davidaulloa/AmericanStories huggingface dataset:
The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-05-31
Your name, fair gentlewoman?
 king Lear.
Jefferson COultY'S Bond Plan

Probate Judge s. E. Greene has de- cided that the two propositions for a courthouse in this city and for another in Bessemer must be submitted sep arately, although they are to be voted on through the use of a single ballot. Judge Greene is an excellent lawyer. The county has no more thoughtful student of statutes and organic laws, and Judge Greene's decision should be accepted as the law applicable to the coming election.
 All the speculations relative to sep arate votes on the two propositions should be dismissed as idle. Bessemer and the south end of the big county should for convenience sake have courthouse In that way the imperial county can be kept intact, and it is to the interest of all to make all parts content to share in the glory of being part and parcel of the greatest county in the state, and one of the greatest in the union.
 A, skyscraper jail and courthouse is sorely and pressingly needed in this city. State, Inspector Bush has con demned the present Jail, and all know the present courthouse is overcrowded. Let us build a jail and courthouse that will meet all demands upon them until 1850. This proposition should command the vote of every intelligent voter
 And so it is with the Bessemer proposition A $1OO,O0O courthouse at that city would remain good until 1850, and it should be built. In all fairness there should not be vote cast against it in this city.
 The Age-Herald has confidence in the judgment and moral convictions of the people. They know what is good for the county. They know that the two proposed buildings would satis- factorily shelter the public offices of the. county until 1850, and that fact should determine the question in the respect of economy and suffrage re- sponsibility.
The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-05-31
THE AMERICAN HUSBAND.

Anno A. Rogers in the June Atlantic.
 The American masculine claim of ab- sorption in his work does not in the least justify such a condition. Frenchmen support their wives and still find time to go shopping with them too. English men do likewise, and find energy left to place their sons In school, energy to watch keenly the love-affairs of their daughters, unhesitatingly bidding this or that man be gone; moral courage and physical vitality left after the days work to be in fact as well as fancy the head of the house." They have the wisdom to leave hours for play, for pure boyishness of living. And all this may be observed in the same middle class that with us turns the whole issue over to the wife, expecting of her all wisdom, though knowing her sheltered youth, and all vi- tality, to run increasingly and unaided the whole machinery of the family. No wonder our women have 'nerves!' No wonder they are becoming more and more restless Gone of. the first evidences of strain), more and more discontented as time passes. Masculine kindness to our women IS SDIltlliileS SO ldHSle up with selfishness that there need be no surprise that there is some confusion re- garding them.
 Not that our men want the money after which they are striving for themselves for. their pleasures They do not. They are almost notoriously generous. Our rich men give, give, give, to their wives their children, to colleges, to hospitals, to churches, until the whole world is amazed at their generosity.
 The habit and fury of work, unreason- ing, illogical, quite unrelated to any need, is a masculine disease in this country, and the whole social system has for years paid the inevitable penalty. Here and there a man tries to stop in time, but finds himself obsessed by work so that he can no longer think of any, thing else. He is as much a slave to it as is any opium-taker to his drug and drunkard to his potion. It is a grave danger, not only to the individual but to the whole American civilization.
The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-05-31
By Mediation, Not By Arbitration

Interstate Commissioner Knapp and Commissioner of Labor Nell inter- vened in the strike against the Louis vile and Nashville railroad and the Atlantic Coast Line, and an agreement was reached which ends the strike. The nature of that agreement is not fully known, but the use of federal troops is not to be resorted to, and any danger of an extension of the race issue to other southern railroads is averted
 The Atlanta Journal says it has "un- official information to the effect that the policy of negro seniority is to be abolished, and the railroad binds itself not to employ more than 20 per cent of negroes among it's fremen The seniority plan gave to negro firemen some of the best runs" and it was this that precipitated the strike. Prac- tically speaking the settlement is victory for the white firemen and for the brotherhood firemen.
 The settlement of the strike will be felt in the offices of northern news papers. Those papers had utilized it to deliver lectures to the south on re- fusing to give the blacks equal oppor- tunity to work, although they knew then as they know now that the oppor- tunities of the negro in the south ex- ceed his opportunities in the north.
 The settlement is all in all the best that the situation afforded and Messrs. Knapp and Niell, acting for and in behalf of the federal government, de- serve the thanks of all southern people
The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-05-31
A CASTLE OF SLEEP.

