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About Omaha daily bee. (Omaha [Neb.]) 187?-1922 | View Entire Issue (Sept. 9, 1917)
The Omaha Sunday Bee OMAHA, SUNDAY MORNING, SEPTEMBER 9, 1917. Comb Honey By EDWARD BLACK. Are You Fit? In these days of national serious ness we frequently hear remarks about doing out hit and being fit. Are yoa fit? Can you do your bit? Can you make a hit, with your strong right mit? -v With that bit of euphony, out of our system, you may remove your gas mask and camouflage-and go with us to join Walter Camp's Senior Service corps. , It has been said that a woman is as old as she looks and a man as old as he feels. A woman may buy what George Ade calls "purchased pallor," and get by with it, but a man has to bat around .300 or he will be sent to the bench. Being "fat and forty" is one of the dreads of mere man. The time is come when men between 45 and 65 are, too, of some value in the world of affairs. Under the present order of things the conservation of man power, makes it necessary to save the men who are worrying the life insurance companies when they reach the two' score and ten mark. f Omaha has some striking examples of physically fit men of three score and ten years of age. There is Gen eral John Lee Webster, who walks down to his office every morning. He advocates walking as the greatest panacea for the ills of mortals. He keeps his interest in life fresh by daily walks. Casper E. Yost is another example of the theory that a man is as old as he allows himself to be and that age, after all, is a matter of allowing one self to get old. He just refuses to grow old. A. L. Sutton uses boxing gloves and also walks to keep himself fit. He says he used to have cold feet now and then and regarded that as an in dication of advancing years, so he adopted a physical regimen and de clares he is as young as he used to be. When you get past 40 and begin to have cold feet, you are growing old physically. And Uncle Sam does not want men with cold feet. Walter Camp is rejuvenating men between 45 and 65, making them over, is it were. He has proved that a man should be young at 65. There are 3,000,000 men in this country between 45 and 65 and they are going to show the youngster just what it means to je young. With all of the work there is to do in these days of national stress, it be hooves men between 45 and 65 to maintain the fitness of younger days. What's In a Name? A city hall official whose name Is Tom has a better half who responds to the name of Kittie. Rev. J. F. Pouch er and Attorney J. J. Boucher have amusing experiences on account of the similarity of their names. Persons seeking to get into or out of matrimony sometimes ' get confused. ' Do You? Remember the time we went down to the station to see the members of an "Uncle Tom's Cabin" company leave? We had seen 'the show on the previous evening and were curious to know what Eva, Marks, Liza and Uncle Tom looked like in real life. Do You Remember? The days when we climbed greased pole at the county fair? When we fed peanuts to Jumbo, the big elephant, and talked .with Tom Thumb and his wife at the circus? When milk was 5 cents a quart in Omaha? " - When "Billy" Sunday came town? 4 ; The Cherry Sisters? Tom and Jerry? Chadron? W.J.B.? to GrbteHisWof Oihaha Allflie truth an & untruth thate fit to know By A. R. GROH. Chapter XXX Parks and Jefferson Square. 1 v Omaha is second to no other city in the beauty of its parks. It started out in the early days to have parks downtown, but this was found' not to be advisable as the space was needed for buildings. So the parks were moved to the more outlying dis tricts. - Such was the case with Washington square, which was laid out in the block bounded by Farnam, Douglas, Fifteenth and Sixteenth streets to day one of our most thickly populated blocks. Jefferson square, however, has sur vived and today beneath its trees the members of the "army of the unem ployed" may be found resting all, through the summer days. They steep on the grass, read the newspa pers, smoke their pipes, etc., etc., etc. Many a time and oft was the little park, Jefferson square, threatened. As early as 1858 it was proposed to build a public school on part of it. Next came a proposal to sell the square, but this was illegal. Then a school building was erected on it, but this was ordered removed the next year. swimming pool and animal menag erie. The five-legged cow has been viewed there with interest by the present historian, an inspiring sight as a freak of nature. Also the antics of the little bears, illustrating the words of the poet that they are "com ical cusses." Fontenelle park and Miller park and Mandan