Ten Paces From An Open Grave

From The Times of Richmond, Virginia on Friday, March 3, 1899:

FOUGHT BESIDE AN OPEN GRAVE. 

A Tenderfoot Who Was Not Terrorized by a Border Ruffian. 

THE DUEL A BLOODLESS ONE. 

The Calmness of the Intended Victim Was Too Much for His Would Be Slayer, Who Apologized Most Abjectly. 

Captain Jacob Matthews died recently near Sidney, Neb.  He was a principal in one of the most singular, if bloodless duels ever fought in the West.  He emigrated from Pennsylvania early in the 60's, and settled at Omaha, where he began as a small merchant.  Of Quaker stock and peace-loving, he frequently declared he had fired a pistol only once in his life.  His title was entirely complimentary. 

The duel in which he engaged took place shortly after his arrival at Omaha City, when he aroused the animosity of Bull Tomey, a blackleg and an expert with the pistol.  Matthews refused to sell goods to Tomey on credit, whereupon the latter promptly challenged the young merchant to a duel.  As Tomey had participated in a dozen or more such affairs and had always come off victorious, great was the surprise and alarm of Matthews' friends when he promptly accepted the challenge. 

"I have never had a pistol in my hands in my life," said Matthews, "but I mean to meet him, though neither of us will be hit." 

The next day Matthews and Tomey met in a field south of the town.  The news of an impending duel had been well circulated and friends of both assembled, although the general conviction was that Matthews was as good as dead. 

A YAWNING GRAVE. 

To the amazement of the spectators, as well as Tomey and his second, when they reached the field they found a newly dug grave yawning for him who should fall in the duel.  Tomey made it the butt of his coarse wit. 

"That feller Matthews is a thoughtful one, he said to the crowd.  He comes out here to get me to pop him off and has his own grave ready, so we can hold the funeral without waste of time."

"On the contrary," answered Matthews, "I have that grave dug for you." 

John Brown's Son Reminisces About Antebellum Kansas, 1903

From the Wichita Daily Eagle of Wichita, Kansas on September 20, 1903.

----

FIGHT FOUGHT OVER. 

John Brown's Son Talks of Border Warfare. 

BATTLE OF BLACK JACK 

How Little Band Routed Missouri Raiders. 

The famous old Kansas border fighters who fought under the man whose body lies a mouldering in the grave, but whose soul goes marching on, greated one another in Portland yesterday after many years, says the Portland Oregonian. One was Solomon Brown, one of the twenty children of the celebrated abolitionist; the other was August Bondi, a wiry little old man, with the dark eyes and expressive face of the people of his native city, Venice.  Mr. Bondi,  a prominent citizen of Salina, Kan., is a veteran of the civil war, visiting Portland from the late San Francisco Grand Army encampment.  He was first sergeant, Company K, Fifth Kansas, and is now 70 years old.  An adventurous old man, inspired by the character of Kossuth and his compatriots under whom he fought for Hungarian liberty, he had come to Kansas in early days and at once thrown his aid to the cause of the Free State party. 

Solomon Brown is a gigantic chip of[f] the old block in appearance.  His resemblance to John Brown's portrait is striking.  A man of low voice and unassuming manners, he impresses one as of the genuine old fighting stock to which he belongs.  He is said to have been a man of enormous physical strength in his prime, though now he is crippled in the right leg from being thrown from a horse some years ago. 

In company with Mr. Bondi, an Oregonian reporter they visited Solomon Brown yesterday at his residence, 353 Grant street, and listened to the story of his famous battle of Black Jack in the old Kansas border days. 

"The battle of Black Jack was the first battle of the war between the north and the south," said Solomon Brown. 

"Yes," said August Bondi, "and its result forecasted the result of the war.  That was on the second day of June, 1856.  Lord! how hungry we were!" 

"That was 47 years ago," said Solomon Brown. "You tell the young man the story, Bondi, if he wants it." 