From the Mexican Herald.
 Dr. Lemesle of Loches, France, has established there what may be called a castle of sleep, an extensive establish ment where no noise is allowed, and where by every method known to science slumber is induced, some of the means used in bringing on hypnotic sleep being employed The idea is to cure nervous people by making them sleep many hours a day, and the place bids fair to be popu- lar It is almost as luxuriously appointed an establishment as the noted Insomnia club of Guadalajara, where the object Is to enable the sleepless members to pass the long nights in agreeable diversions, amid a splendor and refinement that elevate the taste and quite beyond the dreams of a sybarite. For those who finally are wooed by Morpheus, there is vast marble hall with many soft div ans, where murmuring fountains lull the senses into unconsciousness. The Insom- mia club of the Tapatian capital has been often described in foreign journals by travellers who have enjoyed its hospital ity. It is a notable and unique institu- ton,
The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-05-31
Turned Loose In Storm.

'Toleration for young men who go call ing in gangs on Sunday night exists in some quarters, but is rather slight in others" said one of them last night. This afternoon five young men with their usual loud sox, light clothes with trousers turned up at the bottom, and new straw hats, sought permission to take refuge from the storm at a house near Twelfth avenue and Twenty-fourth street, north.
 '@rhe most delicately handsome gentle man in the crowd stepped forward and asked if they might protect their straws under the roof of the veranda, when they were informed that they had better move on while they could.
 Utterly dumfounded the five birds turned feathers and submitted their plum age to the storm"
The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-05-31
KING EDWARD AT THE RACES.
Britain's Ruler in Paddock Treated as
 Any Other English Gentleman.

From England and the English: From
 an American Point of View" by Price
 Collier just published by Charles serib-
 ner's Sons
 How is 1t in quite another social sphere? At Newmarket in the members stand, walking from the stand to the paddock, see a short, heavily built man of 60-odd, with gray beard and mustache, a fine aquiline nose, clear eyes, a cigar in his mouth, dressed in a brown bowler hat and a formless brown overcoat. It is the King. The King of that crowd in Fleet street. The King of that crowd at Epson. The King of these quiet peo- pie here in the paddock at Newmarket. No one stares, points, whispers; no one even looks. He, too, Is given fair play, a chance with other English gentlemen to enjoy himself. He does not meddle with them; they do not meddle with him.
 If it is necessary to have a row, as has happened when there was undue med ding on either side, it Is fought out and settled In the meantime, fair play, and give every fellow a chance, from the King to the costermonger. AS an Amer ican I take off my hat. I should take off my hat to the King, anyway. He Is the cheapest investment and the most valuable asset Englapd has today. When ever he has taken part in national af- fairs it has been for the glory, the peace and prosperity of his country. When he meddles it is not to advertise himself. not for the humiliation and undoing of his country but for her honor"
The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-05-31
HIgh Credit of Birmingham

Mayor O'Brien has borrowed at 5 per cent straight $150,000. This money will be used to tide the city treasury over until the taxes of the coming fiscal year are paid in. The money will be called for as needed, and in this way considerable saving in in- terest money will be effected.
 The city never negotiated tempor- ary loan on equally favorable terms, and the transaction is tribute to Mayor O'Brien's skill in making loans, and it shows too the abundance of money at the money centers, and Bir- mingham's excellent credit.
 The vigorous manner in which Cap tain OBrien is taking hold of the city's affairs is promise of an alert and efficient administration. He should have the active support and good speech of every citizen in all that he undertakes that makes for the better ment of the city. In this way our new mayor will be encouraged to work all the harder, to strike at every evil in sight, and to do his utmost to make Birmingham brighter, mores attractive and more prosperous.
The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-05-31
EVENING THOUGHTS.

