Lightly, lightly winging, on the breezes swinging,
Airy little fairies, full of grace and glee,
Dancing with the sunbeams, weaving dainty day dreams,
Could mortals be as light and free? Airy fairies we!
It was the old story of Cinderella, but the characters were flowers, Sunshine, Bonnie Bee, the good old Godmother, and Mother Nature. Cinderella was a daisy bud, and because her petals had not yet unfolded she had no fine dress to wear to the ball of Prince Sunshine. Cinderella was Marie Schatter, who is well on the road to recovery from a bad case of curvature of the spine. The stepsisters, Hollyhock and Tiger Lily, were proud indeed, although they did limp a little.
Mother Nature, the good fairy godmother, however, summoned Bonnie Bee, who, in his efforts to call the sunshine to open Cinderella’s petals, quite forgot that he had a tubercular knee. When the sunshine did come and Cinderella’s petals opened up, she smiled as only a little girl who has suffered much can smile.
At the ball the part of the Prince was taken by Celia Weller, who has not lost hope that her back may some day be straight. Among the flowers was a little girl, all in white, who carried a bunch of blossoms almost as big as her stunted self.
The play from the ball on followed the time-honored version. In the final scene, where the Prince finds his true love by the try-on of the tiny slipper, all the thirty children in the play came upon the stage.
In spite of their physical handicaps, the children put great spirit into the play, much to the credit of the educational system that lifts little sufferers into Fairyland.
CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL ENTERTAINMENT
New York Mail
A sweet-faced woman stood beside the crib of little Jack MacIntyre in the surgical ward of St. Mary’s Free Hospital for Children this afternoon, and watched him hold court with the little queens of Fairyland, whom De Wolf Hopper had imported from the Majestic theatre. Above the crib was a copper plate bearing the inscription, “In Loving Memory of Katherine Harris Wilkes,” and it was between this plate and the happy group paying homage to little Jack that the woman divided her attention. Sometimes it seemed as if tears were responsible for the glistening in her eyes, but this impression died away when her gaze rested on the little man in the crib.
He was a happy little fellow, and his smile was contagious. Even the staid little members of the “Pied Piper” chorus, exalted to the pinnacle of dignity by being permitted to take part in a “benefit performance,” melted before it. They had approached his crib shyly, but the effusiveness of his greeting was irresistible.
“I was goin’ home to-day,” he gurgled, “but I’m goin’ to stay now for the show. I like shows, I do, and I like”—this with an arch smile—“I like girls, too.”
“You little dear,” said Miss Marguerite Clarke, who plays the part of Elvira in the Hopper show. Jack accepted this tribute complacently, for when one is four years old and the pet of an entire hospital staff, homage becomes almost commonplace.
“Which of these little girls do you like best?” queried the smiling nurse, who was chaperoning Jack’s guests. Now Jack’s last name is MacIntyre, and he proved right then and there that he was a bona fide “Mac,” blarney and all.
“I like,” he said, and his eyes roved smilingly over the entire party, “I like ’em all.”
This diplomatic answer won so much commendation from the little girl guests that it is probable that Jack would still be holding court if the performance planned to gladden both him and his little comrades had not been scheduled to start at 1 o’clock sharp. Chirps of impatience from other parts of the ward warned the party that their visit must be cut short; so the little fairy queens left Jack and prepared for their entrance on the miniature stage which had been erected in the middle of the big room. Only the sweet-faced woman who had stood silently beside the crib remained, and Jack turned his beaming face upon her.
“Are you happy, dear?” she said.
“Sure,” he chuckled; “there’s goin’ to be a show. Ain’t you never seen a show?”
The woman turned from him a second and looked up at the inscription on the plate above his crib. Then she looked down at his smiling face again and said:
“It’s been a long time since I have seen one, dear, but I’m going to watch the show here to-day with you. May I?”
“Sure,” he said. And then he stretched his tiny arm through the bars of the crib and laid his moist little hand in hers—“You and me, together.”
LAWN FETE
Kansas City Times
A quaint old fashioned garden, gay with rose trees and wistaria-twined archways, a garden which blossomed in a day, was the setting for the delightfully costumed fete given yesterday afternoon for the benefit of the little sufferers of Mercy Hospital. Girls in primitive Yorkshire peasant garden smocks assisted in the welcoming of those who came to see the pageant and to give their mite for charity. Little ones of every age who followed the “pied piper” were reproductions of the children of Kate Greenaway. Flowered chintzes gave aid to the blossoms in the garden in adding to the color effect.
It was a fete for the delight of all the grownups, but it really belonged to the little Miss Muffets and their brothers and sisters. This little bit of a Mother Goose child was there in the person of Mary Belden, who looked so bewitching in her flowered ankle-long frock demurely laced in front with velvet ribbon, her fascinating mob cap and strapped white slippers that even then she might have been in a terrible fright of the wicked spider had it not been for the wonderful mitts she wore. They were quaint and black, and Miss Muffet’s pride in them apparently gave chase to her timidity.
Riding a pony with all his might was little J. W. McGarvey. A pale blue long-tailed coat had he, and a stunning high hat sat proudly and securely on his head.
Betty Banks wore a long yellow postilion coat over her pretty white frock and also a big black riding hat.
Far from contrary and altogether fascinating were the “pretty maids all in a row,” and even the original contrary Mary might have been forgiven for her contrariness had she appeared in the frock this Mary (Miss Virginia Aikins) wore. Her costume was a checkered one in many hues, banded about the bottom with velvet ribands. Her big, big hat in Leghorn and her extensive lace collar gave her a very important air.
The pretty maids were decked in flowered frocks of gayest chintzes, bobbing poke bonnets and Maud Muller hats. Ribbon streamers mingled with their curls and gave to the costumes a graceful touch.
The two little Pussy Cats were attractive little kittens in posied skirts and black coats.
Almost too heavy for little Jacky Horner was the big Christmas pie. But the broadly checked long trousers and the checked “runabout” composed a very stunning suit.
Too pretty to tumble in were the costumes of Jack and Jill, Virginia and Penelope Smith. Jack’s suit of sprigged chintz and Jill’s plaid swirling skirts were topped by a high hat and a bright bonnet with plaid bands. With his faithful crook, a gay yellow suit and a cocked hat Little Bo Peep took his way after his sheep very energetically.
“The Merchantmen” were costumed in velvet doublets and hose. These were in bright blue and rose and green and purple. Their velvet Beef-eater hats were true to the type and very becoming to the wearers.
Outside the garden the grounds were turned into Arcady where booths were created into miniature kingdoms, the prettiest of the young matrons and girls presiding. Miss Felice Lyne and her assistants, Mrs. William Perry, Miss Virginia George, Miss Dorothy George, Miss Helen Furguson, Miss Katherine Harvey and Mrs. C. N. Seidlitz, jr., were at the refreshment booth. Miss Lyne sold the cigarettes there.
Miss Josephine Bird, Miss Elizabeth Marsh and Miss Ada Lee Porter served at another booth near.
All these young women wore the picturesque garden smock and some type of hat which properly accompanied it.
Pretty peddlers everywhere were dressed in airy summer frocks with skirts of great expanse, ruffle trimmed and suggestive in every way of the picturesque Victorian era. They were selling sweets and flowers and balloons. To the lot of Mrs. Kenneth Dickey fell the task of disposing of the balloons. Mrs. Dickey wore a white net gown trimmed in velvet bands and a large hat with transparent brim. A silk sport coat added a bit of color. Among the other venders who plied their trade for charity’s sake were:
- Miss Annette McGee,
- Miss Virginia Beeler,
- Miss Elizabeth Dodge,
- Miss Catherine Firey,
- Miss Madeline Dickey,
- Miss Gwendolyn Green,
- Miss Flora Markey,
- Miss Dorothy Johnston,
- Miss Florence Haight,
- Mrs. List Peppard,
- Miss Helen Foran,
- Miss Ada Lee Porter,
- Miss Josephine Bird,
- Miss Elizabeth Marsh,
- Miss Elizabeth Cook,
- Miss Helen Mace.
