davidaulloa/AmericanStories huggingface dataset:
The Washington herald., 1912-07-27
Hughes and Groom Picked to Pitch Opening Games in the West
AMERICAN LEAGUE.
YEsTERDAY's RESULTS.
No Eames scheduled.

GAMES TODAY
Washington at Cleveland.
Boston at Chicago.
New York At st. Louis.
Philadelphia at Detroit
The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-10-20

we cannot see life in the large. Ind.- cations of strikes, protests. etc, show that he has an outlook, though it be ever so meager and circumscribed He if any living on our globe today must be estimated. and his opinion of what we gleefully call Prosperity, must be weighed and balanced, before we can bravely applaud life in the large.
 Those of us who know the urge and urge of a growing nation. sprung from the heart of a great idea. are much given to praise of things as they are. Good 1t Is to note the advance in com merce, the development of mines, fac- tories, labor-saving machines. But un- derneath our seven-league boots of lit erature, art, science, progress of what soever sort, a certain shadow appears indeed many shadows appear They are like those flickering shadows that skim across and vex the nearly perfect kinet- oscope picture While those shadows exist we cannot have a perfect picture. While the social scheme Is marred by those uncounted thousands who lack, and to whom, in spite of our so-called prosperity, the mere business of sub sisting grows a more terrible problem, we cannot call ours a wholly prosperous nation.
The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-10-20
2 SIDE OF THE PICTURE-By A. B. Bealle

The other side of the picture is ono not calculated to give us great cheer But as a nation that has been grievously hurt as well as grievously forgetful of it's children, we have to examine into the causes that have made the other side of the picture so grewsome a thing-so un- eomely a sight.
 Tt is easy to say that protective tariff is the cause of distress; that the appear ance of trusts. and a consequent diverting of vast wealth into private channels. has created a tightening of money markets. These reasons come trippingly to the tongue when We go searching for the bo- gey that causes unhappiness in the land, The whole terror of poverty might even be attributed to Rents, as some of the economists say, or to the citys appeal to the agrarian, who In the act of quitting the field for the street, becomes a con sllmer where Just now he was producer. No doubt all these causes have contrlbu- ted somewhat to the disturbance of so- cial conditions and yet none of these can be called the real root of the evil.
 It is well enough to praise our republic to know all of the thrill and go of a peo- pie in the making. But we must the while be reshaping our institutions, be remould-
The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-10-20

much that Is best in the profession by winking at perjury and making long drawn out trials for the defeat of justice and the circumventng of the law. Does the soul die in these men? Does it die? The preacher did not reach that ques- tion
 I thought of the sins of those "physi- clans who sometimes have been known to make capital out of suffering and to build fortunes not so much by knowledge as by cunning But perhaps those doe tors were not there and thus no jog to the conscience of Galen was in order. Even in that magnificent group of un- selfish servants of God does a soul die2 Does even a doctor sometimes grow vul- gar and then wither. And what happens There is the new definition of sin. a thing clear outside the preachers ken appar- ently but not. therefore, to be despised
 sin Is the anti-social."
 Whatever falls to link man to his fel- low men in the way of love and sympathy and aid is missing of the goal of life. 1t is the curse of our present social order that while we admit the need of philan- throphy We believe that the first concern of every man Is to make money for him self and so real estate speculation kills the soul of many a family, which Is crushed between foul and unwholesome walls, and choked with filthy dust and foul soot and smoke, laden with poisonous
The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-10-20
Deadly Snakes in India
Cor. New York American,

London Cor. New York American.
 According to report just published in Simla the number of wild animals, de- stroyed in India in 1911 was 25,s40 as compared with 19,2S2 in 1910. This total included 1426 tigers. 5352 leopards and i251 wolves. Nearly 172,OOo snakes were destroyed as against 9l.000.
 This increase is largely accounted for by the offering of rewards by the Burma government. That this action was neces- sary is proved by the fact that in ono area the paddy fields were so snake infested that their cultivation was iIn- possible. .
 Altogether 19i7 persons were killed by wild animals and 24264 by snakes, the figures for 1910 being 23s2 and 22,47s. re- spectively. The number of cattle killed by wild animals was 91 ,7O9, against 93, 070 and by snakes. 1O,533. as against 10 . 99O
 With regard to snakebite of human beings, it is said that in the Bombay presidency, the United Provinces and Eastern Bengal and Assam, the use of Sir Lauder Brunton's lancets is reported in a number of cases to have resulted in a high proportion of cures. As in pre- vious years. however the statistics rela- tive to the successful use of this instrr- ment can only be accepted with reserva- tions.
The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-10-20