By Lord Byron. All heaven and earth are still-though
 not in sleep, But breathless, as we grow when feel
 ing most; And silent, as we stand in thought too
 deep:
 All heaven and earth are still from
 the high host Of stars, to the lulld lake and noun
 tain coast, All is concenter'd in life intense, Where not beam, nor air, nor leaf
 Is lost, But hath a part of being, and a sense Of that which is of all Creator and de-
 fense. Then stirs the feeling infinite. so felt In solitude, where we are least alone; A truth, which through our being then
 doth melt, And purifles from self; 1t is a tone, : The soul and source of music, which
 makes known Eternal harmony, and sheds charm Like to the fabled Cytherea's zone Binding all things with beauty-'twould
 disarm The spectre Death, had he substantial
 power to harm. Not vainly did the early Persian make His altar the high places, and the peak Of earth-o'ergazing mountains and thus
 take A fit and unwald temple, there to seek The Spirit, in whose honor shrines are
 weak, Uprear'd of human hands. Come. and
 compare
 Columns and idol-dwellings, Goth or
 Greek, With Natures realms of worship. earth
 and air, Nor fix on fond abodes to circumscribs
 thy pray'ri
The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-05-31
ANTIQUITY OF HATS.
from Harper,s Weekly.

From Harper's Weekly.
 We owe to Asia all our manufactures, not emitting the discovery of producing felt. The hats which are so constantly alluded to in scripture were genuine ones adorned by turban cloths, and not mere turbans, as, for instance, those which were bound upon the heads of shadrach. Meshach and Abednego when they were cast into the Assyrian furnace.
 Today, upon the heads of Asiatic Jews. you will see tall, narrow cylinders of gray felt, surrounded by a colored handker- chief.
 The Nestorian Christians of Kurdistan wear felt hats very similar to the Irish caubeen, while throughout the Orient dervishes and fakirs affect tall, light hued felt head coverings.
 During the wars of the roses, fair danes wore hideous steeple-crowned fabrics and the progress of the hat in Europe was not wholly of a peaceful character. There were cities in which rival factions-elect- ing to die for Red Rose or White-divided themselves into hats and "caps' and fought strenuously for the supremacy of one or the other party.
 The pulpit in those days, too, was most unfriendly to the hat. Broad brims were preached against, and plumes and Jeweled clasps were roughly mauled by fiery, cler- ical orators And behold, the steeple- crowned hat became the mark and sign of the Puritan party, while it had its very anuthesis in the Geneva skull cap. But right on top of this ungraceful, Puritani- cal apex there fell the raillery of the gall lantly and beautifully plumed cavaliers
 The cooked hat followed, which the great Napoleon and that philosophical old crony Voltaire loved so well, this being succeeded by those beavers patronized by dandies of the Beau Brummel type.
 And we know that the hot-blooded youngsters who fought for our independ- ence under Lafayette and Rochambeau took the round hat with them to Paris as a novelty. That benevolent and pa- triotic printer, Benjamin Franklin, used to be mobbed when he represented us at the court of Louis XVI, so very wonder ful in the eyes of the Parisians, was that modern cylinder
The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-05-31
Splendid impression.