JUBILEE SERVICE IN CATHEDRAL
New York Evening Post
It is seldom that New York goes to church in honor of a foreign potentate, and a royal monarch at that. Yet some thousands filled St. Patrick’s Cathedral to-day to listen to a solemn high mass, celebrated with all the stately pomp of the Roman Catholic ritual, in honor of the diamond jubilee of his “Apostolic Majesty Francis Joseph I, Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary, of Bohemia, of Dalmatia, of Croatia, of Slavonia, of Galicia, of Jerusalem, Archduke of Austria, Count-Prince of Hapsburg, Seigneur of the Wendish March, Grand Voyvode of Servia,” and any number of additional titles.
Archbishop Farley sat in his high seat at the left of the chancel, surrounded by monsignori in violet, while the glimmer of many-hued cassocks, the rustling of stoles, and the shimmer of the purple gowns of the acolytes filled the broad altar with a constant play of shifting colors.
Through windows, high up, the cold early-winter sunshine poured, warmed by the gracious tones of the panes, and mingled with the yellow light of the candles on the high altar. At intervals along the nave and in the side aisles bunches of electric lights twinkled dimly.
The church filled rapidly, and by the time the first premonitory rumbles of the organ started the echoes flying back and forth among the lofty arches, the front part, clear across the transept, was full, and scarce a pew throughout the entire body of the edifice that did not have its quota of the devout.
Not all were Austrians or Hungarians, or any one of the myriad nationalities ruled over by the aged Emperor-King; not all were Catholics, either. Many were there simply to do honor to a man who had ruled the most scattered country in the world for sixty years, the span of an ordinary man’s life.
In the front pews sat the diplomats and guests of honor, with here and there among them the glitter of a uniform or a decoration. An Austrian in the full uniform of his country’s service, his glazed, yellow-plumed shako on his arm and sword clanking at his heels, strode up the centre aisle to a pew. His stiff pompadour and little moustache reminded one of the slim lieutenants who haunt the cafés of Vienna and Buda-Pest. While one felt instinctively that he would have been out of place on Fifth Avenue, somehow his strange uniform fitted in with the atmosphere of the church.
The organ started and the procession of altar boys, acolytes, priests, and deacons appeared. Candles glimmered, rose and fell, to the organ’s swelling prelude. With the clergy ranged in orderly rows before the altar, the chant of the Te Deum was taken up by the archbishop. Then the celebrant of the mass, the Rev. John Hauptmann, and his deacons, the Rev. Urban Nageleisen, and the Rev. Rudolph Nickel, clad in shimmering gold vestments, advanced and commenced the preliminary ceremonies of the mass.
It was all very beautiful and imposing, and the vast congregation sat spellbound through the scene, while the clergy, the celebrants, and the masters of the ceremonies, the Rev. J. V. Lewis and the Rev. A. Blaznick, conducted the rites.
Later, there were sermons by the Rev. Ambrose Schumack and Father Mateus. Father Schumack spoke in English with a marked German accent, taking for his text “Fear God, honor the King.” He told of the work of Francis Joseph, of his long and stormy reign.
“On this glorious day,” he said, “it would hardly be fitting to go into the sadnesses of his life. We may pass over the wars, bloody and terrible, into which he was dragged; we may pass over the tragedies in his family history. He is an old man, who has ruled his country for sixty years, and who has kept her, until to-day, whole and strong. He has kept her so, largely, I think, because of the aid which he has been afforded by Divine Providence. ‘Fear God; honor the King.’ That is a motto which can hurt none of us.”
One could not avoid a quiver of historic interest at the words. Perhaps never, since the days when Clinton’s grenadiers garrisoned New York, has a clergyman preached from such a text.
Father Mateus, who followed Father Schumack, spoke in the Magyar tongue. Many there were in the audience who leaned forward attentively in their seats, drinking in the unwonted words. To them it was like a breath fresh from the fatherland. But the majority of the audience could only appreciate the priest’s fine delivery, which sent his resonant words clanging distinctly into every farthest corner of the building.
At last, Father Mateus climbed down from the pulpit, and the service was continued. And then, when it was nearly time to go, the whole congregation rose and joined with the choir and the priests in singing the mighty “Volkshymne,” which runs:
Gott erhalte, Gott beschütze
Unsern Kaiser, unser Land!
Maechtig durch des Glaubens Stuetze,
Führ’ er uns mit weiser Hand!
Lass uns seiner Vaeter Krone
Schirmen wider jeden Feind;
Innig bleibt mit Habsburg’s Throne
Oesterreichs Geschick vereint.
Besides Mayor McClellan and his secretary, others who attended were Patrick McGowan, president of the Board of Aldermen; Lawrence Grosser, president of the Borough of Queens; Louis H. Haffen, president of the Borough of the Bronx; Bird S. Coler, president of the Borough of Brooklyn; Thomas F. Murphy, assistant postmaster; Robert Watchorn, immigration commissioner; Samuel S. Koenig, secretary of State-elect; Rear-Admiral Goodrich; Gustave Lindenthal, Judge Hough of the United States District Court, and the justices of the Supreme Court, Charles H. Truax, Henry Bischoff, jr., Leonard A. Giegerich, John W. Goff, Mitchell E. Erlanger, Lorenz Zeller, and W. H. Olmstead. The city magistrates were represented by Henry Steinert and Peter T. Barlow.
Practically all the diplomatic representatives of the various governments maintaining consular offices in this city were present, including the Austrian consul-general, Baron Otto Hoenning O’Carroll; the Austrian consul, Georg von Grivicic; Karl Buenz, the German consul-general; Leg. Rat Karl Gneist, German consul; the Count Hannibal Massiglia, Italian consul-general; Courtenay W. Bishop, English consul; Étienne Lanel, French consul; Baron A. Schlippenbach, Russian consul-general; Kokichi Midzune, Japanese consul-general; John R. Planten, consul-general of the Netherlands; Julius Clan, consul-general of Denmark; Jose Joaquim Gomes dos Santos, Brazilian consul-general; Jose V. Fernandez, consul-general of Argentina; Ricardo Sanchez-Croz, consul-general of Chili; Wallace White, consul-general of Paraguay; Juon J. Ulloa, consul-general of Costa Rica, and Ramon Bengoeches, consul-general of Guatemala.
The officers of the Austrian Society of New York, Emil Fischel, Dr. Edward Pisko, Dr. Karl Weiss, and Leopold Selzer, together with many of the members, were likewise present.
UNIVERSITY COMMENCEMENT
New York Evening Post
New Haven, Conn., June 17.—Seven hundred and seventy-eight degrees were conferred upon students of the class of 1914 at the 213th commencement exercises of Yale University here to-day. The ceremonies were held in Woolsey Hall, in the presence of a great and distinguished academic gathering. Twenty-one honorary degrees were conferred, among them that of doctor of laws on Romulo S. Naon, Ambassador from the Argentine to the United States, and now one of the envoys in the mediation proceedings at Niagara Falls.
The same honor was awarded to Surgeon-Gen. William Crawford Gorgas, who yesterday received the degree of doctor of science from Princeton. In view of the centennial celebration of the Yale Medical School, it was natural that the number of medical men to receive honorary degrees should be much greater than usual.
The gathering of the candidates for degrees was preceded by the customary procession, formed in Vanderbilt Court, through the central green and thence through College Street to Woolsey Hall, while the Trinity Church chimes on the Green and the band which headed the procession played “Onward, Christian Soldiers.” The formal exercises included music conducted by Prof. Horatio Parker, dean of the Music School. Three of the numbers were composed by Jean Sibelius, who was among the recipients of honorary degrees. Prayer was offered by the Rev. Dr. Charles E. Jefferson, of New York City, a member of the Yale Corporation. Prof. Wilbur L. Cross, of the Scientific School, presented the candidates for honorary degrees.
For work done in the various departments of the University the 778 degrees were conferred as follows: In Yale College, 287 bachelors of arts, 313 bachelors of philosophy; in the School of Divinity, 27 bachelors of divinity; in the School of Law, 29 bachelors of laws, 6 masters of laws, 2 doctors of laws, 2 bachelors of civil laws; in the School of Forestry, 24 masters of forestry; in the Graduate School, 32 doctors of philosophy and 30 masters of arts; in the Sheffield Scientific School, 1 degree of electrical engineer, 2 of civil engineer, 8 of mechanical engineer, 4 of engineer of mines; in the School of Fine Arts, 1 bachelor of fine arts and 2 bachelors of music. The prizes in all departments were announced yesterday, and the chief honors were published in the Evening Post.
