July 8, 1906 (Sunday)

A CARTOONIST'S VIEW OF PARIS: Today's New York Times includes a full page of Hy. Meyer's drawings based on a visit to Paris. I particularly liked this one that shows a tourist asking for directions: "Oo-aye La Roo de Champs Elizah?" over the heading of "French, after all, is an easy language."

THERE'S TALK IN THE 'WEST' OF ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT: Rumors swirled yesterday that someone tried to shoot President Roosevelt while he was on vacation at Oyster Bay, N.Y. One headline in The Syracuse Herald says "Wild Story in the West: Some Papers Heard of Attempt on President's Life." Meanwhile Roosevelt was evidently sitting in his library reading. A gentleman named Moore, who owns the grocery at South and Main streets in Oyster Bay -- his store is under the executive offices that Roosevelt uses when he visits -- had this to say: "Toledo and Michigan papers say the President was shot by a man wearing automobile goggles and a linen duster. Its funny how papers in the West get hit by hot weather."
Here's how one story ends: "And in the midst of the rapid fire of chronicle and comment Sagamore Hill was quiet with the somnolence induced by a warm July sun and the drone of bees."

SHAW SNARLS AT CRITICS: Here's a bit more from George Bernard Shaw, who was happy with the ruling of a New York City judge who found that Shaw's play "Mrs. Warren's Profession" did not violate any of the city's codes. (It deals with prostitution.) In an article with a London dateline, Shaw had this to say yesterday:
The entire blame for the agitation against 'Mrs. Warren's Profession' lies in the heads of the New York critics. Their stupidity, inhumanity and scurrilous and obscene language in dealing with the play drove the poor, wretched little police commissioner to steps which he was reluctant to take. No words of mine are adequate to describe my feelings towards these critics. They should all be gathered in a dust pan and thrown into a dust heap. Had they any sense of decency they would make a barefooted pilgrimage somewhere or shoot themselves, but I don't suppose they will.

July 7, 1906 (Saturday)

MR. SHAW'S TRIUMPH: The Justices of the Court of Special Sessions in New York City ruled yesterday that the production of "Mrs. Warren's Profession" by George Bernard Shaw (right, in 1908) did not violate the city's penal code. Police commissioners ordered the play discontinued last season and charged Arnold Daly and Samuel Gumpertz with the violation. They have, in this ruling, been acquitted. When the play -- which deals with organized prostitution -- opened in the fall of 1905, the New York Herald complained about the "superabundance of foulness." The judges had a hard time seeing any. The news article in The Washington Post says, "The court rules that there is nothing in the words themselves or in any particular phrase or expression in the play which can be said to be indecent."

DIAMOND GIRL: On a Saturday in late May, Mae Thomas swallowed a $350 diamond in an Omaha jewelry story. While looking at a tray of diamonds in the store, she popped one in her mouth. When she was searched, she swallowed the gem at the Coombs jewelry store. An X-ray located it lodged an inch above her appendix and encased in a membrane clinging to her intestines. News reports in June said a police judge told the jeweler: "The diamond is yours. Take it, but If you resort to a surgical operation against the prisoner's will and she dies, you can be held for murder." Thomas refused to allow a surgeon to operate on her and recover the gem for the shop owner. She was sentenced to five years in jail yesterday. I suspect there will be plenty of inmates who will volunteer to clean the chamberpots or toilets once Thomas arrives at the penitentiary.

July 6, 1906 (Friday)

NO, NOT THAT WINSTON CHURCHILL: The news out of New Hampshire is that Winston Churchill (right)is a likely candidate for governor of the state. This is not the British Winston Churchill; rather it's the popular novelist from the States. He makes it clear that he's sick of the influence at least one railroad has in the state. He is quoted in The New York Times today as saying that "the broad issue and general platform should be the non-interference of the Boston & Maine Railroad or of any other corporation in the politics and government of the State." That certainly flows with the point he made in his most recent novel.

SCAM ARTISTS SCORE IN CANADA, BRIEFLY: Canadian wire tappers pulled a fast one on the some bettors yesterday. Evidently a gang intercepted and CHANGED the results of the second race at the Windsor, Ontario, track. Bettors were in on the scam in Cincinnati, Chicago, Louisville and other cities throughout the U.S. They won lots of money by betting on the horses that the wire service listed as winners. A sharp wire operator at the track noticed something was amiss and prevented the third race from being corrupted.