Out came the reporter's pencil, and August Bondi began: 

"There has been fighting in Kansas, you know, for many months, but when Wilson Shannon was appointed governor of that state by Franklin Pierce the day was looking dark for the freesoilers.  The border ruffian invasion was on, legalized by Shannon, who armed the pro-slavery forces with guns from the United States arsenal at Liberty, Clay county, Missouri." 

"Old Jim Lane afterward burned the town," said Solomon Brown. 

"The Kansans," continued the other, "were all new settlers and poor; their seed grain, their horses and cattle were their only dependence for the future, and these were taken from them by force or destroyed, while many men, the support of those struggling families, were murdered in cold blood.  But old John Brown went marching on.  With eleven of us for a nucleus, he prepared to gather a force to repel the border ruffians. 

"The little company made up of John Brown, Jr., captain; four of his sons--Owen, Solomon, Fred and Oliveu; Charles Kaiser, Theodore Wiener, August Bondi, George Townsley, Ben Cochrane, and Henry Thompson, brother-in-law of John Brown, Sr." 

"We were guided by a settler, Howard Carpenter, to a secure hiding place in the virgin forest of eastern Kansas, on Tauy Creek, near the Douglas county line.  There was a reward out for each of our heads, but nobody was trying to earn it." 

"Why?" asked the reporter. 

The Tragedy of the American Buffalo

Very large pile of American buffalo skulls, photo taken 1870.  Source: Wikipedia.

The word "pile" seems a hopelessly inadequate description for this image.

The American Buffalo almost went extinct in the nineteenth century due to people over-hunting them for food, clothing, and sport.  Only a few small herds managed to escape the extermination, creating a severe genetic bottleneck.  Worse, scientists have recently discovered that the genetic makeup of the majority of these herds are contaminated with cattle DNA.  (Unlike the progeny of donkeys and horses, the offspring of cattle and buffalo are generally fertile.)

The following is from the second chapter of The Overland Stage to California by Frank A. Root, published in 1901.   This chapter is actually about the Prairie ("the Great American Desert", as he refers to it), but talks in great detail about buffalo, which I have excerpted and arranged here.  Root was in Kansas Territory in the 1850s and '60s and drove overland stagecoaches during that time, and his book recounts many of his firsthand experiences.  You can view the book on google books for free if you wish to read this chapter, or the book, in its entirety.

CHAPTER II.

THE GREAT AMERICAN DESERT, HOME OF THE BUFFALO. 

The first buffaloes I ever saw were in the streets of Atchison.  It was in the early '60s, during the war; but after that I saw them on several occasions.  These were domesticated and yoked together, having been driven in by a ranchman from the Republican valley, hauling produce to the Atchison market.  They attracted considerable attention from the business men.  They seemed to travel all right, were extremely gentle, and, under the yoke, appeared to work quite as nicely as the patient ox.  Nothing particularly strange was thought about the matter at the time, when there were immense herds of buffalo roaming wild on the plains of western Kansas; but I never, after that year, saw any of the shaggy animals yoked and doing the work of oxen. 

The number of buffalo in the great West less than half a century ago was roughly estimated at from ten to twenty millions. Careful authorities put the number at fifteen millions.  They once existed in New York, a number of buffaloes having been killed in the western part of that state, near where the bustling commercial city of Buffalo is built, which will perpetuate the name of the now practically extinct American animal.  In western Pennsylvania, near the salt-licks, a number of buffaloes were found; and according to an early explorer, a few head were found in ... large numbers in Virginia.  According to early writers, they were found in the Carolinas and along the northeast coast of Georgia, the only record known of their existence on the Atlantic seaboard.  East of the Mississippi, they ranged south as far as northern Alabama and were found in places throughout Mississippi and Louisiana.  Large numbers abounded in Texas.  They were also found in the northern provinces of Mexico, New Mexico, a portion of Utah, and also in Idaho, Washington, and in the arctic circle as far north as Great Slave Lake.  ...   

