davidaulloa/AmericanStories huggingface dataset:
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-10-12

haps float as well in the air as some
 birds do for almost constant motion seems to be a condition of the man-bird.
 When one sees what has been accomp- lished it is not at all difficult to discern what will be added in the soon-coming years. Mans conquest of the air is now fully assured, and this is the point that MT. Parmelee in a Wright machine makes plain every day at the fair. This is what everybody in this state should wit ness It is a marvellous exhibition, and all doubters who see 1t are sllenced by 1t.
 The Wright's have simply put aviation on its feet, or perhaps we should say on it's wings. The process of develop ment now becomes inevitable. It Is as- sured, and every additional year will make assurance douply sure. No achiev- ment of man in the present century will outrank the conquest of the air, an ele- ment that has long baffled mans best efforts. Gasoline and the brothers at Dayton. O., did 1t.
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-10-12
EFFECT OF ALCOHOL ON MEMORY

From The Survey.
 Experiments which have been conducted on intelligent, sometimes highly edu- cated, men, to discover the effect of very small quantities of alcohol, are of great interest. The conclusions which have been accepted by scientists are that even a. moderate" amount of alcohol, if taken habitually, tends to have the following effects, to different degrees in different individuals:
 l. To diminish the amount of mechan- ical muscular work performed, as meas ured by the ergograph.
 9 To weaken the power of attention, as indicated by the length of time required to write down certain figures or letter.
 8. To lessen efficiency in the perform ance of work like typesettipg, in which it is comparatively simple to measure the amount accomplished in a given pe- riod.
 4. To retard the mental processes in vovled in.
 fa) Adding single numbers.
 Cb) Writing down words suggested by given word.
 Co Memorizing figures.
 The curious thing about this is that the individual affected imagines he is work ing faster. thinking more clearly than usual.
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-10-12
Aviator Parmelee'S Marvellous Flights

The ease with which Aviator Parmelee guides Wright aeroplane is simply won- derful in calm weather. What he would be able to do in strong wind remains to be shown at the fair. So far as the art of aviation is concerned the every day spectator will be satisfied with a plain and convincing exhibit that man can fly as readily as a bird in good weather. That is glory enough. He can start as readily as a bird and alight as safely and gently. MT. Parmelee can swoop down like hawk and he can shoot upward as readily and as swiftly as the best of the winged creatures. There are few bird tricks in the air that he is not capable of. He can not per-
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-10-12
IN HOTEL HOBBIES
Delighted nitn tbe Fair


 A. J. Eaton, prosperous farmer of Limestone county. after spending several days Tn Birminghan, returned home last night.
 T have been atending the fair" said MT Eaton, and have greatly enjoyed it. This years fair is in most respects the best ever held in Alabama. The exhibits have interested md. but the aeroplane alone would have been well worth my trip to Birmingham. The crowds in att tendance are very large and every one seems to be deliglted. I wish more Limestone people had come. As the State Fair at Birmingham is now an es- tablished institution 3the visitors from all sections of Alabama will increase in num- bers year by year'
 MT. Eaton said that he had made good crops this season and that the people of northern Alabama generally were highly prosperous
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-10-12

T
 Must moving picture shows be given in dark auditorium. with all the lack of social spirit and the tendency to care less conduct which a dark auditorium leads to?
 On the contrary, asserts the Survey moving picture shows can be and many are being given in broad daylight with out any loss of effect. They are, more over, being given in auditoriums where individuals can be recognized from end to end of the hall and where programmes can be read without strain to the eye.
 'The methods are altogether simple. The screen on which the moving picture is thrown must be sheltered from the direct rays of light, and the eyes of the audience must be similarly sheltered. Where picture shows are given in broad daylight it is the custom to construct sort of hood over the screen, into which the daylight only penetrates by reflected rays, and the picture, In con trast with the extreme brightness out side, appears In all its clearness of out line and depth of shadow. Where it is desired to light the interior of an audi torium during a picture performance, the method is equally simple: No in- tense light must be seen, but the audi torium must be illuminated by a diff fused light thrown from lamps whose rays do not travel direct to the picture screen or to the eyes of the audience. In practice the method is to shelter the electric lights by means of ledge either around the wall or into the ceiling, so that the rays of the lamps are thrown along the height of the wall or across the ceiling and are merely reflected in a diffused way into the body of the audi
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-10-12
LIFE IN A GREAT CITY

