The Lampasas Daily Leader. (Lampasas, Tex.), Vol. 5, No. 1540, Ed. 1 Wednesday, February 24, 1909 Page: 2 of 4
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THE DAILY LEADER
VERNOR & ABNEY, Pubs.
LAMPASAS,
TEXAS
Helping Our Neighbors.
That which stands out bright and
shining above all the tragedy of the
Italian earthquake is the world-wide
and instant response to the need of the
suffering survivors. The calamity it-
self was neither new nor strange, un-
less, perhaps, in its magnitude. Sicily
and Calabria have been often visited
by disastrous earthquakes, both in an-
cient times and recently. Since the
beginning of the present century, still
less than ten years old, the great cities
of San Francisco and Valparaiso, in
the western hemisphere, have been de-
stroyed by seismic upheavals, to say
nothing of the wiping out of St. Pierre,
with all its population, by the eruption
of Mont Pelee, in the island of Marti-
nique. At the time of each of these
great cataclysms the rest of the world
contributed to the relief of the suffer-
ers, and once again the draft on hu-
man sympathy has been honored, says
the Youth’s Companion. Not only did
Italian warships and the Italian king
and queen start for the scene of the
earthquake as soon as news of it
reached Rome, but British, French and
Russian squadrons in the Mediter-
ranean headed at full speed for the
help of the stricken country. This Avas
government aid. The people, the men
and women, in Europe, Asia, Africa
and both Americas, were equally
prompt in offering their'money for the
purchase of food, clothing and shelter,
that the widowed and the orphaned
might not go uncomforted. The hu-
man heart is wondrous kind, and there
is no surer way to make it beat with
helpful sympathy than to disclose to it
the existence of suffering. It has an-
swered the old question of the lawyer,
“And who is my neighbor?” by includ-
ing within that intimate and friendly
fellowship all those in need the world
over.
A parish priest in Ireland recently
informed the department of agricul-
ture at Washington that 12 farmers in
his neighborhood having contributed a
dollar apiece, he bought 12 good books
on agriculture and horticulture, and
thus established a small loan library
which has done excellent service.
Secretary Wilson now plans to develop
a similar idea. He invites both coun-
try clergymen and physicians to take
the initiative, and volunteers to advise
what books shall be purchased, and to
supply such libraries with department
publications. Under these conditions,
a small amount of money will go a long
way; and the farmers who invest it
may feel sure that they, too, are pro-
gressing.
Investors in gold-mining securities
will be interested to learn that an
American lady computed not long ago
that in the United States alone half a
ton of pure gold, equivalent to $500,-
000, is annually put as filling into the
teeth of the living. Inasmuch as none
of this precious metal is ever ex-
tracted after death, the shrewd calcu-
lator further reckoned that at the rate
stated a quantity of gold equal to all
that is now in circulation will, in the
course of three centuries, be lying in
the ground again. It is strange to
think that one digger—the sexton, to-
wit—is constantly returning to mother
earth nearly as much gold as the oth-
er digger is constantly extracting from
her bosom.
A steamer loaded with petroleum
from the Standard Oil Company took
fire in the harbor of Singapore, and
when all attempts to extinguish the fire
failed, the harbor agents appealed to
the commander of the fortifications to
sink the vessel. It was two miles
away, but a few well-directed shots
from the six-inch guns sent the ship to.
the bottom. Thus do warlike weapons
have their victories no less profound
than the implements of peace.
Sirs. Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gil-
man ought to rise to protest against
the government’s expected argument
that when Mrs. Chan I. Ying, the pret-
ty Chinese woman now being held by
the authorities on the charga of being
unlawfully in this country, left her
husband she became a “laborer.” Mrs.
Gilman’s contention recently has been
precisely opposite.
V
It makes a lot of difference where
you’re born. A theatrical manager was
looking for a Cinderella with a foot
tiny enough to fit the slipper. A Mary-
land girl, of course, was the only one
found Avho could fill the bill, remarks
the Baltimore American. Had she
been born in Chicago-.
Washington Whisperings
Interesting Bits of News Gathered
at the National Capital.