Of the men receiving honorary degrees, the following were awarded the degree of Master of Arts:
Edwin Howland Blashfield, mural decorator, winner of many prizes, and editor of Vasari’s “Lives of the Painters.”
Edward Robinson Baldwin, M.D., right-hand man of Dr. Trudeau at Saranac Lake, and an American authority on tuberculosis.
William Herbert Corbin, ’89, honored because of his important work as Connecticut Tax Commissioner.
Capt. Charles Franklin Craig, M.D., ’94, an officer of the United States Medical Corps, who has distinguished himself chiefly by work on malarial and tropical diseases.
John Howland, ’94, professor of pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University.
James Hartness, president of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, inventor of useful mechanical parts, instruments, etc.
Henry Hun, Ph.B., ’74, well-known neurologist and formerly president of the Association of American Physicians.
Elliott Proctor Joslin, ’90, a physician of note in Boston, who is connected with the Harvard Medical School.
Fred Towsley Murphy, ’97, professor of surgery in Washington University, St. Louis.
Oliver C. Smith, president of the Connecticut Medical Society, and a leading surgeon of Hartford.
William Francis Verdi, M.D., ’94, a leading operative surgeon of Connecticut.
Miss Mary Emma Woolley, president of Mount Holyoke College.
Jean Sibelius, the leading Finnish composer, was honored with the degree of doctor of music. The degree of doctor of science was conferred upon Edgar Fahs Smith, provost of the University of Pennsylvania and a well-known American chemist, and upon Richard Pearson Strong, Ph.B., ’93, professor in the Harvard Medical School, an authority on tropical diseases.
Sidney Gulick, professor of theology at Doshisha, author of “The Social Evolution of the Japanese,” and influential adviser of the Japanese and American Governments on matters of race adjustment on the shores of the Pacific, received the honorary degree of doctor of divinity.
The following received the degree of doctor of laws:
William Crawford Gorgas, surgeon-general of the United States, chief sanitary engineer of the Panama Canal, and a member of the Isthmian Commission.
George Wharton Pepper, an eminent lawyer and a citizen vitally interested in the work of Christian unity and missions.
Rómulo S. Naón, Ambassador of Argentina to the United States, formerly Minister of Education, and a jurist of note.
John Kimberly Beach, 77, formerly of the firm which for many years has been the counsel of the University, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of Connecticut, and professor of mercantile law and admiralty jurisprudence in the Yale Law School.
Peter Ainslee, leader in the Church of the Disciples, worker in the cause of Christian unity, and the author of the standard history of his communion.
A commencement week made historical by the endowment and promise of further endowment in its centennial year of the Yale Medical School, was brought to a close by the exercises to-day. In every way, this week marking the completion of the 213th year of the conferring of Yale degrees is generally regarded as a notable one. On the class reunion side, the usual bizarre effects have been gained by the adoption of class costumes. Various classes appeared as polo players, Colonials, British soldiers, and Chinese mandarins, and some two hundred members of the academic triennial class were decked out as playing-cards. Many classes report record attendances, those back for regular reunions including numerous distinguished sons of the University. One gathers the impression that this year’s commencement has brought back greater numbers than any previous occasion, barring, of course, the bicentennial celebration, in the fall of 1901.
Two innovations were tried out this year on the social side of commencement week. The so-called “1492 Dinner,” inaugurated some years ago to provide a Tuesday evening dinner for all returning graduates not included in regular reunion classes, was taken over by the class secretaries’ bureau and rejuvenated under the more formal title of the “United Graduates’ Reunion Dinner.” Held in Woolsey Hall, where the Newberry organ was used to accompany the singing of old Latin hymns, and where the surroundings were conducive to a more informal and intimate gathering than in the University Dining Hall, the dinner was a success under the new auspices. Charles W. Littlefield, ’03, of New York, presided, and two of the speakers were John H. Finley, Commissioner of Education of New York, and Dudley Field Malone. At the end of the Tuesday evening reunion celebration, a general alumni gathering on the College campus brought men of all classes together. This meeting was an improvement on last year’s gathering, spectacular fireworks, general singing, and athletic contests being the features of the programme.
The final event of the Yale commencement of 1914 was the president’s reception in Memorial Hall this afternoon.
Note—The following two stories show how the same incident was reported in a Chicago morning paper and in a New York evening paper of the same day.
COMMENCEMENT INCIDENT
(1)
Chicago Tribune
Champaign, Ill., June 17.—[Special.]—Discipline at the University of Illinois is not what it used to be in the days when they decided to make an example of Porter Gray, the boy who wouldn’t go to chapel.
Chapel cutting in those times was considered a pretty serious offense; yet here was the Gray boy back on the campus today with the full knowledge and consent of the faculty.
And more than that, the faculty—regardless of the fact that it wasn’t much more than twenty-nine years ago that he was suspended—patted him on the back, defied the rules of dignity by joining the student body in an oskey wow, wow, and wound up by making him a bachelor of science.
Those of the town folk who saw Porter the day he packed up his other shirt and collar and marched defiantly into exile remarked on his changed appearance on his return. The hair that fringes the new bald spot on top of his head is gray, he has become exaggeratedly round shouldered, and he can’t see without the aid of thick lensed glasses. But that, says Champaign, is what fast city life will do to any youngster.
Porter had not been back at school long before he met another bad boy—a chap named Harrison Coates Earl, who got into trouble with the university authorities and left as hastily as his classmate, Gray. Harrison has changed a lot, too. He has put on flesh, and he says that even without the recommendation of his alma mater he got a good position in Chicago as a municipal judge.
The new school educators in charge at the university treated Harrison Earl as they did the Gray boy—only it was a bachelor of literature they made him.
The two disciplined classmates had been wandering around the campus unrecognized amid a swarm of hurrying, nervous seniors. They met at the bursar’s office.
“Here’s $5—my diploma fee. I’m Gray, ’85,” jerked Porter through the wicket, when a hand thumped against his back.
“Gray, ’85, eh; little Port Gray? Why, you’re suspended for cutting chapel. You’d better get off the campus before they catch you.”
Gray, ’85, whirled around. He recognized the heavy handed speaker.
“Harrison Earl,” he cried. “Do you mean to say they’re taking you back, too?”
“Not Harrison, but Judge Earl, if you please,” said the other severely. “Your guess is right. They’ve called me back to get my degree. In a few hours I’ll be a bachelor of literature. I don’t know, though, that it’s going to help me any in the law, but I’ll be glad to get it just the same. How about you?”
Gray shook his head.
“I’ll be a bachelor of science when they get through with me at the exercises,” he answered. “The degree might have done me some good—twenty-nine years ago—but I don’t think it’ll be of any great assistance to me now. It might make me eligible to the University club. But they probably wouldn’t want me there. I’m a professional masseur.”
Back in the early ’80’s seniors at the state university didn’t go in for caps and gowns at commencement, but it never did take Porter Gray long to pick anything up. After looking over the new fangled outfits on display along the campus, he went into a shop and rented one for himself.
In cap and gown he paraded into the university auditorium with the rest of the candidates for degrees. In the section to which he was ushered he found a dozen familiar faces, all seamed with wrinkles like his own, and most of them adorned with spectacles. The owners of the faces remembered him, too, as he was whispering greetings.
“Will Brown—you still alive? Bob Dunlevy—why, Bob, you need a shave. Joe Holt, did you come all the way from California for this?”
To those of his old schoolmates who hadn’t read of the university’s intention of calling it quits and conferring on him the degree held back for twenty-nine years, Gray explained the reason for his return.
Gray told how, after losing his battle for reinstatement in the courts, he had decided to cut himself off forever from the university; how the alma mater had forgotten his existence, and then, with the unearthing of some old records, had “discovered” him and offered him a degree.
“If they had not said the first word I never would have taken it,” Gray protested. “If I had it to do all over again I would not change my course. I was an agnostic, and I am one still. They couldn’t drag me to chapel if I thought I could put the time to better use with my books.”
