Thursday,
August 24, 1916
If you will take a stand at the forks of the road in the town of Marlinton, sooner or later, you will see everybody you ever knew in West Virginia come careening along in a touring car. That much has the perfecting of the horseless wagon done for our town. It is the fervent desire of every mountain man to make the roads better so that travel will come this way, but it is a hard job in a vast county like ours which is so sparsely settled. We are not given credit for the fact that we have done more for the roads in proportion to our means than the people of any other community.
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The way it seems to work out is that if you give the women the right to vote, it will take the place of a Christmas present this fall.
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It is better to be born lucky than rich. Last winter, W. H. Dilley, of Dilleys Mill, lost the last two colonies of bees he had on the place. One was robbed of its stores and the other became infested with moths and died out. He saved the hives as they were expecting sometime to send to Elk and get a fresh start of bees from that far-famed valley flowing with milk and honey. One day the family heard a roaring as of a mighty wind and looking out saw an immense swarm of yellow Italian bees coming from the direction of the woods. They went into one of the vacant hives, and about filled it full. They went immediately to work to cleaning out the old combs in the hives and in a few days had a fair chance of honey. They are doing fine and have stored enough honey to keep them through the winter and to spare.
The yellow Italian bee is now a great favorite with the Pocahontas county bee keepers. The bee is larger and a great worker. It is given to robbing weaker hives. Like other bees, swarms will find themselves homes in hollow trees, and when these bee trees are found they are usually very rich in the finest of honey
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Randolph Hamrick reports the killing of an immense hawk at his home on Stamping Creek one day last week. It measured four feet and a half from wing tip to wing tip.
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At the meeting of the Board of Education, of Edray District on Tuesday, the contracts for the school houses at Mace and Laurel Creek were let to Henry Moore, of Onoto.
JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY
By Oscar H. Adkinson
James Whitcomb Riley is dead. A little while ago the message containing these words saddened the hearts and dimmed the eyes of millions who have been made better by his simple get-to-the-heart poetry…
He was as charming as his verse and although past middle life, he possessed the heart of a child, which explains why he gave us the child world – the only true world – as it is to the child, beautiful, becoming, full of love and hopes and dreams.
By those who knew him from boyhood I was told that as a lad he did not learn at school as he preferred to roam and learn the lore of the flower, the chipmunk and the creek of which he has told the world in deathless lines…
His death brought forth scores of poetic tributes in the dialect style of his own writings. The following from John O’Keefe in the New York World will doubtless prove a popular favorite:
RILEY
Although up to a brighter sky
You turn a brighter brow,
The Little Girl you bade, “Don’t cry!”
Must disobey you now.
Beside the Little Cripple’s chair
She’s kneeling, tearful eyed,
Although she knows that you for’er
Are on the Sunny Side.
Amid that land that’s ever new,
Amid new finger’s ranks,
There’s be the same deed joy for you
As on the Deer Crick Banks.
For with your posies in her hands
And on her lips your hymn,
There, Little Orphant Annie stands
To kiss her Uncle Jim!….
SEVEN ITALIANS SHOT
There was trouble among the Italians at Thornwood Sunday evening. A young Italian with but one arm, was fooling with a shotgun. It was discharged by accident, and the knee cap of a little girl was shot off and a few shot hit a little baby in the stomach.
After the accident there was considerable buzzing around in the colony, and the young man becoming enraged began to bombard a shanty in which the other Italians had congregated. For a time they refused to come out, but two men got out of the window and as they ran for the brush both were shot in the back. Three other persons in the shanty received shot wounds. The wounded persons were taken to the hospital at Davis. All are wounded with small shot, and none seriously except the two children.
The one who did the shooting made off in the direction of the Horton line, and has not been arrested.
GREENBANK
We are having old dog-day showers; it has rained almost every day since July 12 when dog-days came in, and farmers are trying to make hay between showers; consequently they get no good hay. Some wheat was injured before it was stacked, and oats is breaking down because farmers can’t cut it. Corn is a bumper crop, and there is fine pastures but cattle are not fattening well, and cows don’t turn off butter as they should, as grass is too washy. Horses are slobbering very bad. Calves are very high; they are selling from $20 to $40 per head. This is good for a Democratic administration. Lambs are 8 to 10 cents, wool 40 cents; and everything high and going up… Labor too high for the farmer, and farm hands are very scarce at any price…
Ground has been broken for the new high school building and the work is being pushed along rapidly. We hope to see it completed in the near future. Everybody should put their shoulder to the load and help make it a grand success, for our sons and daughters are not much in demand unless they have a high school education.
HOSTERMAN
John Galford and sons have shut down their sawmill and gone home to put up their grass.
The West Virginia Pulp & Paper Co. have been doing a rushing business shipping off their timber.
J. D. Wilmoth and several noted vocalists from Durbin, gave a very interesting sing at Bethel church Sunday evening. Come again, Mr. Wilmoth and friends.
Ed Vance passed through here last week.
Mrs. Charles Hugh is very much complaining.
DUNMORE
Very leaky; very hard on oats.
People will have to hang up their automobiles until the mud holes are filled and the mud dries up some.
DURBIN
S. T. Ruckman captured a still near Bartow, but the man got away.
A man placed in the lockup here tried to set it on fire by setting fire to the bedding, and his life was saved by some people passing and who gave the alarm in time to get him out.
POLITICS
We are told by the great philosopher T. Roosevelt, in the book “American Ideal,” page 62; “Excessive criticism indulgence in criticism is never anything but bad, and no amount of criticism can in any way take the palace of active and jealous warfare for the right.” In spite of this advice, Judge Hughes has indulged in criticism to the extent that his most sincere adherents are inclined to consider excessive…
The Republican editors have done their duty by their hoarse candidate, but there is a lack of enthusiasm in their editorials, and a bearing down effect of work produced as an enforced duty that cannot fail to have been noticed by the most casual reader.
From the work quoted above there is another passage that seems to cover the kind of a campaign that Judge Hughes has tried to inaugurate:
“The worst offense that can be committed against the Republic is the offense of the public man who tries to persuade others that an honest and efficient man is dishonest or unworthy. This wrong can be committed in a great many ways. Downright foul abuse may be, after all, less dangerous than incessant misstatements, sneers, and those half-truths that are the meanest lies.”…
Hughes has not measured up to anything like the expectations. He may have been the great man that the p public imagined him to be, and he may be a figment of the public mind…