Like matter, spirit is indestructible.
 It continues. Its form may be changed, but 1t is immortal.
 Kindness. devotion to family, to chil- dren, to friends: justice to all, charity toward all generosity helpfulness-these will last forever.
 Goodness. beauty. truth, heroism, sac. rifice-how can they be lostY
 In the spiritual as in. the physical realm there is no waste. All is utilized. You never had a good thought nor did good thing that was useless. Somewhere, somehow, it is of use.
 And SO what matters 1t if the world does not know and never praises? What matters it if you have wrought and suf- sered in silence.
 Nothing of yours is lost
 You are a contributor to the forces that live forever, the sum total of which Is the universe of God.
 The newspapers have thought it worth while to record the fact that ono west ern couple has spent 65 years on the same farm
 It is unusual.
 Tn the west especially one will find comparatively few couples that have reared children, welcomed grandchildren and have had great-grandchidren to play in the same home.
 However
 Tn the old countries such thing as living on one fam for e5 years would provoke little comment. There is on inn in England whose license as a public place Is 300 years old and inns are transi- ent things compared with farms.
 sixty-five years.
 Why, in Europe descendants of one family hay lived on the same estate for thousand years or more. Having been born in a certain place, the average Euro pean takes that as sufficient excuse for staying there.
 We do it differently.
 Having been born in certain place, VIC made that place the point of our departure. At the most the average young man puts the age of 21 years as the limit of his stay.
 Which explains much in our character as a people
 Because of our native restlessness and dsire to go to new places we are the most enterprisng people in the world In Europe men stay where they were born and follow the business of their fathers: in America men go beyond and begin a new business. The American is at home wherever his hat is off. If he cannot go west and grow up with the country because the west is filling up he will jump over into Canada. Hawaii or the Philippines. He Is a mover He began to move when the slow car avans found their way across the AL leghenies. and his covered wagon has gone on to "Pike's peak or bust" and beyond. There are some drawbacks to this de- side for a change. While 1t accounts for our driving power and prosperous ways. there is this fact: Our society looks cohesion. Our contract with each other is brief. and we do not get into close touch with
The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-10-20

ating word not one word to indicate that the sins of today kill men.
 What is the matter with the definitions? Sin, you say, Is 'the failure of the soul to ekep in fellowship with God" Qite sol! But men go to sleep while you develop that thesis, and going to sleep they go also to the devil unrebuked, unawakened, unconvnced. unconvicted
 Some of us want to hear sermons to the men of today in the language of today and to get those sermons there must be some new thinking. Not least of all the things needing to be redefned is sin. Come to think of 1t, vital prophecy has always spoken out on current sins, from the days of Elijah to those of Savonaro- la, to the days of Sturgeon. and until now. It isn't theory about sin that kills the soul, but sin done by the soul; con- crete, actual sin.
 I listened to hear one word for instance about the sin of modern housing, condi- tions which produce disease and degrada- ton in blacks and whites alike. because they leave no possible room for decency or delicacy or dignity. There may have been real estate owners in that audience who need to be reminded how greed mur- ders those who die of tuberculosis or are driven to drink by bad homes, but also kills the soul that tries to profit by such greed.
 So again I listened for sentence to show that there are lawyers sins, killing
The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-10-20

a dead world spring to life; he swims a river on the mountain tops. He converses with all the signs of the zodiac, touches the Milky Way with his finger tips, and puts eyes in the rims of peasants wagon wheels. Heaven and earth march past him across the wide flats of the deserts, all as a vast symbolic phantom. But these visions are not illusions. Ezekiel is a poet, but not a fool. He knows as we'll as any Persian poet or philoso- pher. before or since. that the evil or the good men do is an investment whose in crement shall be surely paid in full to the last penny. The prophet saw and de- plored and rebuked not ''sin" but con crete wrongs.
 And so I thought there was much req son to expect that "sin" would now be lifted out of its purely theological phrases and frankly modernized, frankly made concrete, visible, real. What happened? Simply that the old definitions, beaut- fully stated with sort of intellectual enthusiasm, once more paraded them selves. I could have listened all night and still been mildly interested. But probably not one in dozen of the too small audi enee could have stayed awake or sus- tained his attention Why? Because it was all so far away, so unreal, so void of human experience, theoretical and vague There was much about sin as principle and "sins" as products of that principle. But I could not hear one lacer-
The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-10-20
BLIND MEN AND MEMORIES
Feats of Mentality That Almost Baf-
 file Belief-SenatOr Gore