(2)
New York Evening Post
Champaign, Ill., June 17.—Suspended twenty-nine years ago because he was an agnostic and would not attend chapel, Porter Gray, of the class of ’85, received his degree of bachelor of science from the University of Illinois to-day.
Gray was working his way through the University back in the eighties. It was his ambition to become a Government entomologist. He was forced to take leave of absence for one year to earn money to complete his course.
In spite of his narrow means and close attention to his studies, Gray began to acquire a campus reputation as the man who never went to chapel. Attendance was compulsory in those days. Selim H. Peabody, then president of the University, called Gray on the carpet, but the student was firm.
“I am an agnostic,” he said. “I will not go to chapel.”
“Write a statement that chapel attendance is repugnant to your religious convictions, and that will suffice,” said Dr. Peabody.
“I will not. I have no religious convictions; I am an agnostic. I simply will not attend chapel,” said Gray.
He was suspended forty days before he was to have been graduated.
President Edmund J. James, of the University, came upon the papers in Gray’s old and forgotten case a short time ago when he was engaged in rounding up the old alumni for a home coming. He wrote to Gray in Chicago, and urged him to visit the University.
Gray, embittered by a vain fight that had taken his last dollar years ago and had ended only in the State Supreme Court, to compel the University to give him his degree, replied curtly that all he wished the University to do was to forget him. President James wrote again that chapel rules were obsolete now, and that they wanted to give Gray his belated degree. Gray came here to-day, and from a big crowd of undergraduates he will hear for the first time the cheer of Illinois. College yells were not much known in Gray’s day here.
UNIVERSITY CLASS DAY
New York Sun
The Columbia seniors had an honorary valedictorian at their class day exercises yesterday afternoon whose name was not on the programme but whose presence on the platform called for ten minutes’ continual cheering. Fifty years after he had been graduated, and upon the eve of his retirement from the university, Dean John Howard Van Amringe became an honorary member of the class of 1910, and yesterday, when the class was celebrating its last reunion as undergraduates, Van Amringe, ’60, made a farewell address to the class.
When the class marched out of the gymnasium at the conclusion, the white haired dean and the senior president went out side by side, on the “pilgrimage” to Hamilton Hall, where the class ivy was planted.
The exercises were held early in the afternoon in a room thronged with the relatives and friends of the graduates, who marched into the gymnasium dressed in academic cap and gown. Robert Scarborough Erskine delivered the president’s address of welcome. Francis N. Bangs, a son of Francis S. Bangs, who had much to do with the abolition of football at Columbia five years ago, was the class historian, and he divulged class secrets. He made the statement that a ballot of the class showed that forty-one of the eighty-seven members have more than a passing liking for beverages stronger than water, while fifty-two delight in using tobacco. Bangs did not go any further into the intimate history of the class.
Harry Wilson of Sioux Falls, S. D., was selected the most popular man in the class, the one who has done most for Columbia, the most likely to succeed, likewise the noisiest, and the biggest politician. Howard Delane was chosen the best all around man and the best natured; he was elected the recipient of the alumni association prize to the most faithful and deserving student, which is the highest honor a senior at Columbia can gain. John Mentil was elected the best athlete; that distinction he gained with ease because he has been captain of a championship basketball team and is on the varsity baseball team. Clarence Renton won the rather doubtful honor of being the biggest fusser and likewise the most foolish man in the class. Sidney Glide took first place in the race for most conceited and grouchiest while Arthur Schuarz was designated the laziest, biggest sport and biggest bluffer.
The statistics of the class as a whole showed that the average height was 5 feet 10½ inches, the average weight 151 pounds and the average age 21 years 5 months, making the 1910 men the youngest set that has been graduated from Columbia in some time. Most of the members of the class were born and live in New York, although every part of the country is represented. Thirty-one men intend to study law, ten will take up engineering, nine have chosen medicine and eight will go into business. The others were hazy as to just what they were going to do, or were too modest to tell about their plans. More than half the class is Republican, and there are only ten Democrats. One man declared himself a “Bryan Republican.”
The class decided that Prof. Hervey was the best teacher and the hardest professor to bluff. Prof. Charles Arthur Beard was elected the most popular professor, and William Clinton Densmore Odell, a brother of the ex-Governor and a professor in the English department, was elected the most polished. The history department was considered the best in the university, while the French department increased its lead in the contest for the least desirable, getting the fifteenth successive annual vote for that honor.
Benjamin Berinstein, one of the two blind men in the class, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, with Thomas Alexander, Paul Williams Aschner, Ernst Phillip Boas, Mortimer Brenner, Louis Grossbaum, John Dotha Jones, Russell Thorp Kirby, Herman Joseph Muller, William de Forest Pearson, Edward Heyman Pfeiffer, Maurice Picard and Rollo Linsmore de Wilton.
Berinstein stood at the head of the list. He has studied for the last year in the law school, having completed the first three years of his course in the college last June. James Henry Mullin, the other blind member of the class, received commendation for his work.
Condict W. Cutler read the class poem, and the class prophecy was delivered by C. Homer Ramsdell of Newburgh, N. Y. Geddes Smith of Paterson, N. J., made the ivy oration, after William Langer and Dean Van Amringe had delivered their valedictories.
William Allen White will deliver the annual Phi Beta Kappa address in Earl Hall this afternoon, on “A Theory of Spiritual Progress.” In the morning the seniors and the faculty will play the annual baseball game on South Field.
- Miss Annette McGee,
- Miss Virginia Beeler,
- Miss Elizabeth Dodge,
- Miss Catherine Firey,
- Miss Madeline Dickey,
- Miss Gwendolyn Green,
- Miss Flora Markey,
- Miss Dorothy Johnston,
- Miss Florence Haight,
- Mrs. List Peppard,
- Miss Helen Foran,
- Miss Ada Lee Porter,
- Miss Josephine Bird,
- Miss Elizabeth Marsh,
- Miss Elizabeth Cook,
- Miss Helen Mace.
Edwin Howland Blashfield, mural decorator, winner of many prizes, and editor of Vasari’s “Lives of the Painters.”
Edward Robinson Baldwin, M.D., right-hand man of Dr. Trudeau at Saranac Lake, and an American authority on tuberculosis.
William Herbert Corbin, ’89, honored because of his important work as Connecticut Tax Commissioner.
Capt. Charles Franklin Craig, M.D., ’94, an officer of the United States Medical Corps, who has distinguished himself chiefly by work on malarial and tropical diseases.
John Howland, ’94, professor of pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University.
James Hartness, president of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, inventor of useful mechanical parts, instruments, etc.
Henry Hun, Ph.B., ’74, well-known neurologist and formerly president of the Association of American Physicians.
Elliott Proctor Joslin, ’90, a physician of note in Boston, who is connected with the Harvard Medical School.
Fred Towsley Murphy, ’97, professor of surgery in Washington University, St. Louis.
Oliver C. Smith, president of the Connecticut Medical Society, and a leading surgeon of Hartford.
William Francis Verdi, M.D., ’94, a leading operative surgeon of Connecticut.
Miss Mary Emma Woolley, president of Mount Holyoke College.
CHAPTER IX
ILLNESS AND DEATH
In this class of news stories are included those concerning the illness or death of persons known in the community or in the world at large, as well as those dealing with illness, surgical operations, and deaths that are sufficiently unusual to be matters of general interest. Stories of this kind are primarily informative in character, but the importance of the personal element permits effective human interest development. Pathetic phases of illness or death sometimes give value to news that otherwise would be of slight interest. The seriousness of the subject demands dignity of treatment.
In writing an obituary the purpose should be not only to give biographical facts but to bring out the significance of a personality. A well written obituary is a constructive interpretation of the meaning of a person’s life and work.
ILLNESS
Kansas City Star
New York, Nov. 23.—Ye Olde Caxton Book Shop, Brooklyn, was closed long after 7 o’clock yesterday morning. Nobody stirred behind the brown paper curtains which hung on a coarse string over an improvised cross wall of musty old volumes, their titles long ago hidden beneath a layer of dust.