park and Syndicate' park s r if CQack ' to Vesture Next, a party by name of Williams proposed to lease the square for a market house. This was refused. Then the city council agreed to let the Board of Education erect a school house on it surrounded by a fence of palings. But- for some reason this" was not done. In 1872 the city council offered the block to the government to Crect an army headquarters building on. But the proposition was lost in. red tape. A few years later they pulled up the market house scheme again, but couldn't get it through. So they planted trees and made a park out of it. , ' The next year the city wanted to have the county buy it and build the court house there. Fortunately this was not done. Imagine how incon venient it would be, were the couft house located way up at Jefferson square instead of where it is 1 Next, a party named Snyder; came along with a proposition to build a city hall on it. And still later some parties wanted to sell it to the government for a postoffice site. All these propositions failed and Jefferson square is still a place where, the unemployed can rest all through, the summer. a Lodging houses are lo cated conveniently. , Hanscom park is a beautiful place, but quite hilly It has a lake and a pavilion where dancing is permitted. There are many beautiful flowers, which the public is requested not to pick. - . -.. " , Elmwood holds a high position in the hearts of Omahans as a park of great beauty. 'There is now a golf course there which the public can use. Also a place where hot coffee and weiners can be cooked for picnic par ties, all without any charge whatever. Riverview park is famous for its are all beautiful spots, where the poor and others go and take their lunches and spend a pleasant day. or evening as the case may be. Band concerts are provided free by the city during the summer time, which are enjoyed by large numbers of people. Soft drinks. peanuts, popcorn, cracker- jack, chewing gum and a small line of candies are sold to the public at popular prices; also ice cream cones. It is indeed pleasant to go to these beautiful places and sit, under the trees and hear the singing of the "feathered denizens of the trees" or the "little people of the trees," as two poets have expressed itj meaning, of course, the birds, of which there is a large variety. v Questions on Chapter XXX. 1. Why were the parks moved out from the center of the city? 2. What can you state about Jef ferson square? 3. In which park is the five-legged cow? 4. What do the poets call the birds? Why? IT IT VV nowu mama $ crapes feom OJtto Svet3 Cna1 Zftarte to Illumim OHer wN AO oraunyiLi r -,, ay, n"' - , - w . . t T t IK 'lit- IV A WMnriTnfy 17. - ! UUi V-C By A. EDWIN LONG. "Don't you jump, d n you, or I'll kill you I" These words, bellowed from the throat of a surly deck hand on a coal barge plowing up the Ohio river, still thunder in the ears of M. F. Shafer of Omaha. Yes, and if those words had not roared into Shafer's ears when he was a lad, attempting to jump out of a small boat one calm afternoon, Oma ha would never have claimed him among its ' citizenship. Instead, the mud of the Ohio's bottom would have claimed him. Shafer lived in an oil town . in West Virginia. He visited his- cou sins, eighteen miles away on the Ohio. Naturally he was i green in the ways of the boys on the big rivers. He soon learned how to row a boat and ventured into the big current. He was drifting along with the great current, carrying on. a whistling conversation with the Whip-IJoor-Wills on the wooded shore, when a powerful tug boat snorted around the bend, plowing up stream, pushing sixteen great coal barges ahead, lashed together with mighty thongs. This was a new experience. He tore the water with his oars to get out of the path of the monster. The tug and Everybody Has a Hobby! What's You rs? Dexter L. Thomas, real estate man and one of Omaha's early pioneers, has a hobby. It is work. Not his usual every day work of being a lawyer and looking after his real estate, but hard, manual labor. Although 75 years oia Mr. i nomas every day performs some strenuous task, either in his large garden at his West Farnam street home or at Florence where he has a chicken ranch. It is Mr. Thom as' idea that he has better health if he works hard and so each Sunday he takes his brusk hook under his arm, goes to Florence where : he slaughters as much hazel brush as any two men he could hire to do the day's work. Henry Kieser, the book dealer, loves to live the simple life and breathe plenty of Of ope during his leisure hours. For this purpose he has built his home in a picturesque place on the Fort Crook boujevard, just this side of the Child's Point bird reserve. The house, built of cement blocks, stands at a high point commanding a mag nificent view of the majestic Mis souri riven All around are mounds built by the prehistoric people of this region. Dr. Robert Gilder, the eminent paleon tologist, or whatever you call 'em, has done a good deal of digging among the mounds there and some'. times Henry helps in unearthing the interesting relics of the mound builders.