire can truly say. I have little sympathy for people who mourn their former prosperity, just making themselves miserable and their hearers uncomfortable.

"My five months' captivity in a rebel prison showed me how little, after all, a person requires to be perfectly happy and contented. One good square meal to the prisoners would have converted the prison yard into a picnic grove. . . . Even if you may meet with ingratitude, your kind deed is recorded somewhere, and will be remembered. I must stop prosing, perhaps you will think I am getting into my dotage." — New York Journal of Commerce and Commercial Bulletin.

Working and Worrying — Men and Women

1916

In spite of the floods of warning from doctors and others thousands of persons keep on working and worrying themselves into early graves, or what is worse for their companions, nervous prostration that makes them unfit companions for themselves or others.

The world is full of trouble, but we are not at all backward about saying that a considerable proportion of the fusses that occur in families and between families has its origin in petulant phrases and complaints that are no sooner uttered than they are regretted. Forced from lips by a peevishness that comes from over taut and overworked nerves, they rip and tear, and we are prevented by the same physical condition from making the instant reparation that we would under other circumstances.

Men as a class have better control of their nerves than have women. This is physiological as well as psychological. They stew and fret less and their work is better fitted to preserve their nerves. If women would understand that they are under as deep an obligation to their husbands to conserve and preserve their physical health as their husbands are to them to keep up for work and thus furnish support things might be better.

—Lincoln Daily News, Lincoln, NE, Aug. 5, 1916, p. 4.

Death's Most Active Agent — Worry

1914

Worry, Never Hard Work, Responsible for the Decimation of the Human Races

We hear daily of men and women who are "working themselves to death." But work is as surely the friend of man as worry is his deadliest foe. Unless carking care and sickening foreboding are blent with labor, work never kills. Yet worry slays its tens and hundreds of thousands every year.

The person who wishes to live long and beneficently should cultivate the desire to see others as comfortable as he wishes to be himself. He must not regret that others are better off in what makes living pleasant.

Here is a fact that some so-called philanthropists never learn: there lives not the human creature who is wholly uninteresting. Be on the alert to espy something in those whom you meet that will commend them to your regard. Listlessness and the capacity for being bored bring more old people to the grave than disease or actual sorrow. If you have no other "job" in life, make one by forcing yourself to be interested in the welfare of your associates. — Youth's Companion.


Midnight Inspirations

Many eminent men have done some of their most famous work in bed. Indeed, no small part of the world's literary treasures have been produced between the sheets by physically indolent although mentally active men of genius.

Longfellow's "Wreck of the Hesperus" came to him as he was sitting by his fireside on the night after a violent storm. He went to bed, but could not sleep; the Hesperus would not be denied, and as he lay the verses flowed on without let or hindrance until the poem was completed. Wordsworth used to go to bed after his morning walk, and, while breakfasting there, dictate the lines he had composed while walking. One at least of Rossini's operas was composed in bed. — Manchester Evening News.

Post Office Workers Listen to Music for Morale, No Jazz

1921

Music for P.O. Night Workers Improves Morals[*]

Minneapolis Postmaster Informs Postmaster General Hays that Psychological Test Proved a Success but No "Jazz" was Allowed

WASHINGTON, Aug. 17. — Music to improve the morale of workers whose duties take them well into the wee small hours has been tried out in the Minneapolis postoffice and proved a success, E. A. Purdy, postmaster, today informed Postmaster General Hays. The idea was tried, Mr. Purdy said, after he had made a psychological study of conditions under which his night force worked. He found men working away from the general noises of the day as a rule showed a low morale, inclined to be morose and generally worried at being away from their families, which resulted in an absence of enthusiasm in their work.

As an experiment a phonograph was installed and records, which it was thought would rest the nerves and enliven the spirits of the employes were tried nightly with gratifying results, Mr. Purdy said, although he was careful to explain that no "jazz" was played, until the fag end of the night as he "did not want the men juggling and tossing about letters and parcels." Everybody was more alert, he said, and at quitting time went home less tired, less worried and with more efficient night's work done. The postmaster general approved the idea and said he would watch further experiments with interest. Mr. Purdy who was characterized by Mr. Hays as a "bird of a postmaster with a batting average of 1,000, although a Democrat," is in Washington to give the department some of the ideas which has made the Minneapolis office one of the most successful in the country, Mr. Hays said.

—Bridgeport Telegram, Bridgeport, CT, Aug. 18, 1921, p. 1

[*] "Improves Morals" is the original erroneous headline, kind of funny. And, hey, it's not that jazz was entirely disallowed, but allowed at the "fag end of the night." That's kind of funny, too.

Note: Back then "post office" was one word, which looks weird, and "employes" generally ended with one "e" like that, also odd.

She's Worth $1,000 a Pound

1909

She's Worth $1,000 a Lb.

PITTSBURGH, Pa. — Because she was jilted and lost twenty-five pounds weight in consequence, Miss Luella Lowstetter wants $25,000 damages — $1,000 for each pound lost. She is a school teacher of the fashionable suburb of Sheraden. Her suit is against Prof. Earl W. Reed, principal of the school. Miss Lowstetter asserts that Professor Reed jilted her in a most humiliating fashion after she had agreed to marry him and had got her trousseau ready. She and her attorney said in court today that she lost at least twenty five pounds owing to worry over her jilting, and that the wedding clothes would not fit her now.


Eskimo Is a Cannibal

ST. JOHNS, Newfoundland — Tragedy in the far North formed the burden of the news brought to port by the Hudson Bay Company's steamship Adventure, which arrived with the crew of the lost Dundee whaler Paradox. The crew told of an Eskimo, who driven to cannibalism by starvation, ate his child and after shooting several neighbors who attempted summary punishment, fled into the trackless wilderness of ice.


Tramp Heir to $25,000

William Close, who ran away from his Baltimore home when he was 16 years old, was found — a typical tramp — in a lodging house in Chicago Thursday night and informed that he had fallen heir to a fortune of $25,000 left him by his father. The next morning he started for Baltimore with Attorney J. D. Goldboro of that city, who has been searching for the prodigal for two years. Close, attired in a new suit of clothes, bathed and barbered, ascribed all his troubles to drink and declared he was determined to reform.