From the Chicago Tribune.
 The crowd blocked the sidewalk and spread out half way across the street.
 Men struggled and almost fought to force their way through to find out what was going on.
 Whats the trouble?" asked a dozen voices.
 The answers were unsatisfactory. It was a man in fit. Somobey had faint ed. Two newsboys were fighting A woman had been run over by a delivery wagon. A pickoclset had been caught In the act.
 "Aw, gwan. here! Move ahn" vocife- rated policeman, who was the last to arrive
 The crowd melted away.
 Then the cause of the excitement was revealed. , It was a glazier trying to break of half an inch from the bottom of a large pane of plate glass
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-10-12
OLD SPAIN IN CALIFORNIA


 From Scribners Magazine.
 It is not a highway in Spain-this Camino Real-that I mean to follow, but highway in our own land. Span ish as any in Iberia, road of infinite variety, long enough to traverse that peninsula, and running, as it would there. from the desert wastes of noun tain plateaus to the orange groves and palmettos of soft lands of sunshine.
 While our patriot fathers were strug- gling for their liberty along our east ern seaboard an old padre-"el infatig- able operario de la Vina de Senor," as his friend and companion calls him was establishing his missions along our western coast. His chain of churches, when completed. was linked by this road, known to the Spaniard as El Camino Real, the Kings high way-the only road marked by Dufiot de Maufras on his map of upper Call ifornia, published in Paris just two years before the American occupation. It still remains the lonely highway that 1t always was, the only road connect ing the old missions-a mere long stretch upon the bare brown hills that skirt the sea.
 The sole part of California that the Spanish exploited was the portion in- cluded in these Coast Range mountains. de Maufras on his map marking the great interior valleys only with the generic legend: This country Is even more beautiful than the inhabited DOT tion of California; its climate Is milder, 1t offers fertile fields, superb forests for lumber. and vast priaries where graze herds of deer, antelope and wild horses"
 The coming of the gringo changed all this. Mining, agriculture, numbering. interested him far more than stock raising and the breeding of fine horses on the hill slopes by the sea. Conse- quently the trend of travel moved in land, down the fertile river valleys. The Camino Real. since so little travelled and so little known, has thus retained it's Spanish character more, I think, than any other portion of the state
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-10-12
AMERICAN SENSE OF HUMOR

that she was getting back at" her companion. "she gives as good as she takes" woman behind me observed gleefully.
 When the pathetic, unattractive little miniature painter the most convincing figure in Miss Crothers play "A Mans World" Is asked by a friend why she has never married, and replies with bowed head, No one ever asked me- 1t was evident that the audience was perfectly capitivated by the joke.
 Another curious example of this de- generate impulse to laugh was exhib- ited by the New York audience at Mime. K" This melodrama--in spite of the deliberate infusion of the kind of farce that one had supposed was out of date even in the Bowery theatre conained some real drama in relation of the two principal characters, and was the vehicle of some very remark able acting on the part of their inter- preters--Dorothy Donnelly and young actor by the name of Elliott. So di- rect and highly colored was the ap- peal of this play that it would seem as if it must have carried to the crud- est intelligence, yet at the moment that the dying mother embraces the son from whom she has been separated since babyhood, a large part of the au- dience were laughing-not hysterical laughter. for 1t was mingled with stupid jokes and comments. The essence of the joke, as nearly as one could make 1t out seemed to lie in the incongruity of the actors costumes, the mother in the tragically realistic rage of the pavement. the youth in the fastidiously tailored garments of the hero of the stage and the magazine illustration.
 Even the audience at the cheap melo- drama shows evidences of becoming tainted with this sophfstication of flip pancy. They can laugh now at tho dying repentant villain and the inno- cent child depositing violets upon his bier A few years ago this could not have happened. Perhaps this is one reason for the decline In popularity of that class of entertainment, which is now quite superseded by the moving picture show and the cheap vaudeville.
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-10-12
COST OF CARELEssNEss
From the Boston Globe.

