davidaulloa/AmericanStories huggingface dataset:
The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-02-07

gram, but Crook declares that Lincoln never displayed any irritation at such in- terruptions. He tells, too, of one occa- sion when entering the Presidents room in response to the usual "Come in," he was surprised to find Lincoln busily en- gagged in sewing a button on his trousers. 'Just repairing damages" explained the drol chief magistrate, with half smile. Colonel Crook was frequently called upon to act as messenger between Mrs. Lincoln in the private apartments at the White House and the President in his private ofice and these interchanges gave him, an Illuminating insight into the humor Lincoln found in yielding to the petty tyrannies of his wife. Once when his spouse had sent for him repeatedly and evidently to the limit of her patience to ! accompany her on promised drive, Lin coin arose from his desk with a resigned expression, but with merry twinkle In his eyes, and remarked to Crook "I guess I would better go.'
 Idncoln's fondness for Crook was prob ably partly attributable to the fact that Crook and little Tad Lincoln, the apple of the Presidents eye, were fast friends. Incidentally, it may be mentioned police
  tion for the young sons of our presidents. Readers of the newspapers may remember that during the early days of the Roose- welt administration the then very youth ful Quentin and Archie were the almost inseparable companions of certain blue coats on duty at the White House grounds. Tad Lincoln was 10 years old at the time of Colonel Crooks first reco- lection of him and the veteran White House employe adds his testimony to that of other intimates of Lincoln in the dec laration that the sadfaced Presidents lighter moods were in no wise so pleas ingly disclosed as when he romped up and down the long upper corridor of the White House with Tad, playing all sorts of Juvenile games. It was for Tad's sake, too, that Lincoln, accompanied by body guard Crook, made frequent visits to a quaint little toy shop, still in existence, n couple of blocks from the White House, and there in his rare intervals of leisure sought new plaYthings for the little lad
The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-02-07

coast, spiders were captured 60 miles from shore sailing on little balloons of their own silk The great earthquake of Concepcion, in Chin. took place just few days before Darwin reached that point.
 Thus Darwin the dunee became the great, naturalist. On his return to Eng land he married his cousin, Emma Wedg wood, and settled at Down, a quiet little village in Kent where he wrote the great works that have made him famous and revolutionized the whole of human thought.
 While Darwin was living here he re- ceived letter from Alfred Russel Wal lace, a young naturalist then away in the Malay Islands, with an article embody- ing the very theory on which Darwin had for years been laboring in secret. Dar- win, with supreme unselfshness, for warded the article to .Lyell for the Lin- mean Society. and but Tor his friends in- tervention Wallace would now be Known as the dlscoverer of the theory of eyolu- ton. As 1t was, the two men, working and thinking along independent lines, had both hit upon the same great truth at about the same time. Their names are indissolubly linked in this discovery, as the names of Huxley, Spencer and Haeckel are linked as the great cham pions and vindicators of the theory, which today dominates every sphere of science. All the world will celebrate, on the 18th day of February, the centenary of Dar- wins birth-on the same day that also gave to the world the other great eman- cipator and martyr, Abraham Lincoln.
The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-02-07

that when God created animals, and Adam named them in the Garden of Eden, their characters had been eternally fixed. How could an elephant be evolved from an ant or racehorse from a tor toise?
 What Darwin Proved.
 Now the great achievement of Darwin lay in his demonstration that such had actually been the process of nature. By a thousand concurrent proofs-he relied upon facts, not eloquence = he showed that species do change and are continu- ally changing. He showed the causes that operate to produce these changes; back of them all the great initial law of Natural Selection.N
 When a dog-fancier sets about to pro- duce a new breed of dog, he selects it's parents with the greatest care. If he is breeding for feetness the most agile and best-winded animals are chosen. This process of selection. through several gen. erations, will produce the fieet-footed and deep-lunged dog the fancier desires. Ar tifcial selection, guided by human intel ligence, can thus produce infinite varie- ties of forms. From the original jungle fowl all our known varieties of chickens were evolved. From the original blue rock pigeon came all the countless varie- ties-tumblers, pouters, carriers, capu- chins, fantails. frillbacks and hundreds more.
 What the breeder does by artificial selection, Nature, as Darwin showed,
The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-02-07