- Henry also goes in for a good deal of rustic building. He chops down trees and builds summer houses. He has constructed a rustic bridge of con siderable size and showing much en gineering skill. This bridges a deep gully on his place. He rises at 4:38 in the taorning and gets out and chops trees and breathes in large lungfuls of ozone and drinks in the scenery. He puts in many hard licks of work before he starts for the city to spend the day in his book store. 1 He is now preparing a sign to erect along the boulevard at' his place call ing the attention of tourists to the historic Interest of the vicinity. Plumbing is the hobby of Dan Whitney. Of course Whitney is a plumber by trade, and also by nature, but then he is one of the' few men in the world who really make a hobby of his work. Of course, he admits that sending out the bills to collect for his work is the real joy in his hobby, and so when work is scarce he sends out bills just the same. Many of his friends get' bills periodically from him, alleging plumbing' work. When they complain that they have had no plumbing done, Whitney shouts back at them: "Well, that's your fault, why the dickens haven't you had some done? You know I stand ready to do it any time and so if you don't call on me I have to send you a bill occasionally to re mind you that I am still in the busi ness. If you don't-care to pay the bill, that is another matter." Dan Gaines has made a real hobby of trading. He is a born trader. He is a David Harum in the trade. Years ago he began trading old horses and cows. When he got a cow or two, he traded for lots. Next he traded the lots for a house. Soon he traded the house for other houses, and when in the course of his trades he acquired enough cash to pay a little boot money occasionally, he began to fish xor stm bigger game. ,Now nothing is too big for Dan to trade in. He trades in aoartment houses, and recently has traded some big farm properties, and the kind of tarms he trades in .represent real money today. - Also he Once walked into a directors meetinc. sat down at the mahogany table, and traded the directors out ot their very bank. He men lurnea arouna and sold it at a neat profit, and" the institution has been flourishing ever since, while Gaines used the orofit made here to plunge further-in some more big apartment nouse deals and high priced Nebraska land. barges were too fast for him. In an j instant he was looking up with the bow of the nearest barge looming ten feet above his head. The barge struck the boat, and began to grind it under. , ... Young Shaftjumped to his feet and bent his 'Knees to leap into the current. As he did so he saw a big deck hand spring to the edge with a long pole which -had a "steel grap pling hook on the end. - - "Don't you jump, d n you, or I'll kill youl" came the deck hand's voice. At the. same time Shafer, saw him swing the mighty hook. ,,' Fearing the old river v rat would mangle him with the hook, Shafer dropped down in the boat and cow ered there. "Plunk," came a dull, soggy sound, and the hand struck the hook deep into the side of the little boat. In an instant he had pushed the boat from under the bow of the barge. The great chuggingwheels of the tug came to a standstill. The captain paced the deck and swore. The deck hands used - language young Shafer had never heard even in the toughest days of the oil fields, but the lad promised never to get into the cur rent and in front of the barges again. "If I knew where to find that deck hand now, I'd apply for a Carnegie medal for him," said ,.. Shafer. "I thought, of course, he was going to rip me wide open with that steel hook, and there he was only intimi dating me to keep me from suicide until he could save me and my, boat." In his boyhood Shafer was ambi tious to be a merchant. Back in the oil town of Volcano, W. Va., he helped his father sell overalls and beans to the oil workers. His father sent him to the state normal at Fair mont, W. Va., but before he was graduated the oil business got so bad that the father had, to- have the lad at home to help in the store and hold down expenses. , , . He posted up the ledger and kept the cash book until he was 21, and then he wanted more breathing space. He