A HERD OF BUFFALO ON THE PLAINS IN WESTERN KANSAS
Pg 26 of The Overland Stage to California by Frank A. Root (pub 1901)

History informs us they were found by Coronado on his march northward from Mexico as early as 1585, between the Missouri river and the Rocky Mountains; later they were found by Lewis and Clarke, Zebulon M. Pike, and Long, in the early part of the present century; still later by Fremont and others, who made tours of exploration through the great West.  Often they were seen by tourists and hunters in immense herds, numbering hundreds of thousands. ... 

... Daniel Boone, the famous Kentucky hunter, once found a herd of buffaloes in his state which numbered 1000 head.  That was then believed to be a big herd but it was not then known that there were herds numbering millions of buffalo grazing on the plains embraced in the region known as the "Great American Desert," lying between the Missouri and the Rockies. 

The pioneers of Kansas, particularly a number who settled on the frontier--along the upper valley of the Smoky Hill, Republican, Solomon and Saline rivers--practically owed their lives to the existence of the buffalo.  For years in the '60s a goodly portion of the meat consumed by those early settlers was cut from the carcass of the noble, shaggy animal which so long existed as monarch of the plains.  Thousands of people who at an early day went overland to Utah, Oregon and California drew their supply of meat from the buffalo.  Where this life-preserver was found, it was known that, by following their paths, nearby water would be found.  The principal article of fuel found on the frontier for cooking the meat of the buffalo was the dried excrement of the animal, known in early Kansas and Nebraska parlance as "buffalo-chips."  The buffalo was one of the noblest of all animals.  It seemed indispensable.  It furnished man with an abundance of the most wholesome meat; the hide was made into shoes and garments worn during the day, and it made a comfortable bed and supplied warm covering in or out of doors at night. 

The building of the Pacific railroad was made possible at so early a day simply because the buffalo existed.  From the mighty herds the vast army of railroad builders drew their daily supply of fresh meat, and thousands of the animals were annually slaughtered for food while pushing to completion, in the '60s, the great transcontinental line.  For a few years in the '70s the railways did an enormous business carrying East train loads of hides and buffalo bones, these for a number of years being the principal articles of commerce gathered from the plains.  For years the great West resembled a charnel-house. Losing their crops, the pioneer settlers gathered up the bleached bones that covered the land, and they were shipped to the carbon works in the East, for the sale of which enough was realized to enable them to pull through another season. ... 

... The last herd of buffalo I ever saw in the wild, native state was in the fall of 1870.  It was along the Kansas Pacific railroad, near the head waters of the Smoky Hill river.  The railroad had just been built, and the animals seemed terribly frightened at the cars.  In their mad race westward along the railroad, they actually kept up with the passenger-train, which was moving along from fifteen to eighteen miles an hour.  The race became exciting, and all the passengers--many of whom had never before seen a buffalo--held their breath in suspense.  It was noticed that the animals never changed their course, but kept steadily coming nearer the train, apparently determined to cross the track at the curve a short distance beyond.  Not caring for a collision which might possibly derail the train, the engineer gave up the race and whistled "down brakes," stopping within a few rods of the animals to let them cross.  A parting salute was given by some of the passengers, who emptied the chambers of their six-shooters among the beasts, but which they did not appear to mind any more than a blast from a toy pop-gun.  While these animals used to cover the prairies and plains of western Kansas and Nebraska in countless millions, hardly one of them is now left to remind us of the once noble and powerful herds originally known in the great West as "crooked-back oxen." 

The best meat we used to get on the frontier in the early days was buffalo.  The markets at Atchison, Leavenworth, Topeka and a number of other Kansas towns, as early as 1857 and for some years following, were often supplied with buffalo meat, brought in from central Kansas.  No beef, it was said, could excel, even if it could equal, that of the buffalo; especially the hump upon the shoulders, which was invariably spoken of as a choice morsel."  Rich, juicy buffalo steaks and superb roasts were as common in the '60s on the plains as were other fresh meats in the best of well-regulated city markets. ... 

