The Birmingham age-herald., 1918-01-08
MEN, WOMEN
 AND THINGS

Olu NOu CNSl 6St on -
 and wonder where so many people were going? It seems like everybody
 is circulating just at present. This
 also applies to The Age-Herald, for it's circulation is rapidly covering every
 part of Alabama.
 The public is in a weaving way ana
 everywhere you go the depots are fuli and the cars damned. It seems as IT
 the white are possessed with the splrlr
 of the negro who, hoeing in the sun'
 stopped in the middle of a row of cot
 ton, and resting on his hoe, gazed
 blissfully at the fast mail as she was
 hitting the high places going by and
 said: You may toot, and you may blow
 but all de same, I'm gwine ter ride you
 Sunday"
 Saturday afternoon I took my first
 ride under government control. If l
 hadn't known about it I wouldn't have noticed any change The Terminal was easily recognizable, the same old caller was just as untelligible as ever in an nouncing the departure of trains. NOW that labor is getting so scare ana we
 are trying to conserve our man power would politely suggest to MT. McAooo that they dispense with the callers, and nut phonographs with mixed. records
 to sing out the leaving trains. The public will not be inconvenienced by
 the innovation.
 The Terminal reminds me of the say I ing of the town wag about the archi- 1 lecture of a certain house in which much money had been spent on the part facing the approach and little on the rear as Having a Queen Anne front and a Mary Ann back" You get in- side the Terminal and you are lost fin wonder at its beauty and magnificence. l You get out in the station and you are 1 still filled with admiration, but when I you pass through the ticket gate and 1 begin to descend into the dark, damp and cavernous regions below. you feel like Dante might have transferred the description which he wrote over the entrance to hell, without doing violence I to the situation: "All hope abandon ye
 who enter here" I dealize now what | aft op oxyfy, O
 been recently through the tunnel, soak l ing with water, to reach a train. realize that the weather is in some de- ] gree responsible for the awful condi-
 tions, but whoever is in charge of the Terminal owes it to the travelling pub- lio to see to 1t that it IS frequently mopped out and that the pools at the 1 enrance to the seps leading up to the
 outer platforms are not over ankle
 deep.
 | Now, I am no kicker. can put ur | with lot of personal inconvenience
 but as a truthful reporter, I must try
 and see that the public gets a square | deal, even though I give offense te Ethose in charge of public utilities. \ am as ready to praise as I am to find fault. No one who knows me can say
 that I am grouch. I am an incura' | ble optimist, and that's the reason \ call attention to certain things I think ought to be remedied, for I have faitf that when those in authority know the
 facts. they will do their best to give relief. I wish Commissioner Burrus, ii it comes under his supervision, will put on his rubbers and raincoat and make ) a trip through the Terminal tunnel ant I put some books in my valise te read on the train, as I knew it was 2 long and tedious ride to Opelika, bu I did not know that the Central O. ,! Geofrgia was so saving in the matter \ of lights. I knew that we had wheat less and meatless days and lightnes: nights in the cities, at least twice { week. I tried to read and gave 1t up \ as did the rest of those who had bough : but I am born "josher." so whel
 the conductor came along to lift m, +l ticket, I said: Hello, Cap, must be Yep ! pelins about, got your orders to run ; ,l dark train?" He smikel and replied :, as he tried to make out my ticket il !, the dim light. That's good one; W, are shy of illumination"
 II It was so gloomy and dark in tn,
 coach that I wandered back to the en,
 to peer out. for I felt that big "glol
 of gloom was beginning to settle dowl on me and I was fighting it. I got t. the rear and looking out, it was pitcl black, without a ray of light anywhere I turned to the brakeman and asked i
 we wore going through a tunnel (yo, |, see, had tunnel on my brain in havini just been through the one at the Ter
 minal). "Nope," said he, just sur
 enough dark" And it was. In a bi
 we came up to. a little station an l looking out I saw at least 20 inhabi 3 tants, each swinging a lantern. I : looked like a torchlight procession, an, to me, in my state of depression, i
 seemed more glorious than the grea F white way on Broadway.
 F As I couldn't read, I began to lool
 lahout for someone to talk to ha,