yariaby wore on such night expeditions, and with his tall beaver hat emphasizing his enormous height. Withal, Lincoln's kindliness of heart shone through his preoccupation, for occasionally he would draw his bodyguard to his side and walk some paces hand in hand or arm in arm with the younger man.
 It fell to the lot of Colonel Crook, early in his career under Lincoln, to inaugu- rate what has since been an invariable rule at the White House-that against permitting guests at the White House re- captions to enter the presence of the President clad in volumnous cloaks or other garments that might readily con ceal weapons. Nowadays no woman car rying a nun or man with his hands thrust deep into the pocket of an over coat would be permitted to approach the President, but until the latter part of the Lincoln administration such precau- tions had not been dreamed of. On the night on which Colonel Crook first put the innovation into practice he encoun- tered some vigorous protests from some of the White House guests, notably the famous Kate Chase Sprague, who entered wearing wrap that completely hid her dress, but the young and rather nervous bodyguard kept his temper, and when he patiently explained to each protestant the reason for the new rule he succeeded in inducing them all to comply.
 How intimate was Crooks association with Lincoln will be the better under stood when it is explained that at night he was on duty fin the corridor just out side the Presidents bedroom-so close that frequently he could hear the great man sigh or moan in his sleep after a day of unusual anguish and anxiety. Oc- casionally he would have to awake the slsspsr to deliver soma imnortant tels-
The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-02-07

haps an hours application. he would say: "Old fellow, I must take the horizontal for it," that being the best relief from ship motion. He would stretch out on one side of the table for some time and resume his labors when he felt a little better. All his life long he had to com bat more serious disease in the same way.
 Apparently his genius was, indeed, the outcome of his ''ininite capacity for talk ing pains." He was considered a dunce at school. His father once told him he would be "a disgrace to yourself and all your family" He was also quite gullible. Once a youthful comrade told him he could get cakes without money in a cer- tain bakeshop by moving his hat in a certain way. Darwin tried 1t, and mar rowly escaped the wrath of the baker.
 He was destined at first for the prac- tice of medicine, then for the study of theology. That he became neither doctor nor preacher was due to his reading of Humboldt and the encouragement of Pro lessor Henslow, of Cambridge, who rec commended him as naturalist to the com mander of the Beagle expedition, who very nearly rejected him because he did not like the shape of his nose.
 Five Years Around the World.
 The voyage of the Beagle is told in one of the most interesting travel books ever written. The tropic life of Brazil, the treeless pampas of Argentina, the gla- cial wilds of Patagonia, the rock-written record of the Andes-all revealed to the young naturalist their secrets. From In.
 Galapagos, Polynesia, New Zealand and Australia. Everywhere this Columbus of science discovered new worlds with his microscopes; the coral reefs told him the tale of their laborious building, forests of stone whispered the mysteries of ancient oceans. One time their ship was sur rounded by cloud of butterflies, extend ing as far as the eye could reach, grass hoppers came aboard 370 miles from any
The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-02-07

In his rear-after the fashion of an orderly as has been the custom of President Roosevelt and other recent chief magis- trates. Lincoln never liked the idea of being specially guarded and when, follow picions Pole, who skulked about the White House grounds, and a very narrow escape frofn bullet fired at him as he was driving in the outskirts of Washing ton, he finally did consent to special pro tectve measures, but he insisted that no public announcement should be made re- garding these precautions; that the guards should wear plain clothes instead of uni forms, and that the guard who accom- panied him on his walks about the capi- tai should ever remain at his side after the fashion of a personal friend, and with no suggestion of that protection, which was obnoxious to Lincoln, because 1t seemed an admission of lack of con.l- dence in the people of the country
 Colonel Crook declares that he gained perhaps his best insight into the gen. erous, patient, kindly nature of the war President during his nightly walks with Lincoln to the War Department. In those days, be it explained, there was no tele-' graph and telephone station in the White House, such as there is today, and the President. when he wished to get, fresh from the wires, the latest news from the front, had to go to the War Department Building, where the telegraph office was located. This Lincoln did almost every night, often remaining until long after midnight beside the operators at their keys. Colonel Crooks recollection of the President on these night pilgrimages to the news center presents an unusual pic ture of the mighty kncoln-the tall 1g- ure strding beside him in the gloom, wrapped in the rough Grax shawl he in-
The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-02-07
Gas Engines for Freight Steamers in Orient.