Congressmen Initiated Into Novel Club
117 ASHINGTON.—The most exclu-
*» sive congressional organization in
Washington is the “Did You Bite,
Too?” club. It was formed here the
other day in the cloak rooms used at
the capitol. The incomplete mem-
bership list, which is withheld, con-
tains a dozen names. Like the Anani-
as club, the wishes of a prospective
member are not consulted. If he is
considered eligible he joins because
there is nothing else for him to do.
The process of initiation is some-
thing like this. A member, either of
the senate or the house, receives a
letter bearing the return card df a
prominent down-town hotel. He opens
the letter and reads it. H his face
grows red and his eyes flash, it is a
good indication that he is material
for membership. If, after a moment
of thought, a smile begins to over-
spread his countenance and he
reaches in his desk for his check
book, it is a mere indication no long-
er. It is a certainty. He is then ap-
proached by a member.
“Did you bite, too?” smilingly asks
the member of the member-elect.
“I did,” the member-elect answers,
in effect.
“Haw! haw! haw!” roars the mem-
ber.
The organization of the “Did You
Bite, Too?” club is the result of a
visit to Washington of two women
from New York in the interest of a
very captivating publicity scheme.
This scheme is now one of the secrets
of the “Did You Bite, Too?” club.
A few days ago the young women
went back to New York. The day aft-
er their departure a large bunch of
letters came to the capitol, all written
on the business stationery of the ho-
tel. Each letter contained a state-
ment of the account of the person to
whom it was addressed. One was for
five automobile rides, another was for
dinners and suppers, another for nu-
merous bottles of wine, others were
for miscellaneous items,
Those who paid homage to these
young women and wondered at the
lavish entertainment are wondering
no longer. The members of the “Did
You Bite, Too?” club know exactly
how they managed it. Now that it
iS all over, if you can get one of them
to talk club matters he will tell you
it was one of the finest pieces of
high financing that ever came to his
notice.
New Aero Club at the National Capital
- It
HTASHINGTON has an areo club. It
was organized the other day in
the office of- Brig. Gen. James Allen,
chief signal officer of the army at the
•war department. Truman H. Newber-
ry, secretary of the navy, was elected
president; Robert Shaw Oliver, as-
sistant secretary of war, first vice-
president; Thomas Nelson Page, sec-
ond vice-president, and Representative
Butler Ames of Massachusetts, third
vice-president.
Among the charter members of the
new club are Representative Parsons
of New York, O. H. Tittman of the
geodetic survey, Lieut. Richard B.
Creery, U. S. M. C.; C. L. Mariatt,
chief of the bureau of entomology;
Lieut. George C. Sweet, U. S. N., of
the bureau of equipment; Col. Charles
H. Bromwell, U. S. A., superintendent
public buildings and grounds, District
of Columbia; Lieut. F. P. Lahm,
George O. Totten, Jr., and R. M. Mc-
Lennan.
A committee of the Aero Club of
America, with which the Washington
club will be affiliated, has been appoint-
ed to receive contributions for a
memorial shaft to Lieut. Thomas E.
Selfridge, U. S. A., who was killed in
the accident to the Wright aeroplane
at Fort Myer last September. On the
committee are Glen H. Curtiss, Prof.
Alexander Bell and Lieut. F. P. Lahm,
U. S. A. The shaft will be erected
either in Arlington National cemetery,
where Lieut. Selfridge is buried, or on
the spot where the Wright aeroplane
fell on the parade ground at Fort
Myer. The flatter spot is favored by
the majority of these interests.
Senate Elevator “Boys” Given a Raise
k FTER protecting President-elect
Taft in the $100,000 salary voted
to him recently, senatorial hearts
opened up to the conductors of the
senate elevators the other day and
scattered a little loose change in their
direction. So that now, if the house
agrees, the president, vice-president,
speaker, the United States judges and
the elevator boys will get a raise.
The president will have $50,000
more, the judges from $1,000 to $5,000,
the vice-president and speaker, $3,000,
and the elevator men $200 additional
a year.
Senator Borah, who insurged all
along against the salary increases,
first took up the cudgels for the ele-
vator conductors. If the president’s
pay was to be doubled, he asserted,
why not remember the hard working
men who ride the senators up and
down every day?