... What a shame, what an outrage on civilization! that the buffalo ... was so ruthlessly slaughtered.  Millions of the shaggy beasts were indiscriminately shot down by the white man in the '60s and '70s apparently just for the "fun of the thing." 

I remember well in the early '60s, while residing at Atchison, when long ox trains, loaded exclusively with buffalo hides, frequently were brought in from the plains by freighters.  The wagons were unloaded on the levee and the skins shipped on board steamboats down the Missouri river for St. Louis and Cincinnati.  Later, I saw hundreds of wagon-loads of these skins on the plains, in 1863-'65, when riding on the overland stage along the Platte and Little Blue rivers.  Several years afterward such trains were frequent sights at various towns on the Missouri.  Most of the wagon trains bearing the cargoes of untanned robes from the "Great American Desert" were from the Platte valley; some bound for Omaha, some for Nebraska City, some for St. Joseph, and most of the balance for Atchison and Leavenworth.  Hundreds of wagon-loads of the skins from the plains went into Kansas City from the "Old Santa Fe Trail." ... 

... According to a writer in Harper's Magazine a few years ago, Fort Benton--a military post about 2500 miles up the Missouri from St. Louis--in 1876 along sent 80,000 buffalo hides to market.  Toward the close of their career on the plains the animals had divided into two great herds--the southern and northern.  The great southern herd, however, was the first to go, being practically extinct at the close of 1872.  A few straggling herds only, after that date, were to be found.  The early '80s was about the last seen of the wild buffalo of the plains, which a quarter of a century or more before was so numerous between the Missouri river and the Rocky Mountains.  The greatest slaughter of the beasts was in 1872-'74, when, it was estimated, the number slain ran up into the millions. 

Hundreds of the best shots from all over this country and Europe, in the early '70s, were on hand to take a farewell hung before the shaggy bison became extinct.  Scores of noted Nimrods came from England, Scotland, Russia, and Germany--in fact, from almost every part of Europe.  The Grand Duke Alexis, youngest son of Emperor Alexander, of Russia, with quite a numerous retinue, came with a party from St. Petersburg, and went on a tour through "Buffalo Land" in the winter of 1871-'72. ...  

... During the immense overland traffic in the early '60s, portions of the plains were fairly white with bones of the buffalo.  The animals had first been killed by the Indians for their food and robes, and later, millions of the shaggy beasts had been indiscriminately slaughtered by the white man just for sport, their carcasses left a prey for the wolves, and their bones to bleach by the wayside.  In the '50s and '60's their bones were scattered promiscuously in center localities for hundreds of miles in central and western Kansas, and between Fort Kearney and Julesburg along the Platte, as far back from the river as the eye could reach.  

No one seeing the apparently endless mass of bones even dreamed that any use would ever be made of them; but after the completion of the Union Pacific railway and its branches across the "Great American Desert," and, later, the building of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe line into the Southwest, an immense new industry was early inaugurated in Kansas.  Kansas was the natural home of the buffalo, and, during the '70s, hundreds of merchants in the western part of the state had a regular trade established and did a lively business buying and shipping buffalo bones to Eastern markets.

Desks, Benches, and Chaos in the House of Representatives

WHY THERE IS CONFUSION 
ON THE FLOOR.
Wichita Daily Eagle, Jan. 13, 1891

The House of Representatives originally had a seating arrangement of assigned desks.  These desks were not only where members participated in the daily agenda, but also served as their personal office space where they wrote letters, conducted research, and talked with other members.  This arrangement resulted in a lot of general confusion.  The most popular solution to this problem was to replace the desks with benches to keep the members from carrying on all manner of business on the House floor. It was thought this would reduce noise and increase collective participation. Two unsuccessful propositions for benches were made in 1842 and 1847.  A third proposition in 1859 succeeded, to begin in 1860.  The benches were changed back to desks after only twelve weeks due in part to an increase in fighting among members in the days before disunion.  However, criticism of the desks continued, and subsequent propositions to change to benches were made in 1878, 1883, 1889, and 1901, until the measure finally succeeded in 1913.