Solicitous neighbors, tradesmen of the block, children on their way to school peered eagerly, but vainly, through the rain-streaked window, beyond careless rows of less ancient authors and orderless festoons of classical sheet music. Mere solicitude increased to anxiety, and anxiety to fear that an old man, loved by the neighborhood, had died among his treasures.
Some one told the police and two men came to force the door, with an ambulance surgeon from the Bushwick Hospital, ready to give him aid if needed. Richard Wright was not dead, but how much longer he would have lasted if help had not come is uncertain. He lay there on a rude couch, home made and stretched across cases of books in the back of his store. Hunger, added to the natural weakness and feebleness of his 78 years, had almost claimed him for its victim.
“No, no,” he feebly said. “Don’t take me to the hospital; I’m too old. I don’t want to cause trouble to anyone. I want to die quietly among my books.”
Nailed against one of the bookcases was a small notice on black tin, “We refer all needy cases to the Brooklyn Charity Bureau.”
INDIAN DYING
Milwaukee Free Press
Tse-Ne-Gat is very weary.
Soon he must go on the long, long journey, following the shadowy trail of all his people.
For the white man’s plague has laid its ruthless hand upon him, and the white man’s plague has done what the white man’s rifles and the white man’s courts could never do. It has broken the spirit of Tse-Ne-Gat, and the heart of sorrowful old Ma Old Polk.
It was while he waited for the white man’s court to sit, that the plague came to Tse-Ne-Gat. Justice the white man gave him, but with justice came the plague. This is the story of it:
Tse-Ne-Gat, so the government said, murdered Juan Chacon, Mexican sheep-herder, and for the slaying Tse-Ne-Gat must be hanged. Cowboys and ranchers rode into the hills to take him, and Tse-Ne-Gat, his father and a few followers fought them off. They had sworn that they would not yield to all the armed forces of the United States, for they knew Tse-Ne-Gat had not killed the sheep-herder, and the Ute should not die a shameful death unjustly.
Then Gen. Hugh Scott, U. S. A., rode into the hills alone. He promised that the Indian should have justice, and Tse-Ne-Gat was content. Out of the hills he rode with Scott, out of the hills and into the white man’s jail. There he waited until the white man’s court should sit to grant him justice.
In the jail were other prisoners, and the great white plague stalked silently among them. Tse-Ne-Gat, pining for the hills and the arroyos and the great open spaces of the Ute reservation, was a shining mark for its unseen fatal arrows. So Tse-Ne-Gat began to cough the cough that all men, white or red, fear most of all, for it has not even the swift mercy of the rifle bullet.
Attorney W. J. Kershaw, when the call for his help came from Colorado, left his office in the Germania building[C] to appear as counsel for Tse-Ne-Gat, and before the court of United States Judge Robert E. Lewis, in Denver, he acquitted him. And Tse-Ne-Gat was free to go back again to the reservation. Only, the order of the court could not free him from the white man’s plague, which the white man’s jail had given him.
[C] Milwaukee.
So Tse-Ne-Gat and old Ma Old Polk went to a hospital, near Denver. Tse-Ne-Gat made for himself a long whistle from the green stalk of a plant. On it he whistled, imitating the calls of the birds he knew, and so well did he do it that the birds answered and came to the yard of the great hospital. That sight the other sufferers there loved, the sight of Tse-Ne-Gat wrapped in his blanket, whistling softly to the birds that gathered at his feet to eat of the crumbs he scattered for them when they answered his call.
More troubles came. The white man’s doctor said that he might not smoke and live. His cigaret was banished. Ma Old Polk was determined that he should not smoke, so she fought the craving with him as she watched him. Neither did she smoke, for his sake, and from the deprivation she suffered more than he, only she could slip out to the reeds by the river now and then when the demand seemed irresistible.
Back at the reservation, Tse-Ne-Gat felt better. The call of the woods grew stronger, and one morning Ma Old Polk awoke to find that her son and his gun were missing, gone no one knew where. That night he returned, exhausted and broken, until he could scarcely bear his gun. He wrapped himself in his blanket, too tired even to whistle for the birds. It was two weeks before the watchful mother heard of the rabbits Tse-Ne-Gat had shot but had been forced by weakness to throw away before he brought them home.
That is the story that has come to Milwaukee and to Tse-Ne-Gat’s attorney here, who cannot help him in this fight. Tse-Ne-Gat still goes walking, but not so far. He walks as one weary of long traveling. Sometimes he disappears for half an hour or more. If the doctors suspect that he is following the example of his mother and stealing the smoke he loves so well, they say nothing. They have nothing but sympathy for Tse-Ne-Gat.
Tse-Ne-Gat has sympathy, too, for the judge who gave him justice. For he has learned that on the very day that the story of his own rapidly failing life had been reported to Judge Robert E. Lewis a telegram had come to the judge, telling him that his father, Col. Warner Lewis, was dead. Col. Warner Lewis was the only survivor of an Indian massacre in 1863 near where Coffeyville, Kas., now stands. And it was the son of that sole survivor of Indian vengeance who gave justice and freedom to Tse-Ne-Gat.
SURGICAL OPERATION
Milwaukee Sentinel
The surgeon’s knife instead of the reformatory; an operation in place of an application of “the rod.”
Is this the manner in which wayward youths are to be made good?
The strange case of Anton Heim, a 14 year old Milwaukee lad, at least lends emphasis to the vast possibilities for the skilled surgeon as a reformer of certain criminally inclined persons.
As he came from a good family, there seemed to be no hereditary reason why Anton should be addicted to stealing and other mischievous acts. His case was a puzzle until physicians learned that at the age of 5 he had been the victim of an accident in which a door had fallen on him and caused a dent in his skull, and it was their theory that the consequent pressure on the brain might have unsettled his mind and thus affected his actions.
The operation was performed on Oct. 19 in Trinity hospital by Dr. W. C. F. Witte.
Since then Anton’s taciturn, irritable disposition has given way to ambitious and honest traits. The operation has not only meant much for Anton Heim, but is full of significance as to possibilities along these lines.
Another case is cited by a Milwaukee physician wherein a Norwegian youth who received a skull injury in his childhood before coming to America, has been relieved through a similar operation and been changed from a dependent to a self-supporting man.
“Persons suffering from such skull injuries,” explained the physician, “are irritable, depressed and subject to an idea that they are being persecuted. This Norwegian lad previous to the operation was thoroughly shiftless. Now he has been holding a position for three years and has recovered his ambition and desire to work and save money.”
SURGICAL OPERATION
Philadelphia Inquirer
WASHINGTON, D. C., Aug. 19.—By massaging the heart of a colored boy who was apparently dead, doctors in the Emergency Hospital succeeded in reviving him.
The boy was under the influence of chloroform, and the surgeon was operating on an infected knee, when respiration suddenly ceased. The pulse died and finally stopped; the body became cold, the limbs rigid. Artificial respiration was resorted to, but there was no responding pulsation of the heart. After six minutes of suspense, during which the physician resorted to every possible method to revive the patient, he realized that there was only one chance to save the boy’s life.
With delicate skill he opened the boy’s abdomen and for seven minutes massaged the patient’s heart with his fingers. Finally, when he was about to give up all hope, the boy took a faint voluntary breath, and for several minutes the heart pulsated gently. Plying the heart with his fingers to stimulate circulation of the blood, the physician after eighteen minutes had the heart pulsating normally and knew that he had succeeded in his almost miraculous operation.
For a day and a half following the operation the boy remained in excellent condition and every hope was held out for his recovery. But the infection of the knee had spread to the left side and had infected the glands of the neck. Blood poisoning set in and, despite all efforts to save him, the boy succumbed.
The operation on the heart is regarded by medical students as unique in the annals of medicine. It also opens up a new field in surgery, and means, physicians say, that many persons who expire while under anesthetics may possibly be revived by such methods.
Within a few months several eminent physicians of this city will conduct vivisection tests to determine how far the heart massage can be carried. Dogs will be placed under anesthetics and allowed to succumb, it is said, so that physicians may determine after how long an interval an animal apparently dead may be restored by heart massage.
SUDDEN DEATH
Chicago Inter Ocean
While joking with several fellow employes over the recent baseball trade between the Chicago American league baseball team and the New York American league team, Robert Nash, 118 Webster Place, a clerk employed by Sprague, Warner & Co., 600 West Erie street, dropped dead from heart disease yesterday in his place of employment.