had been installed on her.
 The saving in space Is tremendous, which counts for much on board a freighter. There Is no stokehold. The entire stanf necessary is only three engineers and two firemen. The gas producer is extremely simple, being only steel casing lined with firebricks. The fuel is fed from the top and only requires attention 24 times during an entire day and night. Also the coal is practically all consumed under the action of the gas-reducing plant, and all of the tremendous waste encountered at this point in ordinary coal-using ma chinery is eliminated.
 The saving of labor in the gas engines is large The gas is formed by air being drawn Into the consumer in the bottom. After the gas is made it must be passed through cooler and several cleansing processes; but this machinery requires no attention and Is simple and gets out of order infrequently. After being cooled and dried and scrubbed the gas is sent along to the combustion chambers of the en- zine.
The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-02-07

own enemies. Thus, the darker-colored bears were less likely to survive; Nature, selecting the Albinos, produced the snowy white polar bear. This explains why desert animals are mostly yellow like the sand; why many butterflies are like the flowers they frequent; 1t is key to innumerable mysteries.
 Martyrdom of n Scientist.
 And for making these wonderful dis coyeries. proving them by laboriously seeking out thousands of bits of evidence, Darwin was more bitterly assailed than had fallen to the lot of any scientist be- fore. Not even Calico was thus reviled and ridiculed. Bruno, burned at the stake, had fewer detractors and foes. From cartoonlsts to bishops, everybody look fling at the Monkey Man. He was called Atheist and Anti-Christ, mis- represented and maligned by mistaken de- lenders of orthodoxy.
 But the storm blew over. The name of Darwin became a synonym of honor.
The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-02-07
Facts About Modern
 Greece.

~ the average reader the mention of ~. Greece calls up at once mental picture - of the historic glories of the ancient Kingdom, of the Spartans who died at Thermopylae and the Athens of Pericles In all It's classic glory. Yet modern Greece has been slowly developing into a sub stantial kingdom, and its finances and it's method of government are for their size perhaps unrivaed in Europe. That, of course, is because the Greeks have a brand new constitution, comparatively speaking-one that was delivered to them nice and new and all ready made for them when the concert of European pow CTS decided in the spring of, 1863 to per init the Greeks to retain their dearly bought independence of the Turkish Em- pire and selected a son of old King Christian of Denmark to be king of the brand new modern country of Greece.
 ,Greece Is ruled by the King and cabi- net of seven ministers. Under this ex- ecutive control there Is the Bule, or Greek Parliament. which is made up of 235 rep resentatives, each of whom is elected and must be at least 30 years of age Mod ern Greece is divided into 26 provinces. many of which are known by names that ancient Greece made family by words even to Americans, as, for instance, Ar cadia and Laconia-two Greek countries whose names are part of the English lam guage. Everywhere through Greece the country shows traces of its past great ness In art and architecture.
The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-02-07

does by natural selection, by the "sur- vival of the Attest" in the struggle for existence" Thus, by way of illustra- tion, the giraffe has a-long neck, because 1t feeds upon the tender foliage of the mimosa. The longest-neck individuals of each generation had the best chance to survive because food was within easier reach, and also because from their living coming tower they could observe the ap- proach ofs enemies more readily. The shorternecked individuals of each gen eration were far more likely to perish in famine or to fall a prey to fierce car nivora. Thus, with each generation the neck of the giraffe became longer and longer, until the animal we know was evolved.
 Protective coloration is another impor- tant factor. Why Is the polar bear white? Because. living amid snow and ice, the light-colored individuals of each generation had a better chance of stealing upon their prey unobserved and better chance of escaping detection by their
The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-02-07