concluded Iowa or Nebraska of fered better opportunities for an am bitious young merchant, so he started a store in Henderson, la. , By the year 1900 he .had found he was not a blazing success in the gen eral merchandising business, but he had learned a lot of "don'ts" in the bus iness. He learned s,o many don'ts that, he felt competent to tell other mer chants some things about their business. tie decided to go to a Dig city and begin telling the merchants how to make a success. . He had developed some good advertising ideas. At least he had learned how not to advertise. So he came to Omaha and began cor responding with ' the merchants all over the country. He gave them ad vertising ideas that made them money and out of his little advertising busi ness has grown the business of M. F. Shafer & Co., printers of advertising specialties, the business which is even now preparing to move into the huge new plant, six stories high, at Seven teenth and Webster streets. When this business began to be ail he could wish he wanted to be a banker besides, so he became the chief organizer of the American State bank, which opened thirteen months ago. So the nameless deck hand oh the Ohio saved for Omaha a bank presi dent and a vice president of a huge printing and advertising, establish ment ' 1 Next In Thlg Series "How Onuths Got Sam Leon." Guess the Doctors Kept 'em All A-guessing. Even. Their Own Parents Would Have Trouble Discovering Who's Who Without This 'Diagram properly Labeled. ' How They Looked Then. ' - . - , ''V - How They Look NowV ' ansa MvwMaM)iur mmhM W" bm HMWMwfwMW mwmwJPwBm TheAVeekly i Bumble Bee THE OMAHA SUNDAY BEE : SEPTEMBER 9, 1917. , THE BUMBLE BEE. A. 6TINGER, EDITOR. Communication! on any tople received, without postage or signature. None retirrfied. NO ACS AT ANT PRICE. More Proof Ttyt Barnum Accurately 7 (jauged the ; hullibility of the American Public Given by Omaha's Easy Marks BOOMS. i -Several more or lees Impressive booms are belns diligently In flated In Nebraska Just. now. looking ahead to the coming of another year, when the people will be called upon to select can didates. Most of these are per sonally conducted affairs, In which the man' Is seeking the office with utmost diligence. Two or three ot them are of such nature that the office is going to have a hard time get ting away, too. These early birds may not get what they go after, but they are going to have some exercise. f ' WONDER. -When the deputy marshals swooped down on the I. W. W, headquarters in Omaha they gobbled, among other plunder, a typewriter and an adding ma chine. . It Is easy to understand the service a typewriter could be to a bunch of I Won't Work, ers, especially if It had a self starting attachment, but what in time did they need an add ing machine for? . CAMOUFLAGE. What are we to think when a brewer Indignantly advertises that unscrupulous persons are selling his well known temper ance drink with a kick In KT Wouldn't such a suspicion lead you to eschew . the dangerous stuff? : Yes, It would not! Harry Wolf hasn't leased the city hall site yet, but that Is no sign that It Is safe from his quest Xor downtown corners. Bets are being mads that the war will be over before the Missouri Pacific gets the Dodge and Farnam crossings fixed. It looks like a long, hard win ter for the fellow who has hitherto been able to dodge work. Nobody appears to care much who wins the pennant this time, not oven the ball players. Old Cap Collier could find something to Interest him here abouts. Three cheers at least for Col onel Welsh and his climate. .Our stings never fait . EasyT Robbing a baby Is hard work In comparison. ' ' All you , need to do la to ar range with two human box cars to push one another around a big mattress until somebody gets tired, call It a champion wres tling match, and here comes the patient, hard-working public. breaking Its neck to spend Its money to see the "contest.", Men who wouldn't give 60 cents to see Edwin Booth, To maso Balvlnl, Mary Anderson, Joe Jefferson, Forbes-Robertson and Minnie Maddern Flake In the same cast, or wouldn't cross the street to listen to Caruso and GalU-Curd singing a duo, ' will come through with a five-spot Joyously to watch two moun tains of flesh tug and strain at one another. - . . .. Why? Lor bless you, man or woman! The Bumble Bee cannot answer that question. It is a quality of human nature that' surpasses the uttermost reach of this paper's philosophy. We only know It was in the beginning, is now, and perhaps ever shall be. Just why they should pick on Omaha- is not plain, either. The fact that they do Is not especially' complimentary to us. It might have been thought