Herman Schweitzer, 2849 Christiana avenue, a department manager, and J. B. Willott, 508 Melrose avenue, were hoaxing Nash about the trade. They told Nash that the Chicago team had obtained Chase of the New York team, a “hoodoo,” and that they would be unable to win any more games.
Nash laughed at their joke and walked to a chair. He fell to the floor, and was dead when a physician arrived.
Nash was one of the oldest employes of the Sprague-Warner company. He had been in the grocery company for thirty-seven years. Heart disease is believed to have caused his death.
ENGINEER’S DYING REQUEST
Boston Herald
CHICAGO, Dec 21—Charles W. Walter, veteran conductor on the Nickel Plate Railroad, died yesterday on his run from Bellevue, O, to Chicago, and members of the train crew fought snow and slippery tracks to carry out Walter’s last request that No. 1 be brought in on time, thereby preserving his record of never having been late.
Walter took the train at Bellevue, where he lived, at 7:55 a. m. yesterday. An hour later he became ill and placed the train in charge of Samuel Wilson, an extra passenger conductor.
“Be sure and bring her in on time, Sam, and keep my record clean,” Walter requested. Stops were shortened to a minimum. The engineer kept the sand running on the slippery rails, and his fireman hardly took his hands from the shovel.
Near Leipsic Junction, where doctors and ambulance awaited, Walter died. No. 1 pulled into the Lasalle-st Station, Chicago, on the dot. To the dispatcher, who was surprised to see him report instead of Walter, Wilson said: “Charlie has made his last run, and be sure to put it down we’re on time.”
WOMAN DIES ALONE
Kansas City Star
Police officers forced their way into the home of Miss Mary R. Wilson, daughter of John H. Wilson, a former mayor of Kansas City, at 961 Cane Street, shortly before 6 o’clock yesterday afternoon, and found her dead in bed in her room on the second floor. Dr. Harry Czarlinsky, county coroner, said that the cause of death was pneumonia brought on by exposure.
Since the death of her mother seven years ago, Miss Wilson had lived in the big house on Cane Street alone. She kept no servants and her only companion was a pet dog, Danny. Miss Wilson, who was more than 50 years old, had ignored the advice of friends, who believed she should live with relatives.
She was last seen alive Thursday night, when Mrs. B. F. Strong, wife of B. F. Strong, the vicar of St. James Church, who lives at 965 Cane Street, noticed her moving about in the rear of the house with a lamp. Friday passed without either Mrs. Strong or Mrs. Albert Hart, the neighbor north of the house, seeing Miss Wilson. The snow had drifted evenly over the front walk and the blinds at the window were drawn.
Mrs. Hart telephoned Sanford B. Green and Porter Home, Miss Wilson’s attorneys. Mr. Green called several of Miss Wilson’s intimate friends and was unable to find out anything of her whereabouts. He then called the chief of police and asked that a search of the house be made.
When the officers entered the room, they found Miss Wilson attired in night clothing lying on her bed. Her pet, Danny, was curled up at the foot of the bed. Weak from want of food, he growled at the officers. The coroner said that life had been extinct twenty-four hours.
A small diary which Miss Wilson had kept for years testified to her illness. An entry Tuesday read: “I haven’t felt well all day.” Wednesday it said: “I think the weather has brought on an attack of grip.” Thursday’s entry was the last in the book: “I know I’m in for a bad case of pneumonia.” No explanation can be given why Miss Wilson did not get medical attention when she knew she had pneumonia.
Miss Wilson was a niece of the late David Brewer, associate judge of the United States Supreme Court. Her father figured actively in Kansas City politics as a leader of the Democratic party and in 1874 was elected mayor of this city, a position which he held two years. He was a widely known business man. Miss Wilson’s only sister, Ella Wilson, died in Leavenworth, Kas., in 1865. Her mother, Mrs. Alice Strong Wilson, died in the family home on Cane Street in 1907. Miss Wilson had no relatives in Kansas City.
The body was taken to the Stine undertaking rooms.
DEATH OF VETERAN FIREMAN
Springfield Republican
William C. White, 72, veteran fireman, who was retired from the active service of the fire department last June after 35 years of continuous service, died at the Wesson Memorial hospital yesterday after a long illness. Mr White had been identified with the fire service of the city for more than 50 years. During his period of active service, Mr White spent most of his time as engineer, taking charge during his later years of the engines in the North-street fire station. During his 35 years of service, Mr White was absent from his post only one month, and then on account of illness. There was probably no man in the department who was better known or who was better liked by the men in the department. He was a skilful machinist, and his worth to the department was frequently recognized by the different chiefs under whom he served.
Mr White was born at Amherst, October 11, 1842. He removed with his parents to this city when he was 12 years old. He received his early education in his native town, and after he came here he attended the Union-street school. His first employment was in the United States armory, where he practically completed his trade as machinist. He subsequently worked for Smith & Wesson for four years as tool-maker, and it was there that he received the training which fitted him for his work in the fire department. While he was employed at the Smith & Wesson shop, he became a call man in the fire department. He was appointed to the permanent service in 1872, just nine years after he became affiliated with the department as a call man.
His first active duties were as hose-man. He was stationed at the old fire station, formerly located in the rear of where the Granite building is now. His next work was as stoker on the Hanson No 2 engine, stationed on Sanford street. He later became a full-fledged engineer on the old monitor, George Dwight. Mr White was later assigned to the Pynchon-street engine-house, where he served as engineer on the No 1 engine. He was stationed there from 1872 until 1876. In 1876 he was transferred to the Bond-street engine-house, where he remained until his retirement in June. It was a matter of notable record in the fire department that during all this time he ran the old No 1 engine without experiencing any accidents or having his engine tied up because of failure to work properly.
When Mr White first became affiliated with the fire department there were but four companies, with 26 men each, in service in the city. The companies were located on Pynchon street, on the Hill, near the old railroad station, and on Sanford street. During the early ’70’s the system of naming fire engines was succeeded by the present system of numbering them. When Mr White entered the service, L. H. Powers was chief engineer, and he was succeeded by Hosea Lombard. It was during his regime as chief that the present department actually came into existence. It is a singular fact that Mr White saw service in the department during the period that Springfield experienced its biggest fires. From the date of his connection with the department until his retirement there were seven very disastrous fires.
During his many years in the department he was constantly drafted from one engine-house to another to do repair work. His expert knowledge of apparatus made him invaluable in this respect. When the company at the Bond-street engine-house was transferred to the North-street station several years ago, he went with it and remained there until his retirement, June 15 of this year. Mr White held several patents on devices used on fire apparatus, but never troubled to have them put on the market. Some of these devices, however, have been used with satisfaction.
Mr White was taken ill last May, and it was with difficulty that he was persuaded to leave the active list. He eventually went to the Wesson Memorial hospital, where he remained constantly until his death yesterday. Mr White was married, and for many years lived at 961 Second street. His wife died a number of years ago, and since that time he has made his home at the North-street fire station. He was a member of De Soto lodge of Odd Fellows and of the Firemen’s aid association. He leaves no near relatives, but Arthur Green, secretary of the Putnam woolen mills at Putnam, Ct., a cousin, is expected in this city to take charge of the funeral.
The funeral will be held to-morrow afternoon at Washburn’s chapel. Rev Dr Frank W. Merrick of Faith church will officiate. The burial will be in the Springfield cemetery.
DEATH OF A POLITICIAN
New York Times
Martin Engel is dead. This does not mean anything to those unacquainted with New York politics, nor to those whose political interests have been quite recently developed, but to the “old-time” politicians familiar with the days when “Boss” Croker ruled Tammany Hall and “Big Tim” Sullivan was the man highest up in the Bowery district the death of Martin Engel means the passing of another of the Tammany leaders who led when to be an east side leader was greater than to be a silk-stocking Republican.
At the age of 68, several years after he had lost his leadership in the old Eighth District—“De Ate,” to those who were of it and in it in the “good old days”—Martin Engel died yesterday in his home at 29 East Third Street. He made money in his business of politics, and it is said that his son, Alfred S. Engel, will inherit a comfortable fortune. His death was due to Bright’s disease, from which he had been a sufferer for some time.