But the senate warmed up slowly.
Senator Warren coldly argued that,
if the elevator men were to be bene-
fited, a general adjustment of em-
ployes’ salaries would be necessary.
As proposed by Borah, the amendment
was beaten.
Senator Knute Nelson of Minnesota,
however, sprang the same amendment
after changing the verbiage slightly.
He spoke of “our poor elevator boys”
who work the day long all the year
round for a scanty hundred a month.
Not one of the “boys” is under 60, but
that did not seem to make any differ-
ence.'" La Follette put in an almost
tearsome plea.
When the test came the second time
even Warren had wilted and not a
viote was recorded against increasing
the “boys’ ” salary from $1,200 to $1.-
400 a year.
Victims Open War on “Mushroom” Hat
^OUNGER officers of the navy who
I are regularly invited to the de-
butantes’ teas in Washington say they
are going to form an anti-mushroom
“Merry Widow” hat league, or wear
baseball masks in the future.
It appears that the so-called “pink
teas” are sometimes positively danger-
ous if either Miss Newberry, daughter
of the secretary of the navy; Miss Ol-
ga Converse, the Misses Fremont, the
Misses Goodwin or any of the other
navy girls turn around too abruptly
when naval officers or others of their
admirers- get among them and come
within range of their hats.
These large hats of the mushroom
"Merry Widow” species are some-
times as sharp on the edges as if they
had been specially stropped, and, In
addition, generally have stanch, shar©
pointed feathers which protrude and
could inflict untold damage if properly
aimed. No one accuses the navy girls
of attempting to do damage with these
weapons, but the fact remains that
there are several of the younger offi-
cers who have received painful glan-
cing blows from the hats but have been
too gallant to complain.
“The way the damage is done,” one
of the navy girls’ admirers said the
other day, “is generally in this fash-
ion: You go to a tea and, after shak-
ing hands in the drawing room, spy
several of the fair young navy dam-
sels all in a group and talking viva-
ciously. You approach cautiously and
begin the recital of some carefully
prepared speech about the weather
to Miss Converse. At the sound of
your voice Miss Newberry or Miss
Fremont or some other navy girl turns
her head quickly your way and de-
livers you somewhere about the face
a stinging blow with the edge of her
hat and the sharp pointed feathers.
“We are praying for the day when
softer or smaller hats will bo in stylo”
I’VE BEEN
THINKING
About Mr.Pullraan’s Cars
By
Charles Battell Loomis
(Copyright by W. G. Chapman.)
I wonder if anyone knows the name
of the man who first invented Pullman
cars. I’ve traveled a great deal and
I notice that they call them Pullman
cars in every state in the union. And
they are all. built on the same pattern,
too—in order to make a man appre-
ciate the comforts of the home he has
left.
I don’t know much about practical
things, but I should think that there
must have been a good deal of money
in that Pullman idea first and last. I
doubt if porters get as much as do
the people who made the original cars
and allowed persons in every state
to copy them so accurately.
There’s hardly ever any ventilation
in them. New inventions come up
everywhere, and there are even vil-
lage improvement societies, but who
ever heard of a Society for the Im-
proving of Pullmans?
The only difference between a
Chinese opium joint and. a Pullman
car is the fact that there’s no pipe
dream about the Pullman. It’s the
real thing.
What would the authorities say in
bags and umbrellas are being con-
ducted to their perches by an oleagin-
ous porter.
In the homes of the mass of Amer-
ican people whose ancestors were liv-
ing here 150 years ago men do not
walk around in their undershirts when
ready to perform their morning ablu-
tions. It is considered anything but
good form to do such things.
But Mr. Pullman changes all this
in his enchanted bower on wheels.
There, as you, my lady, walk in your
dainty kimono to fight for a place
among the women who are crowding
the lavatory, you meet several stout
and frowsy haired men in their nether
shirts making tnelr unblushing way
to their crowded lavatory.
But let me note a difference. I have
heard that women sometimes snarl ,
at one another in the lavatory and
make remarks concerning slowness
and selfishness in “hogging? the basin
too long.