Below are a five newspaper articles (or excerpts of articles) which fill in some of the more colorful details of how desks augmented the chaos of congress. 

Source for this introduction: Pgs 1106-1107 of Volume 5 of Hinds' Precedents of the House of Representatives of the United States by Asher C. Hinds, Clerk at the Speaker's Table, published 1907 and available on google books here. Also, due to the length of this blog post, all screencaps of articles have been placed at the very end with captions indicating their origin.

SEEN BY A CANUCK.

A Visitor From Canada Writes of the House of Representatives.

 [Toronto Globe republished in Macon Telegraph of Macon, GA on Feb 20, 1899]

From the Toronto Globe.
To the visitor in the house of representatives who has been accustomed to the severe discipline and strict decorum of British legislatures the degree of liberty indulged in by the members seems somewhat strange.  There is a continual hum of conversation, a constant moving about the floor, the frequent formation of groups of members for consultation and, what would doubtless be regarded as treason by the attendants in the gallery of the mother of parliaments, applause from the spectators at times.  The American politician is often accused of over-vehemence and a disposition to shout when ordinary tones would better serve the purpose.  After an hour in the big chamber of the popular house, with its continued din, one can well understand that the member of congress comes naturally by his strident tones and strenuous manner.  Without them he would never be heard by his chattering colleagues, and to the galleries he would speak only by gesticulation.  The official reporters suffer greatly from the noise.  Instead of sitting at their desks in front of the speaker's chair, they find it necessary to skip about to whatever section of the house a speaker may be in, dropping into a vacant seat if convenient, but more frequently leaning against a desk, pad in hand.  Unhappy indeed is that mortal in the middle of whose 'take' there is a change of speakers.  He may have crept close up to 'the member from Michigan' on the extreme left of the huge semicircle in which the seats are arranged, and may have to make a run like a baseball player for his home base to the other side to catch the opening remarks of 'the member from Arkansas' as he rises to interpose an objection. 

SHOWING THE WAY REPRESENTATIVES ARE NOW SEATED AT THE DESKS.
Plan of the 59h Congress.
From The New York Tribune, of New York, NY on Oct. 20, 1907.

It sometimes happens that members lose their tempers in the heat of debate.  The bowie knife and the revolver, contrary to the belief of many of our kinsmen across the seas, are no longer the weapons with which these quarrels are settled.  They have been replaced by the statutes in calf and the inkstand, which are much more convenient and less deadly.  When a row breaks out on the floor and the combatants come to close quarters, it is the duty of the sergeant-at-arms to interpose the mace between them.  The mace is the emblem of the civil power, but it is somewhat different in appearance from ours.  It consists of a bundle of ebony rods bound together with ligaments of silver and having on top a silver globe surmounted by a silver eagle.  It resembles the faces borne by the lictors[?] before the Roman magistrates.  It is known familiarly as "the bird."  Just before the declaration of war with Spain "the bird" did duty in quelling a row.  An excited member had enforced his remarks by throwing the law in the concrete form at his opponents head.  The latter made a rush at his antagonist, mutual friends held them back, while from all sides of the house came the cry, "Sergeant, bring the bird!"  The bird was sent forward to the fighting line as rapidly as possible and hostilities ceased.  The man who would dare to strike a blow over "the bird" has not yet entered congress.

Fists Are Shaken.

[excerpt from "Fistfights in the Halls of Congress" by the New York Herald published in The Ogden Standard of Ogden, Utah on July 2, 1910.]