The Rev pr. Plunkett of Augusta, who preached twice yesterday at the South Highlands Presbyterian church, made a splendid impression. Said man, not of the Presbyterian household, who heard the visiting minister last night:
 "Dr. Plunkett Is not only a polished and forceful speaker. but he holds strong ly to Trinitarian Christianity. He believes as firmly as did scholars of old in the divinity of Christ, and in the doctrine of the atonement. Nearly all the divines of the Southern Presbyterian church are, I believe, loyal to their standards, but In the north not a few of the younger ministers are saturated with the so-called new thought and are systematically en- deavorng to minimize the supernatural in religion and make of Christianity sim ply an ethical religion. The old belief that Christ was God was suited to Chris tians of earlier days, these so-called lib- erals seem to think. but we have out grown It. While few preachers come right out and proclaim themselves Uni tarians, there is decided note of Uni tarianism or so-called ethical theology in many Presbyterian and Congregational sermon delivered in the north. I read these new thought discourses in homi- letic publications and am amazed at the loose views entertained by men even who are supposed to be orthodox. Dr. Fuller ton of St. Louis, the retiring moderator of the Northern general assembly, in his sermon before that body refers plainly to the liberal drift and sounds a loud warning.
 ''As I am one of those old-fashioned creatures who still believe in the truth of the sacred records, it was refreshing indeed to hear Dr. Plunkett talk out in no uncertain tone and talk out, toos sanely and convincingy.
 "All the other Presbyterian ministers hereabouts are. I assume, as orthodox as Dr. Punkett, but as I seldom visit a Presbyterian place of worship I refer especially and with great pleasure to the sermon I listened to at the Highlands Presbyterian church.
The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-05-31
TRADE IN REPTILES.
m the Boston Herald.

From the Boston Herald. .
 The trade in snake skins does not at first thought suggest itself as one re- quiring large capital or very compli- cated organization, at least in this coun- try. But in the far. east things are diff ferent. The Java Reptile Skin company has been incorporated in the island of that name with capital of $40, 900. Branches will be established in num- Der of places throughout the island, where live snakes will be purchased from native hunters. Great stress is placed upon buy ing the reptiles alive, since the skin is much more valuable if the snake is skinned while yet alive. Live snakes 12 to IS feet in length bring good prices; while dead snakes are a drug. in the market. The woman who wearA with pride a daintily bound snake skin cardcase will probably not give a thought to the fact that the material was stripped from a living snake Ever since the episode in Eden some few thousands of years ago shakes have apparently had no right to having their feelings considered.
The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-05-31
JULIA WARD HOWE

maternity, of travel abroad, of constant mingling with first society-American and European-of study of classic litera- ture-Greek' and Hebrew-and last, but not least, the outcome of a poets vision, have given her eatholicity of spirit, boise, a patience, a confident philosophy of meliorism, possessing which she has persuasively made her "causes' take on quite different and more rational as pect in the eyes of carping, critical men. Reformer. lobbyist, public speaker, preacher she has always been womanly in the highest. deepest sense. She al- ways will deserve admiration and re- membrance because of her example of hospitality, hospitality (which not only led her to create and establish a salon at her Boston and Newport homes, but which has led her forth to a wider field for it's display She has seemed to con- ceive it as her patriotic duty, as well as her high personal privilege, to me diate between Creeks Italians, Euro peans of any kind, and the best Amer ican domestic and social life, endeav- ering thereby to open the eyes of both old and new races in America to the human worth or the Otneri ana thus contributing, by this mediation. to per feet that ultimate American racial type and that cosmopolitan point of view which she, so long ago, saw must su- persede the primitive colonial, English American outlook of provincial Boston.
 Supplementing and crowning Mrs. Howe's career as a patriot, as a writer of the "Marseillaise of the unemotional Yankee" and as champion of liberated womanhood, has been her gracious sem eseence," and her personality, which, as they have been disclosed before widely separated groups of fellow-countrymen, have, asIt were, tested the nations ca pacity for reverence-when it has some thing to revere. And the test has been met For 25 years now Julia Ward Howe invariably has won from any American gathering, west, south or east, academic or commercial, pious or profane, the nearest approach to homage and Orien- tai obeisance of which the nominally ir- reverent and often impolite and seeptical Americans are capable. May she repnd out her century, and more
The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-05-31
From the Boston Herald.