From the Boston Globe.
 Carelessness materially increases the most of living in this country. accsrd- ing to MT. Franklin H. Wentworth, so- calist and insurance man, who has a vivid way of putting things. He says it costs each head of family in the United States sl5 year to pay his share in the annual fire loss, whether he Is insured or not. "The loss Is covered by insurance is a common phrase in newspaper reports of fires. and the av- craze citizen lets 1t go at that, forget ting that he himself helps to pay the loss.
 MT. Wentworth thinks we have con- tracted the "conflagration habit" We throw matches around with utter indiff- erence The fault is temperamental. It is characteristic of America. We gather and we scatter, we produce and we con sume, with the utmost prodigality. The annual fire loss in Chicago, for instance.
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-10-12
The Beauty of Electrical Effects

Birmingham is beautifully illuminated in its business section," said visitor last night as he stood and watched the flashing. electrical signs.
 You people who have grown accus- toned to the electric lighted arcades. the hundreds of beautiful signs, cannot appreciate the fascination of these rain bows by night as we country folk who often travel dark roads with no light whatsoever I believe that one of the most pleasing sights to the thousands of visitors Is the beautiful light of the arcades and signs
 Another thing that is pleasing is that visitors are aroused to the holiday spirit by the parade of the excellent band through the streets during the morning hours. I daresay 1t affects many of your citizens, too, and reminds them of the fine fair now going on.
 'I understand that already there is every assurance of financial success for the fair. If fine weather continues a handsome surplus will be carried over, after an expenditure of approximately s4O,oo0."
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-10-12
Army Engineer on a Visit

Mai Chester Harding, wife and daughter are the guests of Major Hard ings brother, w. P. G. Harding, and will remain here several days.
 Major Harding is of the corps or engineers, United States army-Gatum dam division. He is regarded as one of the ablest of the younger genera ton of engineers in this country. A ma tive Alabamian, he was appointed to the United States Military academy at West Point in 1884 by Consressman c. W. Hewitt when Tuscaloosa and Jeff ferson county were in the same dis trict. He graduated high In his class.
 Major Harding has served in the en- gineer corps at Chicago, St. Louis, Grand Rapids and has supervised the construction of a number of large fed eral buildings. He has also filled the position of instructor in engineering at West Point.
 It is a noteworthy fact that Alabama has furnished in addition to Ma jor Harding two distinguished engineers for the work of building the Panama canal-Chief Engineer and Chairman of the Board of Construction Colonel Goe- thals, Lieut.. Col. ". L. Seibert of Gadsden.
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-10-12
PLAIN ENGLISH
From Lippincol


 By the extraordinary contortions of her neck, he concluded she was trying to get glimpse of the back of her new blouse; by the tense line and scintil- lating flash about her lips he concluded that her mouth was full Of pins.
 'Umph - goof = sufr-wuff = she-sh-fr- spog?" she asked.
 Quite so. my dear." he agreed Tt looks very nice"
 "Ouff-wuff-Po-gs-p gs-ph-rf-ugh-ight7 was her next remark.
 Perhaps 1t would look better if you did that" he nodded. "but 1t fits very nicely as 1t is."
 She gasped and emptied the pins into her hands.
 i've asked you twice to raise the blinds so that l can set more light, Jawesv' she exclaimed. Cant you Understand plain English?'
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-10-12
WHY PLAYS ARE REJECTED