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 1860.
Wichita Daily Eagle, Jan 13, 1891

The most hotly contested Speakership election featured the opening of the Thirty-sixth Congress, in December, 1859.  The bitterness of preceding contests paled before this struggle, which lasted from December 5, 1860.  The tenseness was exaggerated by the seating arrangement in the House.  Instead of the seats and desks of an earlier and a later day, benches were installed, so that the House was drawn into a small compass.  During these days of turmoil and strife the members were thus in closer contact and were more easily impelled by the prevailing passion.  As a consequence there was much shaking of fists under noses, much hurling threats of personal violence and much assuming of insulting and defiant attitudes.

Trend Alert: Teeth Disappearing, 1897

This fine example of absurd, alarmist journalism comes from The Princeton Union of Princeton, Minnesota on September 9, 1897:

ARE TEETH DISAPPEARING?

A Terrible Callamity Promised for the Coming Generations.

What is to be done about it, or will the future race be consent to do without teeth? asks the Boston Herald.  According to an experienced dentist, education is playing sad havoc with the teeth of the modern generation.  The change in them has been apparently rapid, more so than in other physical deteriorations, and, dentistry having become a science, the cause is sought with hopes to stay the effect.  Formerly, says the dentist, decayed teeth were attributed to a fondness for sweets, but this idea is a mistake.  Sugar is nourishing, and taken with a wholesome diet and proper care of the teeth it doesn't harm them.  The truth is that the ancient sturdy square jaw of the Anglo-Saxon race is changing through over-much study and over-reduction to a V shape, which presses the molars one upon the other and does not give them room to grow, and will in time prevent them cutting at all.  The horse lost his five toes through disease; the man is about to lose his "wisdom" teeth through a like process.  The "wisdomers" are already missing in many jaws.  This singular to relate, makes the "educated jaw."  English women are not averse to this V-shaped angle of chin.  They are distinguished for the length and breadth of the teeth, and would gladly see their ivories diminish under the new facial form.  Girton and Newnham, Radcliffe and Vassar are responsible for much of this "educated" jaw.  The young men are not sorry to have less teeth to be filled, and as personal vanity plays little part in their physical culture they would as soon be toothless as not.  But suppose more study, more "higher education" aids this process of evolution and in the course of time the grandchildren of the students of today have jaws like chipmunks and never, no never, cut any teeth, what then?  Will the dentists' occupation be gone; or will they, as a writer suggests, then manufacture complete artificial sets for people from the day of their birth onward?

"The War on the Northern Pacific"

From Harper's Weekly magazine on May 25, 1901, Volume XLV, No. 2318, comes this wonderful cartoon by W. A. Rogers and related article by Henry Loomis Nelson.  Many volumes of Harper's Weekly are available on google books, including this one (available here).  Click the images to enlarge.