the performance out at Krug park would have cured even the most confirmed case, but it seems that a second application ,was needed. It came at the Auditorium Mon day night- And the editor of The Bumble Bee has it on good authority that more Is to follow as soon as the suckers can get together the price of more tickets. It's a great game when It's played right DANGER. Soldiers who have "gone over the top" have nothing on the venturesome citizen who under takes to cross Boul' Farnam anywhere west of Twenty-fourth after nightfall. That's out where all laws are off. so tar as the auto Is concerned, and where reckless drivers contend with one another tor the surface of the street - In utter disregard for the humble pedestrian who may want to get from one side to the other, or who fatuously seeks to board a street car. Safety first cuts no figure In this proceeding. Maybe it would be a good plan for the city dads to pass a law forbidding foot passengers to enter that region. LAWMCR. Talk Is that Eddie Lawler Is to be Inserted Into the vacancy left on the county board by the death -of Jeff Bedford. Well, no one who ever watched Ed play bass ball will say he ever shirked a chance. ' . . TONY, -"Tony" Easterltng Is going to be a btrQman, and fly his air plane over the German trenches, "Somewhere In France." - If he does as well on this job as he J did when he chased the fugitive Item- around the city hall In Omaha, the, opposition had bet ter beware ot him, for a smoother newshound than Tony never Infested the village. . We wish him well, and no worse luck than he had dodging Irate counctlraen and school board members. '. SONGS. . ' Tony Buechler walls through the columns ot his own paper that he can no longer sing the old songs. He never cou'U. Leave It to Adam Breede or Jim Elliott, or Lou Frazier. i . WONDER. . ' Did Superintendent Beverldge aubmit that bit of verse as ex ample ot what, he wants the teachers to do, or as a warning as to what must be avoided I SHORT. Several of the city funds are aid to be running short of cash, just like a lot ot common THRIFT. , Benson's late city officials certainly knew their business. They are now accused of hav ing paid one another a. full year's salary Just before going out of office, and charging it all to Omaha. Nothing slow about those Benson boys, . and never was. BUBBLES. Somebody blew a few bubbles over at the court bouse during the week, thus bearing out the prediction made here some time ago that It wouldn't be forever, for someone would have to come up for air. - -f QflET. -', . Coal man. flour man and baker man all have calmed down. They are now watching to see what happens to the butcher "man, whose turn Is next. - ' COAL. Local coal dealers have ceased to lament their sad fate, but so far nobody's slumber hs been disturbed by the crash of fall log prlcer t IN pUR TOWN. Charley Hull Is looking ahead to a trip to Washington. Mat Hall says he could look that way yet if It were the fash Ion to wear that kind of clothes. Charley Meti is another of the brigade that walks down town each morning. He doesn't car much for golf. Lee Estelle showed up at home last week, after a summer on the road Lee is getting to be one ot our best little travelers. Gbuld Diets has the courage of his convictions. He told a lot of - the society girls they were slackers and sticks to It Dad Weaver' la getting well again; says he couldn't think of being in bed with Ak-Sar-Ben's big days so near at hand. Abo Sutton has been jover around Red Oak for a few days. It Is , understood ha- has a law case in one of thy courts over there. ",. - - . 'n V,.: RIVALRY. '-.; Since Hank Dunn has really gotten on the job, he has piled up a stock of contraband that makes Mike Clark's collection look like a family supply. By the way, that's what most ot Mike's wss In the first place. Just a carload Larsen had laid In against the summer drouth. Be that as It ma v. Hank will have to rent new quarters for his Jail pretty soon It he doesn't get a declslofi on soma of the stuff he la holding. LAW. Tou must admit that when the burghers of Montgomery county,Iowa, do engage in liti gation, they give the proceed ings such attention as obviates any danger of their being called slackers. FLENTT. ' Judging by the contents et some of the caches opened up by the police during the week, soma ot our citizens are truly, thrifty. At any rate they laid In plentjr. WAITING. We are still waiting to hear Ig Dunn say he'll do as much for Ed Howard. .. , INCONSISTENCY. When a maiden la yoong ant you call her a kitten. . She smiles at that; . But a few years later. Is aha tickled to death when rem Call her a cat I Richmond, Tlmet-DlsDat