fFofn the BOOkfnan.
 There are, however, decided consola- tions for those whose plays are rejected; a little experience soon recognizes the reasons, gives a healthy, sane accepting view of conditions and aids the author better for his next attempt. The chief reason play is turned down. is not be- cause it Is bad, but because it is unsuit- able. A playwright, for example, should show more discretion than to submit his manuscript with an ingenue heroine to a star of avoirdupoidal tendencies. How ever clever a boys role may be, certain female stars know they wouldn't Hook it." No star. either, can be asked, in our present star system, when personalities are exploited, to play against a stronger part. she must have the. art, and it is no reflection on lay that is not accepted for that reason. So, too, that leading part must be sympathetic role. This Is an almost infallible rule to remember for there are today few stars who can afford for commercial reasons to play un- grateful parts It is not their fault, but what managers have discovered the audi ence demands. The leading part may be wrong or criminal. but it must be loved by the audience. For example: Rallies, Jim the Penman, Captain Swift, criminals against the law; Zaza, Camille, East Lynne, violators of sex conventions. would have no chance to succeed had the authors not used every trick and device of their art to make the figure an appeal ing one. The audience feel sit and thinks it thinks it. Managers have long since sensed that sympathetics and not ethics Is the law of the drama, and that no one ever questions the sentimental selfshness of stage sacrifice when. as in most of these plays. it is made the pivot of the ,lo ot
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-10-12
THREE SHADOWS

By Dante Rossetti. I looked and saw your eyes In the shadow of your hair. AS a traveller sees a stream In the shadow of the wood: And said, My faint heart siehs An me! to finger there,
 To drink deep and to dream In that sweet solitude"
 looked and saw your heart In the shadow of your eyes, As seeker sees the gold In the shadow of the stream: And l said. "Ah me! what art Should win the immortal prise. Whose want must make life cold And heaven a hollow dream!" looked and saw your love In the shadow of your heart. As a diver sees the pearl In the shadow of the sea; And murmured, not above My breath, but ali apart "Ah! you can love, true girl. And Is your love forNmeT
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-10-12
KEEN ADVERTISING

From the Argonaut
 He was pathetic little figure, and kind-hearted passers-by felt their own eyes grow dim as they listened to his heartrending sobs. vainly a policeman tried to find out what was the matter. The little fellow could do nothing but sob. The crowd grew till 1t threatened to stop the traffic. and the policeman grew stern. Now, then, my boy" he said, you'll have to speak up or else come along with me-" At last the lad wiped his blue eyes. I'm lostr he cried. Please take me to MT. Joshua Binks, the tailor, in Lurch street. who has got a good stock of fall suitings in, and can sell them cheaper than any one else" Then the crowd groaned.
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-10-12
CERTIFICATE OF CHARACTER

From Brooklyn Life.
 The superintendent of streets in a western city recently summoned one of his subordinates, saying:
 Mike, there Is dead dog reported in the alley between Illinois and Blank streets. I want you to look after its disposition
 It was about an hour later that this truly Celtic report came over the tele- phone:
 T have inquired about the dog, and find that he had very savage disposi- tion."
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-10-12
THACEKERAY,s APPEARANCE

From Justin McCarthy's "Reminiscences
 Thackeray was much taller than Dickens; his form, indeed, approached the gigantic in its proportions; he looked far older. Although the two men were much about the same age; his immense head his broad forehead and his prema- turely white hair gave him an appear ance of authority, and even of severity, which one might have thought would prove intimidating to a stranger. Yet at least never felt 1t so. He seemed to me to be less self-assertive. less conscious of his superiority. than Dickens appeared to be.
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-10-12
MERRY KING CORN

From the Richmond News-Leader
 The Birmingham Age-Herald says King Corn is snapping his fingers Up here he is also cracking his joints.
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-10-12

is 5000. .OOo-although the o'Leary COW is long since dead-and the fire department there costs over ss.ooO.OOO, whereas Ber- lin's annual fire loss is less than sl75,ooo, and its fire department costs only about sso0,OO0 a year.
 True, "care will kill a cat" It will also stop the enormous unnecessary waste by fire in this country.
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-10-12
WHY MEN GO INSANE