From the Chicago Journal
 The feats of memory shown by a blind man, over which educators have been ex- claiming of late, are really rather cheap and unmportant. Besides. they show nothing but memory
 Thomas P. Gore, the blind senator from Oklahoma. doubtless has quite as many facts filed away in his brain as has this rather overrated wonder. And Senator Gore knows how to use his facts. He is clear-headed reasoner, a fine, old-fash- toned lawyer, and a statesman In the best sense of the word
 Paul Murphy. the famous chess player of bygone generation performed q hun dred times more marvellous feats than any recently recorded in this line He played eight games of chess, all at once against tho eight best chess players in Europe. He won six games and drew two.
 And he did this blindfoldedi He kept all the changing positions of all those chessmen in his head, and still had men, tai energy enough to outgeneral three quarters of his antagonists, and play even with the other two.
 One of the most marvellous perform ances of blind man may be told. but without using his name
 He lost his sight when about a year old. He retained all his other senses. He took the regular course in school and college and graduated with honors.
 Then he entered medical college, took gruelling course, and came forth a full fledged surgeon. It was not an empty honor. He had trained his ears and his finger tips till he was a keen diagnos- tician and a good operator.
 He practiced for some years. and with success. Then, in some manner and for some reason never fully explained, he en- tered the service of the Russian govern ment as a spy on it's unruly subjects who had fled to this country One would think this the last job in the world for a blind man: but he seems to have given satisfaction to the czar's se- cret service. Then he became involved in many-cornered scandal and either killed himself or was murdered in the re. sulting quarrel The possibilities of the human brain seem almost limitless.
The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-10-20

'Yes, we have had prosperity" said Woodrow Wilson, "if by prosperity you mean vast wealth no matter how dis tributed or whether distributed at all or not; If you mean vast enterprises built up to be presently concentrated under the control of comparatively small bodies of men, who can determine almost at pleasure whether there shall Le competition or not. The nation as a nation has grown immensely rich. -. But what of the other side of the pie ture? It is not as easy for us to live as 1t used to be. Our money will not buy as much. High wages, even when We can get them, yield us no great comfort. We used to be better off with less, because a dollar could buy so much more. The majority of us have been disturbed to find ourselves growing poorer even though our earnings were steadily increasing. Prices climb faster than we can push our earnings up. -
 Words, words, wordsi Any first grade lever of men might have said them. It is mere re-saying of what everyman knows summing up of the times tendencies. But humdrum and com monplace as the little summary may be, it brings us face to face with a ter
The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-10-20

souls comes from mans indifference to man? And is it not. clear also that the true religion is mans care of man, his thoughtful earnest planting of himself side by side with his fellows, to aid. to love- to console, to succor to be friends with them? The unsocia is the immoral Dickens gave it to us a thousand times, from Mrs. Sairy Camp to Servage and to Mr. Pecksnlff. There was soul in Mark Iapley, for he loved men. What soul was there in the elder Niekleby2 What killed Ralph Nicklebys soul? Just this: lie loved only himself and even for himself the word is a msnomer, for he could not love, since already his soul was dead. Ralph NiclIeby was a spiritual suicide, nolsome dreadful figure.
 Drop strong acid on living tissue and It begins to die The strong acid of ar- roganee. of greed. of selfish ambition, so eats the social sense away that Ameri- can men actually have been known to boast that they have made their thou sands through trampling other American men into their graves. Such hectic story as that of Thomas Lawsons has truth in it It Is not all hectic, not all exagGeraton. For the soul of America is in peril by It's i'll won wealth, because 1t is already scared and scorched by the men who give their souls to achieve that wealth.
 There were other thoughts that came to me concerning sin" which can be
The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-10-20

rible dilemma; 1t Is the statement of the attitudes of him who has and of him who has not; 1t Is a laying bare the actual causes of prosperity and of pow erty, or of progress and poverty" as the good Henry George so clearly defined 1t twenty years ago It is a shewing-up of the ighborliness of mankind when the peck ethook Is in the question. It Is as if one should bring in a death's- head to a banquet where chosen few had foregathered to celebrate the joy of life. This talk of Wilson's, or of any one else who has glmpsed the shadows in the picture-the other side of the page-the reverse of the coin--is &C., counted incendary by the banqueters
 It is no more than the fetching of q word contrast for men to see It Is the fetching of a contrast between the op- timistic editorials recounting the splen- did advance of manufacturers and the installation of new industries, against the pessimistic market reports of St wheat, of BOG chickens. of 19c bacon bellies, of 40c butter, to the end of the chapter of Morris avenue or any other avenue where the produce of men IS bartered today
The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-10-20