~ HE battle for trade supremacy on the high seas is a harsh one. In the Far
 u East especially the prices obtained for ocean freight are extremely small. Out there the competition Is decidedly mixed, even the antique Chinese junks still calling regularly at ports for heavy loads of merchandise. While slow, they can fill the demands of big shippers of what is called slow freight.
 So steamship owners all over the world are ever on the lookout for some new sub stitute in present methods of handling their vessels that will reduce the price of coal and get the same power results. A number of inventions have been made that have helped increase the coal efficiency in these big tramp steamers, but still the expenses were very large.
 This refers particularly to tramp steam CTS ,trading in the Orient, where the cost of fuel has risen so very high in the past year that the big steamers have increased fares 10 per cent. on all boats, and the cost of handling freight has gone up in proportion.
 Gas as a motive power for cargo steam CTS has been tried a number of times, but the latest experiment has been made with an old British gunboat. The ship is TOO tons in weight, and so very small con cern She made a distance of II miles at a speed of 10 knots an hour driven by gas generated by the special machinery which
The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-02-07
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The Darwinian theory became the key stone of all scientific thought. A phalanx of great thinkers-Herbert Spencer, Thomas Henry Huxley, Ernest Haeckel and Alfred Russel Wallace-took up arms against bigotry and ignorance. Gradually the truth prevailed, as men saw it was not a question of Moses versus Darwin, of science versus religion; but simply a new and wonderful addition to mans knowledge of Gods eternal law. Canon Farrar was one of the pallbearers at Darwin's funeral. James Russell Lowell, at the time the American ambassador to England, was another. All the world united in mourning and praising the man it had laughed at and decried few years before.
 With the publication of his Life and Letters" it also became known what grandly simple and sweet character had marked the great scientist. His home life was ideally happy. His modesty was sur passed only by his reverence for truth. And perhaps never was patience better personified than in this invalid, who wrote nearly a score of volumes based upon personal painstaking research.
 His Wonderful Patience.
 Many incidents of his life are told to illustrate the perseverance and deyo- ton of his character. He would watch for hours the movements of vine tendrils, study for years the habits of earthworms in his flower pots. A field at Down, his place of residence after returning from his fve-year voyage around the world on the Beagle" was covered with lay CT of chalk and permitted to lie over 20 years before he dug into it to discover what change had been wrought by the ae- tion of earthworms. How many scien- lists could wait placidly for 20 years to learn the result of an experiment?
 During the whole cruise of the "Bea- gle," he suffered severely from seasick- ness, but kept at his work nevertheless Admiral Stokes has told how, after per
The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-02-07
TY HARLEs DARWIN was born on the I/ same day of the same year as Abraham Lincoln - EebrIarv 12

1 HARLEs DARWIN was born on the H/ same day of the same year as N Abraham Lincoln = February 12, 1S09, just hundred years ago. It is one of the most remarkable conjunctlons of all history-the emancipator of a race and the liberator of thought ushered into the world together. One Is almost per suaded that there must be something in astrology, as one compares the character and destiny of these two great men akin in so many ways, in kindness Of heart infinite patience, devotion to truth, heroic courage, dauntless battle and ulti- mate victoryl
 Darwin, who had been ridiculed and de- ncunced all the latter years of his life as the ''Monkey Man." was buried in Westminster Abbey when he died. His grave, by design, is only few feet from that of Sir Isaac Newton. The one dis covered the key to inorganic matter; the other to the yelled portal of life itself.
 By the time Darwin died his theory Of Evolution was generally accepted by scientists, and even theologians began to see that it was not in any sense inimical to revelation or destructive of religion. He was acclaimed as the greatest Eng lisbman of the nineteenth century. A few years ago the "9utlook" published a symposium from eminent men in all walks of life, giving what each thought was the most important book of the nine- teenth century. Nine out of ten put ''The Origin of the Species" first on the list.
 This book, published in 1859, electrified science. It had been a dogma that the species of animals and plants are immut- able cross s-breeding might produce new varieties within a species, but one spe- cies could not be derived from another or changed into another. It was thought
The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-02-07
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who occupied the largest place in his heart.
 Crook, who had been on duty with the President all day, did not accompany Lin coin to Ford's Theater the night of the assassination. He always refers to his ab sence with a certain regret, for he had special system of his own for guarding the Chief Magistrate on such public ap- pearances, and he is convinced to this day that If he had been at his usual sta tion at the door of the Presidents box Booth would never have passed him. There would seem to be some ground for Crooks confidence, for the bodyguard did frustrate the plans of a man who sought to gain audience with Lincoln during the latter's famous visit to City Point, and who, when refused admission, made threats against the President. At the time the man gave the name of Smith, but Crook has always been confident that 1t was none other than the notorious Surrat, with whose appearance under nor nal conditions he was familiar through having lived in the same county in Mary land before the war.
 After the death of Lincoln Colonel Crook accompanied Mrs.-Lincoln to Chicago, and later returned to the White House as the bodyguard of President Johnson. Ere he
The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-02-07
FACTS AND FIGURES.

Official statistics issued in Berlin show that 9,927 young men were condemned and punished during 1907 for attempting to evade compulsory military service.
 A French linguist who recently trans lated some early Greek writings found that the people of those far-away days were well acquainted with the necessity for sterilizing drinking water.
 For use on rural delivery routes a letter box has an electric atta chment which gives the alarm in the house some distance away when mail matter has been deposited by the carrier.
The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-02-07

The Swedes have a custom at Christ mas time of decorating a pet lamb with red ribbons and bells, then loading 1t with gifts for the family. The lamb is turned loose in the house. and each per son attempts to catch it and find his or her gift.