Men are- always hail-fellow-well- .
met while at their toilet operations,
and splash water all over everything .
in the room with the utmost good na-
ture, even walking carefully to avoid
lurching into the crank who insists
upon shaving with a real razor while .
the car is going at the rate of 50 miles
an hour.
I once heard of a drummer who had
spent 20 years in the cars of Mr. Pull-
man, he being an unmarried man. He
grew to like their unaired compact-
ness so much that when at last Hy-
men lit his Pintsch lamp to show the .
drummer the way to the married state
the man felt uncomfortable in the v
ordinary “large” room of an apart-
ment house, and after fretting and
fuming for a week or two he had a
little house constructed in exact imi-
tation of a Pullman car.
He was a well-to-do man, and so he f
was able to pay for the leather-like :
blankets and the wonderful mechanism
that converts a comfortable day seat
iff
Emerging from Upper Two in a Silk Hat.
a large city if they found a house
with bunks, curtained bunks at that,
curtained against the air, along the
walls of a small room, bunks capable
of accommodating 24 persons of both
sexes?
Why, they’d put a stop to that lodg-
ing house at once. “Tenement house
reform” abolished all those promiscu-
ous and crowded sleeping apartments
long ago.
But this Pullman man has never
waked up. He seems to have dreamed
to himself: “If I can only charge per-
sons a high enough rate and make
them believe that my customs are
immutable I’ll make a success of this
thing.”
That was his dream. And his dream
came true. People of all sexes walk
right up to the Pullman office and
Lhey hand out two, three, five and ten
dollars for the privilege of being laid
on a shelf for a night or two.
Will you try to imagine a self-re-
specting woman in her home going
behind a curtain that does not hide
her figure‘and undressing there while
three or four strange gentlemen sit
in the same room talking or reading
magazines?
You know she would refuse to retire
in the first place, and if at last, over-
come by fatigue, she felt that she had
to she would ask the gentlemen if
they would retire also—to some other
place. And they, being gentlemen,
would do so.
But when she enters Mr. Pullman’s
oblong box with the double row of
cubby holes on either side of it and
a narrow aisle down between them
she is hypnotized, and without think1
ing of the gentlemen who are sitting
reading in the only reservation not
yet converted into beds, she “pulls
the drapery of her couch around her”
and gets ready to go by-by as fast as
one can -who is bumped into every
now and then by stout persons wno
have iust come aboard and who with
into a cramped couch. Not only that,
but, being of a hospitable nature, he
was glad to keep “open house,” as he
called stuffing his friends into the
sleeping boxes. And they do say that
he had a carpenter manage so that
the floor shook and lurched until one
of his guests broke a shoulder-blade
from being thrown out of an upper
berth.
I know he had an ex-porter for a
house servant, and that fellow used,
from force of habit, to go through that
“car” at about five in the- morning,-,
just when sleep was most precious;
and poke the reclining sleepers with
his bony hand, saying: “ Are you de
gentleman for Pittsburg? There in
t’frty minutes.”
There is something fascinating in
the Pullman when you have become
used to the abandon and discomfort
and stuffiness of it, and after awhile
you can dress comfortably without
leaving your bed.
I well remember on one occasion
seeing the curtains part and from
an upper berth came down the ladder
an old gentleman in frock coat and
wearing a silk hat. Fancy; emerging
from your bed at home so completely
dressed as that! Let us bless Mr. -
Pullman.
Not for Hans.
Hans came in from his ranch to
buy a horse. “I’ve got the. very thing
you want,” said Ike Bergman; “it’s a
fine road horse, five years old, sound
as a quail, $175 cash "down,, and he
goes ten miles without . stopping.”.
Hans threw up his hands in protest.
“Not for me,” he said—“not for- me. ’
I wouldn’t gif -you five cents -for him.
I live eight miles out, und 1,’d half to
walk back tvro miles.”
Liberty and Morality.
Liberty cannot be established with-
out morality, nor morality without
faith.—Greeley.
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Vernor, J. E. The Lampasas Daily Leader. (Lampasas, Tex.), Vol. 5, No. 1540, Ed. 1 Wednesday, February 24, 1909, newspaper, February 24, 1909; Lampasas, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth910555/m1/2/?q=%22~1~1%22~1: accessed July 15, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Lampasas Public Library.