gases. But if We know that our way of making money kills other men and forces them down into social depravity and de- generacy, can our own souls live? I should like anyone who reads the story of Miss Ethel Armes concerning sin gle smoke breeder in this city, to say whether that industrial concern has lost it's soul. When Wordsworth seemed to turn his back on the democracy and pay homage to conventional order and the powers that prey Browning hurled at his retreating form the fiery lamentations en- titled "rhe Lost Leader: Just for a handful of silver he left us, Just for a riband to stick in his coat Blot out his name, then, record one lost
 soul more,
 One task more declined, one more foot
 path untrod.
 One more devils triumph and sorrow for
 angels,
 One wrong more to man. one more Insult
 to God
 Life's night begins: let him never come
 back to us!
 But Wordsworth was a good man. Did even his soul die? Let Ezekiel answer. Does the soul of the retail merchant die when his girl clerks are so poorly paid that they are tempted beyond their pow CT to resist? Our chief sorrow. Indeed, and our chief disability, come from dead soul stuff, from dead and dying souls. And is 1t not clear that the death of
The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-10-20

one another. It is easy for the politician to divide lis and get his way, which has much to do with the corruption in our political and industrial life.
 Worst of all
 Home does not mean 10 us what it ought to mean-the house of our fathers, the place where we have lived and loved and the place where our children shall be born.
 A young man was speeding his now motorcycle along a country road. He got into rut. lost control of his wheel and met with q severe fall.
 Dragging his machine to the side of the road. he sat down beside It. His clothes were torn. He was suffering in- tense pain from internal injuries. A farmer drove by in his wagon.
 Hurt yourself2" he asked.
 Yes. but I hope to be better pres ently."
 Running pretty fast, reckon. Serves you fellows right. I wonder you don't have more accidents" And the farmer drove on.
The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-10-20

K xY heading today looks like a ser MI mon title. In fact recently had M the pleasure of listening to an eminent preacher as he discoursed oil Sin" and I wondered every minute when the sermon would enter the twen- tieth century, when it would begin to convict the hearers when 1t would strike the agonzing note of poignant reality and create cry of conscience instead of ending in a temporary intellectual in- effort Moreover the text was a great text on which to hang splendid and pungent discourse; for 1t was from the words of that poet-preacher Ezekiel, son of Buzi, priest. patriot, and exile, where he hurs heredity aside and asserts so splendidly the last fact of conscience, mans own responsibility for his conduct of life. No longer should men repeat in Israel the proverb of the past years of the exile: 'The fathers have eaten sour grapes and the childrens teeth are set on edge" but they should each eat the fatal fruits of retribution: 'The soul that sinneth, it shall die"
 Ezekiel is a modern man. though he is a Jew from the sixth century B. C., and despite his repudiation Of scientific ne cessitarianism. He is modern in the sense that he combines the realism of Tolstoi with the mysticism Of a Maeterlinck. He paints a temple in cfoudland, he sees
The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-10-20

A few moments later man came along on foot He was a farmer who from his field near by had witnessed the ac- cident.
 Been hurt?'
 "Yes.p
 Well, you look rather pale. Shall I go for a doctor?'
 No. thank you. Somebody will come along directly and maybe I can go back to town.
 Maybe you can and maybe you can't. You come on with me. I live down this way I'll hitch up and take you into town right away. It might be dangerous 10 wait"
 In a few moments the young man. ly- ing on some straw in the farmers wagon. was being taken to the city. The farmer drove directly to the hospital.
 Inside of two days the young man died
 The farmer had refused to accept money and besides told the doctors he would help to pay the boys bill, if necessary
 Now
 Do you note the similarity between this story and one that was told nearly 2OOO years ago about a man who was
The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-10-20

left to every mans imagination Only 1 cultivate good wholesome conviction of sin in these days. Bankers. preachers, toiiers. merchants, agents principals, law yers, doctors, women and men and chil- dren--would it not be well to ask our in nermost souls whether our selfshness is making 1t sicl<2 Is the soul and body of Birmingham sick because we are living in sin, in social inhumanity2
 Spirited and proud and gallant. or beau- tiful and graceful and winsome we may be, and yet all hollow. because the poor soul itse1f Is gone dead. l dare to won der whether some of the beautiful women of Birmingham have dead souls because they have no interest in anything that they do for anyone except their own amusement. How many of the success ful men are treading a dreary routine because calculation and interest and shrewdness have quite supplanted the living soul breathed into them in the days of their paradisel
 And yet the need is very great, and there are things waiting to be done. Chil- dren who need clothing. Children of whom Judge Murphy and Miss Mary Rumph could tell, who need clothing made with personal interest," the sick who need to be visited; and everywhere folks who want to be loved.