Martin Engel rose to political power when the immigrant Jews from Russia, Rumania, Bohemia, and Hungary began to crowd the Irish out of the east side. The son of a “kosher” butcher, he was born in the Bowery and began life, after leaving the public schools, in his father’s butcher shop. After the death of the father he continued the business, and even after his business became politics and his “office” for all important purposes was in “Silver Dollar” Smith’s Hotel, near the Essex Market Court, he remained the nominal head of the market, from which fact he became known in the east side as “Butcher” Engel.
“Big Tim” Sullivan, Irishman, and Martin Engel, Jew, were the combination that held the power in “De Ate,” where fully 80 per cent. of the fixed and floating voters spoke Yiddish. Engel was apparently devoted to Sullivan, and was ever faithful to “Big Tim” in matters political, and, until the Republican leader, “Charley” Adler, began to make trouble in the Eighth, he always “swung the district” at election time.
Those who followed Engel as their political leader could never, in their own opinion, exaggerate his virtues. He was generous, as all Tammany leaders of the east side have been, and he was successful in “landing jobs” for those who served the party. Also he was known to have a strong “pull” with the police, and many an east side youth who “got in bad” with the authorities owed his liberty to Engel’s influence. Because of all these things he was the leader, and because he was the leader he cultivated the character and quality that enhanced his leadership.
But to reformers Engel was the personification of a vice that, though seen with disturbing frequency, could never be even endured, much less embraced. In “De Ate” was what was known for many years as “The Red Light District.” Engel’s political enemies used to dwell with views of alarm upon the protection under which the district thrived, and Engel was always named as the protector.
Those who have seen Engel remember as his most striking facial characteristic a “dented” nose. The bridge of his nose had been broken, and until his death there was a depression in the centre of his face that never failed to attract attention. The scar was a mark of Engel’s rise to political power. He received the original injury in a fight years ago—and there have been stories of this fight to Engel’s credit and to his discredit. The only positive and printable fact is that a man who became enraged against Engel struck him across his nose with a bung-starter or some other equally destructive weapon.
Besides “Silver Dollar” Smith’s hotel, which later became the property of Engel himself, the leader of “De Ate” had several “headquarters” in the district where those who knew his habits and haunts might find him. His home was at 29 East Third Street, where he died; but in the days of his power he could be found most often at some of his “hanging-out” places—such as the clubrooms of the Martin Engel Association, at Ludlow and Grand Streets, or the old Café Boulevard, in Second Avenue, where, for a number of years, he regularly received his henchmen between noon and 3 o’clock.
Although the kind of politics accepted as legitimate by Engel is passing for the good of society, there are those in the east side who will feel real regret for the death of their former leader, for whatever his vices were, Engel was sympathetic and generous in his own way and in his moods, and many a family would not have eaten had he not supplied a meal, many a man or woman would have gone barefoot had he not furnished shoes. Also, many a “down-and-outer” would have gone thirsty if Engel had not “set ’em up” to the drinks. So, somewhere east of the Bowery, where there were not many of the Ten Commandments, and where a man could raise a very great thirst, Engel had his friends who will mourn him now.
DEATH
New York Evening Post
The odor from the chestnut roasters is as fragrant as ever, the heaped-up mounds of lettuce and kale on the mile of push carts are just as crisp and green, and there is the same glistening sheen on the pyramids of green and scarlet peppers, but, nevertheless, things seemed altogether different in Mulberry Bend to-day. There was less noise, the hurdie-gurdies were not playing, and groups of dark-haired women talked solemnly on the corners.
Down in front of No. 26 there were many children looking into the window, but, unlike children of the Bend, making no noise. That’s where the cause of all this change was. For No. 26 is Charles Bacigalupo’s chapel and undertaking rooms, where for twenty-eight years the services for the dead of the Italian colony have been held; and now—Bacigalupo himself is dead.
He was much more than an undertaker. He was a benefactor of the quarter, a man with a motto of his own that he lived up to. It hardly could be called a business motto, but Bacigalupo always adhered to it in his business, and it was that no Italian should be buried in the Potter’s Field, if he could help it.
A north of Italy man and a devout Catholic himself, “Charlie,” as the colony called him, never asked what a dead man’s religion had been or whether he was Sicilian, Neapolitan, or Genoese. The chapel was always open, day and night, and there was always a hearse and at least one carriage ready whether there was anything to pay for them or not.
It was so in the beginning, twenty-eight years ago, when Bacigalupo, who had come to the country when he was thirteen, decided that he would no longer work for undertakers by day and black boots on Broadway in the evening, but go into business for himself.
He had saved money enough then to buy a second-hand hearse and a dilapidated hack. At the outset he had to hire the horses, and the only room in which he could do his work was the one room in which he lived.
Within a week after this start an Italian was murdered on Mulberry Street. Nobody knew him, and the body, after the coroner had got his routine description of all the knife wounds for repetition in court, was to go to Potter’s Field—after the usual custom. But Bacigalupo changed the custom so far as Mulberry Bend was concerned. There was a real funeral in his room for the unknown victim of the stiletto, and the man who could not afford to keep his own horses did all the work and paid all the bills.
That was when the motto was adopted, and the records at Bacigalupo’s chapel today show that he has saved nearly a thousand “unknowns” and “unfortunates” from the Potter’s Field.
Most of them were Italians, but some were the more unfortunate white girls of Chinatown.
He prospered in spite of all this free service and he has averaged three funerals a day for ten days. From the one room his place developed into a whole floor, and for the living room in which services were held for that murdered Italian twenty-eight years ago, there was substituted a fine chapel with altar fires and many pictures and tapestries, which Bacigalupo brought from Rome on his return from frequent visits to his home country.
But as gorgeous and elegant as the place became, in the eyes of the Italian quarter, it was still free for all who could not pay.
Bacigalupo never talked about these things himself when asked about his business life in the Bend. It was his private business, the number of big black hearses he sent, free of charge, for the laborers who had died while out of work, and the number of small white hearses with the angel figures on the side which he had provided for the children whose parents were penniless. Neither would he talk about the times he had paid other people’s coal bills or put a stop to dispossession proceedings by paying the rent of people whom he simply knew as Italians.
And only his intimate associates knew that he owned a half-acre in Greenwood Cemetery and another big lot in Calvary, in which he put the bodies which otherwise would have gone to the graveyard of the morgue’s unknown.
All these things Bacigalupo was remarkably reticent about. On the other hand, there were some things that he liked to boast of. He used to say, for instance, that the proudest day in his life was that in which he drove, himself, the second coach in Gen. Grant’s funeral. He groomed his own horses for that procession.
And when Meucci, the Italian patriot who came over with Garibaldi, died on Staten Island Bacigalupo had charge of the big Italian funeral service, in Tammany Hall, and it was the undertaker of Mulberry Bend who prepared the revolutionist’s body for shipment to Italy.
When King Humbert was assassinated Bacigalupo had charge of the memorial service in this city. And now the most conspicuous pictures at the entrance to the chapel are those of the dead King and of President McKinley, both nearly life size.
Bacigalupo also took a little pardonable pride in the fact that his establishment had grown to include a big stable with 250 horses, 10 hearses, and many coaches; that he had the only automobile hearse in town, and that it was he who introduced the custom of having dirge-playing bands in the funeral processions on the Bend.
Four years ago Bacigalupo went to Rome to present to the Pope $5,000 which had been contributed by the immigrants in the Italian quarter, and to the money he added as his own gift a wonderful jewelled robe for his holiness. The Pope granted him an audience and gave him his picture and autograph, which Bacigalupo brought back to Mulberry Street.
Then there was that wonderful Chinese funeral several years ago when the bones of nine Chinamen were removed from a Brooklyn cemetery and sent back to the ancestral graveyards in China. Bacigalupo had that affair, and it overtaxed even his stable resources, for there were 300 coaches in the procession that wound through the streets of Chinatown, all filled with Chinamen, while the rest of the Mott and Pell Street colony walked behind over the route laid out for them by the Italian.