"ESTABLISHING A "COMMUNITY OF INTEREST"
cartoon by W. A. Roger

The War on the Northern Pacific

By Henry Loomis Nelson

There is much confusion of rumor, and consequently much confusion of thought, touching the recent struggle, perhaps not yet concluded, for the control of the Northern Pacific Railroad.  As a stock-jobbing operation, the facts are clear and pretty well understood.  During the week which ended on the 4th of May, the healthful week when the abounding wealth of the country and its rich promise of prosperity expressed themselves in the stock quotations of the Exchange, Northern Pacific, in the language of Wall Street, was "one of the most active stocks."  It had been selling below 80 a few weeks prior to the general rise in prices, and now it went bounding up towards 120.  Some one, or some combination, was buying it in large quantities, and there was an apparent change of ownership in hundreds of thousands of shares.  Monday, the 6th of May, saw a continuation of this buying, and there began what seemed to be, and was, a struggle for the possession of the road.  Stocks went in response to the eager demands for it, and finally Mr. Keene, seeing the effort that was being made, and knowing that prices must go up until the sellers begged for mercy, helped along the movement by becoming an auxiliary buyer.  When the stock broke, it had once reached, for a moment, the price of $1000 per share for the common stock of the road.  Thousands of shares had been sold which did not exist.  Money was borrowed at astonishing rates of interest, and small fortunes were paid for the loan of Northern Pacific stock.  Loss and ruin visited hundreds of rash speculators, but no so many as would have been caught under like conditions at any other moment in the history of the Stock Exchange.  Then the question rose as to who controlled the road.  The effort to buy it away from the control of J. Pierpont Morgan & Co. and Mr. Hill was made by Kuhn, Loer, & Co., Mr. Jacob Schiff being the active partner in the transaction, the firm representing the Union Pacific Railroad interest, at the head of which is Mr. Harriman.  Which of these parties controlled the road at the end of the contest is a question still unsettled.  The aggressive war was made upon the Morgan-Hill management, who still believe that they own and influence enough stock, as the stock account stands, to maintain themselves.  The others deny this, and assert that they possess a majority of the stock.  Mr. Hill neither bought nor sold a share during the excitement, and no one of his men who are of his party, and who are in his confidence, yielded to the temptation to part with a share of his stock while the high prices prevailed.  It may require the revelations of the natural annual meeting to determine the control of the property.

Tesla Predicted Television and Video Chat

This one didn't quite fit in with the topic of my last Nikola Tesla post where I shared clips of his more outlandish claims, but I liked this one too much to not share it as well.

From The Tacoma Times of Tacoma, Washington on October 14, 1915:

The Tacoma Times, Oct 14, 1915

...Tesla, "but believe me when I say it is only the beginning.

"Very soon it will be possible for us to see each other at distances of thousands of miles; we shall be enabled to hear an opera, sermon or scientific lecture, and be visually present in all kinds of meeting and transactions without regard to where we ourselves happen to be at that time.

"This will become a daily business experience, not only to transmit with unerring precision a signature to an important document, but enable the recipient in a distant country to see it affixed by the sender.

1.5-Year-Old Boy and His Pet Snakes

From The Caldwell Watchman of Columbia, Louisiana on January 8, 1915:

SNAKES IN INFANT'S LAP

-----

Mother Startled at Finding Child Petting Copperheads and Feeding Them.

-----

Altoona, Pa.--To keep him home, where she thought he would be in no danger, Mrs. John Kobac of Northwood, a suburb of Tyrone, carried a large bowl of bread and milk out on the front porch and summoned her active eighteen-month-old son George to a feast.

George "fell to," and the mother went off to finish her housework.  In a short time she heard him using pet names, and went out to see who was there.  She was horrified to discover George nursing two fair-sized copperheads.

The reptiles were lying in his lap, greedily feeding on the bread and milk, while he stroked them affectionately with his hands.

Mrs. Kobac screamed, grabbed the child and fled into the house as the snakes wriggled away.

Nostalgia versus History

From the satirical magazine Puck, VOL. XXII, No. 508. on January 25, 1888.  This is viewable for free on google books here.

 

Ah, yes, the quiet life they used to lead in those days sitting  before the dear old open fire-place, with the great log smouldering  -- all  conducive to tender  thoughts and romantic attachments.  But no one has ever mentioned the dear old blow-downs they used to have from that dear old fire-place.

A Brief Look at Inauguration Customs, 1809-1909

This article really lacks focus, so I wasn't sure what to name this post.  This article, however, is still entertaining.  It starts off talking about the packing of President Theodore Roosevelt's belongings for his move from the White House, with the preparations for Taft's inauguration as a backdrop.  It also describes T. R.'s library.  Then it jumps back a hundred years to look at James Madison's inaugural in 1809, and talks a bit about a few inaugural customs from that era which did not last.  It also discusses Teddy Roosevelt's attitude regarding gifts, and at the end briefly reviews inaugural gifts given to Presidents Madison, Van Buren, and Harrison.

From The Washington Herald of Washington, D.C., on February 14, 1909: