davidaulloa/AmericanStories huggingface dataset:
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-03-13

human mind. Willfulness, as We use the term in such cases. implies conscious ness of the act done or contemplated as well as foreknowledge of the result of such act. Seeing that wrong-doing is generally fatal, destructive to the doer, would we not better take pause here and consider for c moment the nature of evil? We can't afford to jump at conclusions. more especially with regard to those in- volving our neighbours acts, nor can we assume as entirely responsible him or her who chooses to remain in that stunned section of society we call the wicked" We have to remember that none are wicked, save as an unlovng social environ or a blind destiny has created them so. We have but to examine the annals of law courts to see who are the losers in lifes race-not the good, the just. tho lovely. The losers are those who have not conformed to the good laws, rather than thos5 who chose the ap- plauded channels of responsibility and
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-03-13

TT seems that Roosevelt did not quite
 finish the octopus chase, and that ~ Taft Is called on to complete it. At least in his elaborate special message on January ', the President recommends amendment of the Hepburn law that Roosevelt had such a time bullying through Congress. the session when Bill Chandler was the medium of communica- tion between the President and Ben Till- man, and, believe, Joe Bailey also. It had a rather unfortunate ending when Roosevelt was reduced to the necessity of quafring the cup Nelson w. Aldrich brewed for him, and the President smoothed his ruffled feelings by nomi- hating Chandler. Tillman and Bailey to membership in the Ananias club.
 Like everything else of reform nature he ever undertook, Roosevelt in that af- fair merely initiated the King of France, who marched up the hill with 4O,0o0 men and then marched down again. On the "trappings,'' the pride, pomp and cir oumstance' of reform, Roosevelt never had his match in this or any other coun- try, in this or any other age. But that is all. In reality he is. in political sense,
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-03-13

the most vicious character our country has produced. and the one President we have had who was utterly and defiantly contemrtuous of the law. That Is the great difference between him and Taft, who, in the first place, knows the law. and who not only will not violate it him self, but will allow nobody else to break it if it comes to his knowledge. Then I applaud Taft, the one republican Presi- dent whose act has not, and will not. belle his tongue in his professions of friendship for the south. He is the one republican President who at the same time Is a friend of our people.
 As for the railroad problem, all this tinkering with it is worse than foolish. One of two things will happen. Either there will be government ownership or there will be one gigantic corporation owning every mile of steam road between the two oceans. The government can regulate one railroad without harm to anybody; but it cannot regulate G. number of railroads without harm to somebody. Some of the roads are strong, others are weak. regulation that the Pennsylvania road can stand without in
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-03-13

jury would put the Erie into the hands of a receiver. Every time railroad goes into insolvency 1t injuriously affects every community it supplies. A railroad Is an enormous buyer; but in the hands of a re- ceiver that road buys nothing except what it is bound to have, then and there on the spot.
 Again there are thousands of miles of road in this country built on the idea of competition that ought not to have been built at all. There is a railroad con- necting directly Louisville, Ky, and Nashville, Tenn It can haul without en- barrassment every pound of freight that can possibly pass between these two towns. Then what waste 1t would be to construct another line between Louisville end Nashvillei It would be like the farm CT who would send two blows to turn one furrow. or two men to feed one steer. It would be that bane of all business-waste.
 All such folly as that would be impos- sible if there were but one railroad. 1t would be operated by men whose chief intent would be to build up every com munity for it would be to their interest to do so, and if they failed, then the gov
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-03-13
THE INUTILITY OF SCORN-By A. B. Bea1e

punishment seems not to lessen greatly the will to continue bad, nor would a re- turn to the original environ serve to uplift. To release to a cleaner air, 1t seems to me. to give a newer outlook, to be surrounded by men and women who have lost the will to scorn. o, but there are hundred ways to lift men when we have forgotten to hate theml Men all around this big-little world Of ours are wondering what shall be done with the black sheep. And those babies that are coming into the world today, and will continue to come tomorrow. and tomorrow-many of these too will be stained and soiled and hurt into the semblance of black sheep. Whats to be done? "If you become a lover of dark ness, if you quit the radiant joy of liv- ing and loving and dwell in the shadows of error and crime, I will destroy you,
 society seems to thu der at the ears of both those born solled and clean. And society" which we call ourselves ma jestically. with bulging chest. society must be protected at all haZards.'
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-03-13
BIG PICKEREL
Two Anglers Get 70 That Weigh 0A
 Pounds.

From the Gardner News
 Another big string of large pickerel are on exhibition in the show window of Houde X Brassard's store on Parker street There are 49 fish which weigh 64 pounds, thereby surpassing the string caught earlier in the week by Dr. A. N. Leblanc and party who took 57 that av- eraged pound each.
 The big one in the string taken yes- terday by Charles E. Beauregard and Rod Allaire weighed three and one-half pounds The fish are beauties The party got an early start and left the fishing grounds early content that they had all the fish they and their friends would need for a few days, else they fish were biting when they took up.
 peculiar feature of the hsh taken by these two parties and from the same wac ters is that they are so fat and plump. Ordinarily a pickerel to weigh upwards of three pounds Is from IS to 20 inches in length, while the ones taken from the new fishing ground are scarcely 16 inchea in length, but very deep and chunked.
 The fishermen report great sport get- ting the big strings. Yesterday was not what is rated as a particularly good fsh- ing day, but in spite of conditions tho men say they had all they could tend to taking the 49 fish. Another beauty of fishing in this pond Is that all fish taken cover the law. there being no small ones to bother or put back. The ice Is now about IA inches thick and It's good foot Ing,
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-03-13

fers of Rockefeller. Carnegie and the others. Then after they killed the pooi- iGg bill it was laughable to see the poor little statesmen assail the trusts that they had just saved.
 And so 1t went for years. The railroads were forced to compete. The rebate was the way they cid it. and by that means they sent to bankruptcy or drove out of business thousands of small shippers, whose business was immediately absorbed by the big shippers. Had there been but enc railroad company in the United States that would have been impossible It could have said to the trusts, We will kaul your goods at the same rate we haul the smallest shippers goods-'
 Steve Elkins, who has done more to solve the railroad problem on lines of ifi- ,elligence and justice than 40 Roosevelts. secured the passage of a law forbidding rebates, but not until the roads were ale lowed to make agreements that amounted to pooling That Is permissible under tho law and the roads and the people arc getting on very well now.
 But the one settlement Is one company owning every mile of road, or government ownership.
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-03-13

pie may be. they will still be barbarians morally. Christianity makes an immense difference between morals and manners Samuel Johnson was not so elegant as Chesterfield; but he was much better man than the polished. licentious earl Chesterfield C was the nobleman; but John son was the noble man.
 We now and then hear it said that the Sermon on the Mount is fine thing, and that the New Testament morality Is of a high order; but that the Old Testament is so full of barbarisms that it Is impos- sible to accept it as authority for our cul- tiyated age. But again l ask. Does God care only for cultivated people? Did not Paul preach at Lystra as we'll as at Athens? No small part of the Old Testa- ment was originally addressed to people who had just emerged from servitude, and who were still at very low grade of culture"
 John Foster, the great English essay ist. wrote one of his most splendid assays to show why men of taste are so gener- ally opposed to evangelical religion, and 1t is now in order for some critic of the weilhaussn school to write m essay to
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-03-13
SHAKESpEARE'S STRATFORD-By The George Eaues

ipg, mystfyng, forbidding yet inviting7 Without rivers there had hardly been poets anywhere. It was the Jordan that nourished the Hebrew soul into passion iausic. Prophets saw a parable of life in it's origin and it's end. One captive priest in Babylon became a creative vis- ionary by the Chebar. though the lesser souls hung up their Earps on the willow. So I think that the Stratford of Shake- speare was simply the Avon and itg banks, it's ancient churches. that look as though they were born there and grew up among the trees and the changing sky, the always green turf, and the pre- historic willows where Stratford boys have hung their harps these many cen- turies, while they patiently angled for Celtic soul of Burns must needs be quiclS- ened by mountain torrents, but the Eng ishn an in Shakespeare found the face of his heart reflected in the persistent. si- lent beautiful Avon, which means ''the River" stalwart, happy, playful serious. the soul of Shakespeare flows on through the years today as 300 years ago. and still the Avon flows it's physical counter part Presently the sweet May blossom will make the hedse-rows snowy white. or rosy pink; yellow prmroses will sprin- lie the green banks. and wonder in Arr cen woods by Locksley, the wood ane- none and the violet will lift their heads end smile back at the spirit of Shake spesre, smiling at them in the April sum shine.
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-03-13

highly cultivated men, in ancient as well as in modern times, have often been ex- tremely wicked Julius Caesar was one of the most accomplished men that ever lived and Aaron Burr was one of the most accomplished that has figured in cur political history. From a moral point of view the boasted Greek civilization, with all it's art, science, poetry and phi losophy, was rotten to the core. Even Plato's Republic" advocates the twin vilainies of communism and free love- and is a sort of combination of Victoria woodruff and George Francis Train, done into philosophy.
 Between Christianity and civilization there is, indeed, an antithesis which Is too frequently overlooked, even by thoughtful men. Civilization is a social force. operating upon q society: Christian !ty is a spiritual force, operating upon the individual. You cannot civilize an individuals; and you cannot convert a sfate. Rough people can be converted. Among the Creeks one and the same word meant morals and manners" ," The same thing Is true in the language of the Romans and the reason is that morals were manners. and nothing more. However highly cultivated heathen peo-
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-03-13

well of you, because one is accepted largely at ones own estimate of one- self.
 I have read somewhere that the man who does not think well of himself the God who made him and pro- nounced him good.
 But the main reason for thinking well of yourself is to be found in this Bible truth:
 "As a man thinketh in his heart go is he."
 If you think yourself worthy you will try to be worthy; If you think you do not amount to much you will not amount to much; if you think yourself capable of doing things you will do them.
 Somehow the mysterious life proc esses of mind and body tend to repro : duce in your mind and body what you think.
 Napoleon believed in his great des- tiny. If he had not so believed there would have been no great destiny.
 Modest Abraham Lincoln-if you
  low estimate on himself, always be- lived in his own powers.
 Think we'll of yourself and of your future. It is as sinful to mistrust yourself and cheat your future as to mistrust and cheat your neighbor
 If you talk with the average young man of today he will give one of two excuses why he does not get along:
 First-Heredity. He will say he is handicapped because he was born to mediocrity and therefore cannot pc what he wants to be, or
 Second-Environmen He will tell you he is what he Is because of his surroundings and that he cannot be what he ought to be.
 Whereas
 There is a power within himself greater than both these other forces combined-the power of personal en- deavor.
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-03-13

lens would set fire to combustibles.
 We'll
 If the attention is distracted from one thing to another and the fugitive rays of thought are scattered, there is no accomplishment.
 Concentration is power.
 What we call mesmerism is merely the power of the mind raised to its highest by concentration of effort.
 If you would succeed in life learn to concentrate your mental faculties.
 Education itself is largely the ac- quired ability to focus the mind on its task
 Concentrate.
 Fix your mind upon whatever pur- pose you have in view. Bring to bear upon your concerted effort every unit of your will force And keep at it.
 That is the price of accomplishments
 As the mischievous boy holds the mirror at the proper angle until the victim of his practical joke feels the sting of the burn. so must you hold tie mirror of your mind at the proper an- gle until the effect is produced.
 And this power. mind you, which no one fully understands, is divine power.
 You merely borrow it.
 It is lent to you for benign purposes. Do not use it basely or selfsh1y.
 If you should misuse the mysterious power If you should employ it to hurt a weaker brother or ruin a weaker sis- ter, beware!
 The reaction of the law is as divine as the law itself
 mt xx,{o only way to reach the right goal of life's desire
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-03-13

Considering the nature of wrong-doing, that 1t does in truth destroy, unmake the wronger. are we just in prescribing the sweatbox, the bread-and-water diet, the dirty, noisome cell the cleverly knot ted moose designed by the worlds hang men? As if one should say, This man has done wrong-has hurt himself more than anyone else Let us get together F men who will in turn hurt him violently worse than he has hurt himself"
 In an age of stress where for ones life to be thoroughly enjoyable one must be in easy circumstances. and where the struggle for subsistnce in the middle and lower strata becomes ever sharper, in
 tenser, 1t seems rather a brutal affair to assembly, daily and hourly, courts for the damnation of those already damned. And this today Is the final word of the law to the soiled, diseased, vanquished ones.
 Always dilemma obtrudes. and this matter of punishment or release certainly affords material for debate. Corporal
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-03-13

commonsense and mems well-wishing. Shall we not call these veerers from &C., cepted conformity. diseased ones, treating them as blind ones lost from the pleasant paths, the while we scorn them not at all?
 These are they who are scorned-these brutal ones, these thieves, murderers, swindlers. destroyers of homes-these are they created not in the image of God. or Good-that sublime ideal which we must grow to, and which as nearly as we can we must help others to win. For do not these scorned ones, these vicious ones, represent that portion of society which wins least from life?
 We who assume that there is design in nature can at least do somewhat to- ward moulding that design in form and pattern where 1t lacks In grace and sweet ness. We can all make life somewhat more tolerable, more livable, lovable. And Indeed, we can't do this by creating criminalD and promptly destroying them.
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-03-13

sons whose main purport makes for serv- ice of the human race And whatever be our conclusions of the past or the future of earth and it's dwellers-whether it be the extreme of empirieism or of rational- ism-we do in truth find ourselves here together--all Of us nearly of the same type and cast-all nearly with the same aspirations. We cannot will or wish our selves to another planet-we cannot get away from each other. Is it not the part of wisdom 10 at least be on good terms as practicable? We may be sure that this light-and-snadow world will present. ly be finished and done for each and all of us. The end of all right govern rpentl tending toward a living in accord, need we wonder that it behooves us first of all to know each other better?
 This interminable chatter about wilful rong-doing-that here and there are men and women, wide-eyed and aware, de- liberatey doing mischief for mischiefs sake-seems based on ignorance of the
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-03-13