LITTLE WOMAN MAKES BIG SHIP WAIT....AND WAIT: This headline in today's Syracuse paper demanded a closer look: "Tiny Fan Stops 10,000-Ton Ship." It's true -- sort of. But it has nothing to do with mechanical engineering. Yesterday, the "demure and petit" Lucille Farnois was on board the Lorraine, a French liner, which was ready to leave the dock in New York City. Just as the ship was about to leave, she dropped her four-ounce hand fan over the edge. It fluttered to a spot between the planks of the pier, at the shore end of the gangplank. As the ship whistled for its departure, Mlle. Farnois spent some precious time fishing for the fan. The liner held fast to the pier, whistling a bit impatiently. Once she got it, she crossed the gangplank, which was hustled out of the way and the ship -- under the thrust of some of its 15,000 horsepower engines -- immediately backed away from its berth and headed for Europe.

July 5, 1906 (Thursday)

NATURALIST FACES AN UNNATURAL DEATH: Professor Henry Augustus Ward stepped in front of a car yesterday in Buffalo and was run down and killed. Ward (shown with a buckskin-clad Buffalo Bill) was one of the country's best-known naturalists. He once worked with Louis Agassiz at Harvard and owns the largest private collections of meteorites in the world. The Washington Post says that Ward "built up what was said to be the greatest natural history establishment in the world" in Rochester, the city where he was born. His body will be sent to Rochester tomorrow. He was 72. He was walking to the railroad station after dining with a friend. He was planning to catch a train to Wyoming, N.Y., where he has a summer home. The driver of the car, Alex Gunnell, a real estate broker, claims Ward stepped in front of his vehicle. He is scheduled to be in Police Court tomorrow to face a manslaughter charge.

PRESIDENT IGNORES THE RAIN: President Roosevelt was undeterred by the rain when he gave a 45-minute talk at Oyster Bay yesterday in honor of the Fourth of July. By the time Roosevelt (shown with his family at right) got to the grandstand to speak, there was a puddle around his feet. The New York Times notes, "The President never noticed that his feet were getting wet." A downpour came as he began to speak, and, the Times said, "the Oyster Bay umbrellas went up like a field of mushrooms." But Roosevelt, uncovered, went on. And on. And on. The rain "pattered on his head, washed his hair over his forehead, sent streams down his back, and the louder he talked, the more rain came down.
He interrupted himself a couple of times. At one point, he was distracted by a conversation at the edge of the crowd. The Washington Post reported the exchange in this way:
"Will you please stop talking over there," he interrupted himself to say, pointing as he did so to the offenders.
"Is he deaf?" queried the President with his peculiar cluck of humor in his voice. "Please make him dumb also."
An excerpt, courtesy of the Post:
Distrust as a demagogue the man who talks only of the wrong done by the men of wealth. Distrust as a demagogue the man who measures iniquity by the purse. Measure iniquity by the heart, whether a man's purse be full or empty, partly full or partly empty.

WALKER GETS CLOSER TO MANHATTAN: ?Long-distance walker Eddie Adams is nearing the end of his "Minneapolis-to-New York" walk. He hopes to earn $3,000 for the effort — $2,500 to complete the walk and $500 if he breaks the world’s record. He’s averaging nearly 50 miles a day, meaning he’s sure to set a record. He is expected to arrive in Syracuse today. On this tramp, he is accompanied by four dogs. He says the St. Bernard is the best walker. If he wins the $3,000, he will have earned about $1.58 per mile -- enough to buy the dogs plenty of meat.

AMERICA IS SAFE: Many are relieved to learn that the immigrant steamer America -- and her 110 passengers -- is safe. A wireless report from Bermuda indicates that the ship was towed to that island by another steamer after its machinery had become crippled. The America was expected in New York about two weeks ago. Many feared the worst. But it was towed to Bermuda by another steamer, the Dinnamare.