These were the things that the undertaker was willing to talk about when he was asked what he had done in America. But they are of secondary importance on the Bend to-day. It is the coal bills, and helps with the rent in hard times, and the free funerals that everybody in the quarter, including the policemen on their beats and the one black native from Abyssinia who speaks Italian, are talking about now that the crepe is on Bacigalupo’s own door.
DEATH OF GREAT EDITOR
Philadelphia Ledger
KANSAS CITY, Mo., April 13.—Colonel William Rockhill Nelson, founder, owner and editor of the Kansas City Star, died at his home here this morning. He was 74 years old, and had been confined to his home since last December. Uremic poisoning caused his death.
Colonel Nelson took an active part in the management of the Star until about a month ago, for even after his illness began members of the Star staff gathered at his bedside several times weekly for discussion of questions of editorial policy. At these conferences he dictated editorials and outlined ideas for cartoons and special news articles. Although his physicians advised against this activity, he reminded them that it was in the building of the Star he had been happiest.
A day or so before he became unconscious Colonel Nelson said to a friend:
“The Lord has been far better to me than I deserve. I have had a long and happy life, with great opportunities for usefulness. My only regret is that I have not accomplished more. If this is the end, I am ready.”
Throughout his illness the problem of the poor was of intense concern to him. He made large gifts to local charitable institutions and was absorbed in the work of a soup kitchen, which his daughter, Mrs. Kirkwood, inaugurated and conducted.
While no formal statement was made, it was announced that “as far as is humanly possible, the Star will be conducted in accordance with the aims and ideas of Mr. Nelson.”
Although Colonel Nelson did not enter the newspaper field until he was nearly 40 years old, he brought to it such ability and energy that he built up one of the greatest newspapers of the country. He was born in Fort Wayne, Ind., in 1841, and was educated at Notre Dame University. After a short experience in cotton growing he became a general contractor. When 34 years old he was Samuel J. Tilden’s Indiana campaign manager.
His interest in political leadership caused him to turn to newspaper work. He bought an interest in the Fort Wayne Sentinel and a business reverse caused him to decide to devote all his time to journalism. He and his Fort Wayne partner, Samuel E. Morss, went to Kansas City and started the Evening Star on September 18, 1880. Mr. Morss withdrew after a few months.
When the Kansas City Times failed, in 1901, the Star bought that paper and its news franchise. The venture proved a marked success, and the Star now has a circulation, morning and evening, of more than 200,000 a day.
In politics Colonel Nelson was, as he often said, “independent, but never neutral.” He never would consider any elective or appointive position.
DEATH OF COLLEGE DEAN
New York Evening Post
John Howard Van Amringe, former dean of Columbia College, where for half a century he endeared himself to thousands of students, who knew him best as “Van Am,” died suddenly yesterday at the Keeler House, in Morristown, N. J. Professor Van Amringe, who was seventy-nine years old last spring, retired from the Columbia faculty five years ago, and for some time past his health has been failing. He suffered a stroke of apoplexy just before luncheon, and died within an hour. His daughter, Miss Emily Van Amringe, was with him.
The story of the venerable ex-dean’s life is almost a history of Columbia College for the last fifty-odd years. To Columbia men he was more than a teacher. As Charles Halsted Mapes remarked, when the alumni presented a bronze bust of the dean to the Columbia University Club, in 1913: “Van Am has become more than a mere man to us; he is a sentiment. What the Yale fence is to Yale, the ivy to Princeton, Van Am is to Columbia—a tangible, concrete expression of sentiment to which our memories lovingly cling.”
He was born at Philadelphia, on April 3, 1836, the son of William Frederic and Susan Budd (Sterling) Van Amringe. His grandfather, Lionel Van Amringe, was a soldier under Frederick the Great, and emigrated from Holland in 1791. His family removed from Philadelphia to New York in 1841. He received most of his early education from his father, but was later sent to the Montgomery Academy, Orange County, N. Y., where his father was instructor for a time. In 1854 he entered Yale, and would have graduated in 1858, but left the College at the end of his sophomore year and taught private pupils for two years. In the fall of 1858 he entered Columbia College as a member of the junior class, graduating with the degree of B.A. in 1860.
Van Amringe, the undergraduate, displayed a fondness for mathematics and debating, and in after years these were always his favorite subjects. Those who listened to him in more recent years, addressing undergraduate mass meetings or speaking at alumni reunions, or presenting some distinguished candidate for this or that honorary degree on commencement day, could trace his flow of oratory back to its beginnings in the classroom, where, as a student, he used to hold forth in the presence of old Professor Nairne, who taught moral and intellectual philosophy and literature. Nairne had a way of holding impromptu debates in the classroom, pitting one student against another. But it was in mathematics that Van Amringe excelled, and he taught this subject to generations of Columbia men.
When Van Am came to Columbia he was possessed of a brilliant head of red hair, which in later years turned white. He also wore flowing moustaches, and these became immortalized in the song that Columbia men never tire of singing:
D’ye ken Van Am with his snowy hair,
D’ye ken Van Am with his whiskers rare,
D’ye ken Van Am with his martial air,
As he crosses the Quad in the morning?
CHORUS.
The sight of Van Am raised my hat from my head,
And the sound of his voice often filled me with dread,
Oh, I shook in my boots at the things that he said
When he asked me to call in the morning.
Yes, I ken’d Van Am, to my sorrow, too,
When I was a freshman of verdant hue.
First a cut, then a bar, then an interview
With the Dean in his den in the morning.
But we love Van Am from our heart and soul,
Let’s drink to his health! Let’s finish the bowl!
We’ll swear by Van Am through fair and through foul,
And wish him the top o’ the morning.
D’ye ken Van Am with his fine old way,
The Dean of Columbia for many a day?
Long may he live and long may he stay
Where his voice may be heard in the morning.
One of his undertakings at Columbia was the organization of the Alumni Association of Columbia College, which he began as soon as he had become an alumnus himself. The Association was then more dead than alive, but through his efforts it has become the most flourishing and influential of all the Columbia alumni organizations.
The dean had few outside interests; his life was devoted almost entirely to Columbia, and the few other activities in which he engaged were closely allied to his work at the College. He was a member of the American Mathematical Society and of the New York Historical Society, and, at one time, was president of the New York Mathematical Society. He was also a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a vestryman of Trinity Church. Some years ago he edited a series of Davies’s mathematical works.
As prime mover in the organization of the Columbia University Club, he was its first president, and there never has been any other.
As an authority on matters relating to the history of the University he was without an equal. He wrote a “History of Columbia College,” and to the volume known as “Universities and Their Sons” he contributed the Columbia section.
One of the things that endeared him most to Columbia men was his championship of football. In 1905, after Columbia had been severely criticised for her football tactics, and the faculty, in a historic meeting, decided that the sport should be dropped, the Dean was the only friend the undergraduates had. In that meeting he took the stand of the undergraduates and earnestly championed the game. After the close of the football season of 1906 more than two thousand students stormed the Faculty Club, where the Dean was at lunch, and, after singing his song, demanded that he make a speech to them on football. They told him they wanted football, and he said: “I know that, but you know I cannot give it to you. You have behaved as I have always known you to behave, with propriety and dignity, and if you keep on there’s no telling what you may get.”
Football will be played once more at Columbia this year, and more than one alumnus will regret that the venerable Van Am is not in the stands when the opening game is played on South Field.
At the time when Columbia began to expand from a college to a university of many departments, the proposal to do away with the college altogether, and to convert Columbia into a group of graduate schools, was considered. The idea “took” with some of the authorities, and had it not been for vigorous opposition, in which Van Am took a leading part, it is not unlikely that the change would have been made.
When it became known, in the spring of 1910, that the dean was to retire, the students prepared a petition to the faculty, asking them to place him on the roll as dean emeritus. The parchment was afterward framed and hung in the Trophy Room.
At the dinner given by the Columbia alumni to celebrate Dean Van Amringe’s fiftieth year of connection with the University, the presiding officer read from Oliver Wendell Holmes’s class-day poem, and turned to the venerable dean as he quoted:
Was it snowing, I spoke of. Excuse the mistake!
Look close—and you’ll see not a sign of a flake!
We want some new garlands for those we have shed,
And these are white roses instead of the red.