From the Boston Herald.
 3HE diversely beneficent and much
 ko enriched life which today rounds
 out it's 90th year overlaps tho lives of Napoleon, George III. and Presi- dent Monroe When Julia Ward Howe was born Scott's novels were all the rage: Keats had just issued his poems; Bryant, Irving and Cooper made the re- zion beyond the Hudson river the center of American literary interest, and Amer jeans in general still implicitly followed British models in literature, philosophy and theology. The Monroe Doctrine" had vet to be defined and American in- telleetual independence of Europe was not even so much as hinted at. Lowell, Whit man. E. P Whipple and T. w. Parsons, who entered the world the same year, long since left it; and an interesting and brilliant group-Taylor, Aldrich, Stod- dard. Stedman, Mitchell, Parkman and Curtis-who were born even later, also have departed.
 When Mrs. Howe first saw the light woman in America thought of herself as either foreordained to matrimony, house service or a state of singleness which was the butt of the scornful. High CT education, both in theory and prac- tice, was denied. Public expression of opinion, in print or speech, was not good form for woman; and interest in cur rent events, national or international, and participation in civic affairs were tabooed.
 The contrast between the state of af- fairs then and now is startling, and the historian of the transformation must reckon with Mrs. Julia Ward Howe as a creative personal factor in bringing 1t about For consider what she has donel She has remained womanly while being a reformer, a public speaker, preacher and lobbyist She has not been "a bigot of the ideal" nor "watered the tender plants of reform with the aqua fortis" of Pharisaical hyper-righteousness, nor been
 "A Radical blushless. bold,
 Who spits in the suns face and cries, Beholdi'
 Wit, humor, a sense of the comic as well as the tragic in life, a wisdom born of
The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-05-31
REFLECTIONS OF A BACHELOR

From the New York Press
 The best way to make love last a long time is to get in the habit.
 If a woman were the best dressed in the town she could worry because It wasn't in the country.
 One of the meanest things for a woman about airships will be how people down on earth can't see she has the best seat. he ought to be doing something more worthy of his ideas than making his living.
 The way to make a girl know you ap- preciate her Is to take her to a baseball game and be proud of her not knowing the difference between base hit and d slide to the plate.
The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-05-31

lature meets in 1911. and then it would be voted on at the general election Of 1912, and legislation under the repeal of the offensive section could not take place until the legislature meets in 1915 unless, indeed, a special session were called for that purpose at an ex- pense of about s5o,00O. The people are, therefore, in no mood to indorse Dr. Tarrant's repeal proposition. It in wolves too much delay What is wanted is statewide reform bill at the earliest practicable moment, and this can be had under section 96. The fee brigade really builded better than they knew.
 The four candidates in the field in this county for member of the house of representatives are Felix L Tarrant, J. Murray Norment, Dr. W. F. Black and Capt. Romaine Boyd of Ensley. Dr. Tarrant has explained fully his views on the fee issue, but the other three have not They should do so without delay, and the columns of The Age-Herald are open to them. The people await statements of their re- spectiye positions on the chief issue of the day wholly regardless of the action the governor of the state may or may not take upon it.
The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-05-31
Goes to Tampa.

J. H. Tracy, who was connected with the carpet department of Loveman. Jo- seph & Loeb, having accepted a position with Maas Bros, Tampa, Fla, left for his new home yesterday. The concern with which he goes has the contract to fur nish and decorate the United States gov- ernment building at the exposition to be opened at Tampa January 1, 1910; and MT. Tracy was especially in demand, owing to the fact that he is an expert in carpets and draperes and decorative art generally.
 His many friends here regret to see him leave Birmingham, but will wish him all manner of success in his new field.
The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-05-31
Local Labor Employed.

About one-half of the skilled labor at work on the office buildings recently con- structed and in process of construction is home labor,' said a skilled mechanic.
 ''rhe fact is that Birmingham can now furnish all the skilled labor needed in the construction of steel frame and con crete buildings. During the past three or four years some of this class of labor which came here has remained with us. Then, too, there are many skilled men here in the iron working and bridge building trades as well as workers in wood and stone and terra cotta.
 Tt is probable that the next piece of large. construction work will use at least three-fourths of home labor; and the wages are good. This will keep much of the money here"