From the Chicago Tribune.
 Reason 97s.-The person who asks for a match when you have 17 bundles in each hand.
 Reason s79.-The fat chump who wades placing his elbow in your B. B. basket, denting your hat and walking on your shoes.
 Reason 9s0.-The same chump coming back as the curtain rises.
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-10-12
Not We'll Counted

Louisville, like is old neighbor, Gin cinnati, makes a peor showing in the census" said L. T. lNoland of Chicago.
 "Cincinnatis population, announced several weeks ago, was only about S67,- ooo. whereas 45o,oOo had been claimed, and Louisyille's population, just an nounced, is only about 22sOoo, instead of 3oo,0oo, as had been claimed. Cincinnati may have been fairly well counted. It doubtless made the poor showing 1t did because it failed to annex Norwood and other populous suburbs not naturally belonging to the big city. But as for Louisville I think recount would show population of upward of 25oooo. It Is wealthy, wide-awake, progressive city, and when I was there a week ago I would have been willing to bet that it's population was nearer 100000 than 250,ooO.
 From nfy observation, I would say that several ambitious cities have had their census reports padded. The cen sus bureau is after certain of those cities suspected of being padded
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-10-12
FATHERS ADVERTISEMENT

From al London NeWspaper, 1807.
 A Frenchman's advertisement, in a Boston paper. run in the following singular strain:
 Lost, last evening"; child about 5 years old; whoever will return him to his home, in Fore street, shall be hand somely rewarded by his afflicted father. Jean Baptiste. who likewise deals in French brandy.
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-10-12
REFLECTIONS OF A BACHELt
From the New York Press.

From the New York Press.
 Even iced virtue can spoil.
 The trouble with duty is it's always in the way of what you really want to do.
 A mans good opinion of himself makes him think other people have it for him, too.
 The reason a girl can laugh so appre- ciatively at mems jokes is she doesn t understand them.
 A woman has to talk about her tailor if it's only somebody who comes to the house to sew by the day.
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-10-12
Has Been Seeing the West

The far west is an interesting coun- try, as every one knows" said Gentry Hillman, who has just been travelling extensively in that section. 'I have now seen every state west of the Mis- sissippi and have greatly enjoyed my sightseeing experience.
 Portland, Ore, Is one of the most flourishing cities in the country. Spo- kane is another exceptionally prosperous city. Seattle has grown rapidly in recent years, but at this time it is looking dull. It is one of the few cities, in fact, where people seem depressed. There are 10000 vacant houses in Seattle. Many of these houses have never been occupied, which would go to show that Seattle's building boom, growing out of the exposition, was overdone.
 "All in all the west is wonderfully prosperous, but the south Is just as in- viting a section. There is certainly no better state than Alabama"
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-10-12

THE DAY OF LOST TALENTS"
 Probably nothing in the world can make one more unhappy than to be d msfit. And yet the world IS full of men and women who realize-with what de- spair 1t is easy to imagine-that they have never been able to do the wolk which lies nearest their hearts. The bread they earn is steeped In bitterness and when they escape for the momspt from their thralldom they hover liM. ghostly shadows on the outskirts of those magic realms where dreams are born and higher aspirations make life seem mo, worth living. Touching this impossible side of so many lives and the day when most of us make those doleful pilgrim ages to "the grave of our dreams" Joseph Lee writes in the Survey as follows:
 Sunday is the day for revisting the ancient shrines, for going back to the fountains of our strength. back in our
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-10-12
APPLAUSE UNDER DIFFICULTIES

From Scraps.
 Opie Read appeared as entertainer for a switchmans convention in Peoria
 Tt was a very enthusiastic audi ence," said MT. Read. They laughed heartily, but they didn't applaud much. You see. there were so many one-armed men there that they had to applaud in pairs"