July 4, 1906 (Wednesday)

READY FOR THE FOURTH: In New York City, 24 anti-toxin inspectors are ready to work their magic today, in anticipation of the usual damage caused by fireworks and other explosives in the hands of foolhardy celebrants. Fireworks manufacturers say that demand for Fourth of July materials is 25 percent greater than it was in 1905. The anti-toxins are designed to prevent lockjaw. (The magazine cover at right is from last year.) That news reminds me of something that was printed recently in the Brooklyn Eagle and reprinted over the weekend in various other papers:
To those who are to die by fire and bullet on Wednesday -- and there will be scores of them -- we bid farewell, and wish that they might perish in a worthier cause than that of perpetuating the present way of celebrating the Fourth of July.

WHERE IS 'AMERICA' HEADED? People on both sides of the Atlantic are worried right now about the fate of the immigrant steamer America, which is run by the Fabre Line. It left Marseilles on June 3 with about 150 on board. It left the Azores on June 11 and should have arrived in New York about June 20. The Germania and the Madonna have each arrived in New York since that time, covering the same route. Neither reported seeing the America. Worries increased yesterday because the Hydroraphic Bureau reported there was a derelict ship adrift in the ocean about 400 miles west of the Azores. It's the dismasted schooner Lizzie Chadwick and it is considered a hazard to navigation. Could the America have collided with the schooner? The head of the Fabre Line implores people not to worry.

THE DANGERS OF SPEED: Speaking of ocean-going safety, an editorial in Syracuse's Post-Standard weighs in on the ongoing Europe-to-America speed race between the liners Deutschland and Provence. The editorialist says such recklessness about safety will eventually catch up with the steamship lines. The closing lines:
It the effort to make new speed records is pursued without restraint, another and more sinister record will be made sooner or later in an unprecedented ocean calamity.
I guess we can only wait to read about some deep-sea disaster that lurks in the future.

July 3, 1906 (Tuesday)

LONGTIME AUTOMOBILIST WORRIES ABOUT LIFE IN THE FAST LANE: The man who claims to have owned the third American-built automobile is in Syracuse. C.R. Wooden, one of the country's most avid automobilists, recalls he drove a Winton touring car through the city back in 1897 -- "to the great wonderment of crowds that collected to see the machine." Here's what he told a reporter yesterday:
I don't think that Syracuse people knew what an automobile was at that time, for hundreds surrounded our machine all the time we were here. I found the car unsatisfactory for climbing hills, and as I live in a very hilly ocuntry in Pennsylvania, I ordered a new machine of Mr. Winton the following year. I received the seventeenth car they turned out.
(Later, Alexander Winton had a famous race against Henry Ford. The photo above is from the 1901 race. Ford, on the left, is gaining ground on Winton. Ford went on the win the race.) He adds that SPEED is taking away some of the fun and appeal of driving an automobile. "I can imagine no greater enjoyment that going through the country at a rate of fifteen or twenty miles an hour."

'HUMAN ENIGMA' WAS AMONG VICTIMS OF SALISBURY TRAIN WRECK: Today's New York Times has a small article on one of the people killed in the train wreck over the weekend in Salisbury, England: Julius Keller. He's also known as "The Human Enigma." News of his death has caused plenty of mourning among youngsters on and around Morgan Avenue in the Williamsburg section of the city. Keller, who was 38, had some remarkable mobility even though his LEGS WERE PARALYZED. He used his hands and arms to get around. He walked and climbed stairs on his hands. He liked to race firemen up their pole in the fire house of Engine Company No. 137. Kids loved to race him; they'd run on their legs, he'd "run" on his hands. (They usually gave him a half-block head start.) He had gone off to England for a vaudeville performance.

HOW TO STEAL A BAG FILLED WITH $500,000 WORTH OF JEWELS: A Paris jeweler named Goldschmidt lost $500,000 worth of jewels in London. Here's what happened: He and a customer were having lunch yesterday in the Cafe Monaco. Mr. Goldschmidt left the table at one point to go to the lavatory to wash up. He took his bag of jewels with him. He placed the bag in front of him as he washed up. When he had his hands immersed in water, a man knocked into him. Another man grabbed the bag. Goldschmidt chased them out of the room. But he failed to catch the crooks because a third man fell in front of him, blocking his way. What was in the bag? About a dozen pearl necklaces and more than 1,000 loose stones.