great northwest and could not rest until they made manifest their dreams.
 Morse dreamed of carrying intelligence on wire, and Marconi dreamed of the wireless message, and both materialized their dreams.
 Professor Bell dreamed and the tele- phone spoke. Edison dreamed and the photograph sung
 On the hills near Dayton, O., the Wright boys dreamed their dream of an airship and now men sail the skies.
 The poet said:
 Alas, that dreams are only dreams, That fancy cannot give a lasting beauty To those forms that scarce a moment live.
 Which would be true if men merely dreamed and dallied and dreamed. But some are not disobedient to the heavenly vision. They go out to fulfill their dreams, to give a lasting beauty to the momentary glimpse.
 Every concrete thing of creation Is a materialized dream; every outcome of beauty or utility was dreamed out.
 Dreams are the shadows of things hoped for, the substance of things not seen
 First the seed of the dream, then the blade of purpose and then the full corn in the ear-fulfillment.
 Surely we must do noble things, not dream them all day long, but we must dream them before we can do them.
 Such stuff as dreams are made or is soul stun.
 And soul stun was made for service as well as for dreaming.
 man died in Chicago recently who was supposedly a pauper. He was buried in the potters field by the county
 Later 1t developed the man was pos sessed of $60,O00.
 He was insane.
 That Is to say, an inquiry might not have sent him to an asylum. Neverthe- less his mind was warped out of normal shape.
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-03-13

Society, it seems to me. is never so
 ordly. beautiful, as in those gestures that stoop and tend and help. When [ think of Clara Barton the most radiant soul that history has record of. no thought is eonjured of ghastly wounds. bleeding bodies, and unlovely carnage of war. Rather does it bring vision of peace and comfort. the thought of healing. and the ministering touch of hands.
 Men and women day after day are being intensely hurt and flung into the muck and grime of things. Paradoxical as 1t may seem. 1t is not society that must be protected now. but rather those victims of socety-those maimed bodies and diseased minds that have not come into the sweetness and light of the world those who have not discovered life's worth. It behooves us, who know in part the real value of living and loving, to stoop and serve and tend. Not with bandage and liniment, but with the larger, more durable service of strong will and kindly word
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-03-13
yUIHETHER Shakespeare wrote the \x/ plays and poems may perhaps
 w ho 4,atfaohla nuestiou Ger

yVYIHETHER Shakespeare wrote the A/ plays and poems may perhaps
 w be a justihable question. Ger tainly he did greater thing. How he did it I must leave his unbelieving critics to explain. If he did not do the writing, 20 much the more marvellous and diff cult of explanation is this greater achieve ment. For since he has, for more than three centuries, held the credit for the writing and through that credit he has drawn the worlds pilgrims and the worlds love to the little Warwickshire town where even the unbelieving are willing to admit that he-William Shakes peare, Shakespeare. or Shakspere-was ac- tually born into this world.
 Yet another thing this country boy accomplished He put a spirit into the place He peopled the lanes with .avatars" of that spirit, if I may bor now the language of the self-elected elect. So that no man who can read walks the streets of Stratford, or explores the banks of the Avon or wanders across the fields of Shottery, without the con- sciousness that somehow he Is in touch with the poets personality, his imagina- ton quickened by faith in that august ina gination which gave Prospero and Caliban, Lady Macbeth and Shylock. Lear and Wolsey to the heart of man. kind
 In other words it matters less who
The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-03-13

He died for want of common comforts, clutching at his money. He was literal martyr to his money.
 A man who cares more for mere dol lars than for that which dollars can buy is more or less crazy.
 Somebody has said something like this The spendthrift believes coined money was minted in a round shape so that it would roll easily. The miser believes that coined money was minted flat so that 1t would easily pile up.
 However that may be, neither miser nor spendthrift knows the true meaning of money-that 1t is measure of values and a medium of exchange.
 The spendthrift cares little for his dol lar, puts upon 1t a low purchasing power and cares nothing for value received. The miser cares too much for his dollar, esti- mates too highly its purchasing power and is not willing to part with 1t for value received
 And both spendthrift and miser make defense by saying:
 Tt is my money
 But in wider sense that is not true.
  and sweat and sacrifice. It was intend ed to buy somebody clothes, food, roof over head It is part of the accumulated capital of society.
 Suppose one were to say: Here is 5000. It is mine. I will throw it into the fire."
 "No, mol" you would interpose. And yet in a social sense a man has as much right to burn his money in the fire as to squander 1t foolishly or pile 1t up uselessly.
 The Chicago miser had money mania. Thousands have the same disease, more or less.
 And were we to put all the people who are troubled by this distemper into in sane hospitals it might be there would be more people inside the asylum than out of it.
 Think well of yourself.
 If you do not others will not think