Along the Jersey Shore, read for LibriVox.org by Alan Davis Drake. Boardwalk for Long Branch Many improvements promised or already underway, special to the New York Times. Long Branch, New Jersey, July 9. Not in many years has there been such interest taken in the welfare of this place as at the present time. Since it has received its new charter and has now termed the city, everyone residing here, from the summer cottagers to the all-year-round residents, is talking improvements, many of which are already underway. At a citizen's mass meeting a few nights ago, when nearly every cottager interested in Long Branch was in attendance, it was decided to widen the famous Ocean Avenue Drive to 75 or 100 feet. Erect a boardwalk along the ocean front and build one or more casinos. P. Sanford Ross of Jersey City, who is president of the Long Branch Property Holders Association, which is composed principally of New Yorkers who own summer homes at Long Branch, said that he favored an ocean boulevard as perfect as possible. Other cottagers who are present express themselves in a like manner. The old George Laurelard stock farm at Eaton Town, famous in the days of the Mammoth Park race course, and which, since the abandonment of racing in New Jersey, has been more or less neglected, has been sold by Frank Durand, representing the heirs who are selling the Laurelard estate. George Laurelard, as will be remembered, married a beautiful southern woman whom he met in Florida. After his death, Mrs. Laurelard became the Countess de Agreda, through a marriage with an Italian nobleman. She died a few years ago, leaving two daughters, who now reside in Florence, Italy. They are sole heirs to Mr. Laurelard's vast estate, and are now converting portions of his real estate into money. The Laurelard farm at Eaton Town cost Mr. Laurelard something like $40,000 before it was improved. It was sold to Edward P. Hatch of the firm of Lord and Taylor of New York for $14,000. It is understood that Mr. Hatch will use the farm for stock breeding purposes. Mrs. Phillip Daly, who owns the Pennsylvania clubhouse at West End, which did not open its doors last season, has finally decided to utilize the building for restaurant purposes. The Rumson Polo Club will hold a big tournament on July 25th. Some of the crack teams, including the West Jester's and Squadron A, will line up against the Rumson's. Harvey E. Fisk, the New York banker, who has been a summer resident at Elberon for several seasons past, expects to have a handsome country seat built here next fall. Mr. Fisk and family are occupying the Cherry Wild Cottage on Park Avenue Elberon at present. The summer colonists from New York, who are familiar with the performances of the Metropolitan Opera Company during the winter months in New York, are delighted to know that Frank Rigo will put on some plays at the West End Casino. He has opened the summer season with the Bohemian Girl and is well pleased with the patronage he is receiving from the cottagers and hotel guests. End of Along the Jersey Shore, July 10th, 1904. This recording is in the public domain. April, North Carolina by Harriet Munro. Recorded for LibriVox.org by Larry Ann Walden, North Carolina. Would you not be in try-on now that the spring is here? When mockingbirds are praising the fresh, the blossomy year. Look on the leafy carpet woven of winter's browns. Iris and pink azaleas flutter their gaudy gowns. The dogwood spreads white meshes so white and light and high to catch the drifting sunlight out of the cobalt sky. The pointed beach and maple, the pines dark, tufted, tall, pattern with many colors the mountain's purple wall. Hark! What a rushing torrent of crystal songfall shear! Would you not be in try-on now that the spring is here? End of Poong. This recording is in the public domain. The Black Country. Being an excerpt from Rides on Railways by Samuel Sidney. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For further information or to volunteer, please go to LibriVox.org. Recording by Andy Minter. Preface. The following pages are an attempt to supply something amusing, instructive and suggestive to travellers who, not caring particularly where they go or how long they stay at any particular place, may wish to know something of the towns and districts through which they pass, on their way to Wales, the lakes of Cumberland or the Highlands of Scotland. Or to those who, having a brief vacation, may wish to employ it among pleasant rural scenes and investigating the manufacturers, the mines and other sources of the commerce and influence of this small island and great country. In performing this task, I have relied partly on personal observation, partly on notes and the memory of former journeys, and where needful have used the historical information to be found in cyclopedias and local guidebooks. This must account for, if it does not excuse, the unequal space devoted to districts with the equal claims to attention, but it would take years, if not a lifetime, to render the manuscript of so discursive a work, complete and correct. I feel that I have been guilty of many faults of commission and omission, but if the friends of those localities, to which I have not done justice, will take the trouble to forward to me any facts or figures of public general interest, they shall be carefully embodied in any future edition, should the book, as I hope it will, arrive at such an honour and profit. SS, London, August 1851 The Black Country Walsell, Dudley, Wensbury, Darleston The first diverging railway, after leaving Birmingham on the road to the north, is what, for want of a better name, is called the South Staffordshire, which connects Birmingham with Dudley, Walsell, Lichfield and Tamworth, thus uniting the most purely agricultural with the most thoroughly manufacturing districts, and especially with that part of the Great Coalfield, which is locally known as the Black Country. In this Black Country, including West Bromwich, Wensbury, Dudley and Darleston, Bilston, Wolverhampton and several minor villages, a perpetual twilight rains during the day, and during the night fires on all sides light up the dark landscape with a fiery glow. The pleasant green of pastures is almost unknown. The streams, in which no fishes swim, are black and unwholesome. The natural dead flat is often broken by huge hills of cinders and spoils from the mines. The few trees are stunted and blasted. No birds are to be seen, except a few smoky sparrows, and for miles on miles a black waste spreads around, where furnaces continually smoke, steam engines thud and hiss, and long chains clank, while blind gin-horses walk their dullful round. From time to time you pass a cluster of deserted, ruthless cottages of dingiest brick, half swallowed up in sinking pits or inclined to every point of the compass, while the timbers point up like the ribs of a half-decade corpse. The majority of the natives of this Tartarian region are in full keeping with the scenery. Savages, without the grace of savages, coarsely clad in filthy garments, with no change on weekdays and Sundays, they converse in a language be larded with fearful and disgusting oaths, which can scarcely be recognised as the same as that of civilised England. On working-days few men are to be seen. They are in the pits or the ironworks, but women are met on the high-road, clad in men's once-white, Lindsey Woolsey coats and felt hats, driving and cursing strings of donkeys laden with coals or iron rods for the use of the nailers. On certain rare holidays these people wash their faces, clothe themselves in decent garments, and since the opening of the South Staffordshire Railway take advantage of cheap excursion trains, go down to Birmingham to amuse themselves and make purchases. It would be a useful lesson for anyone who is particularly well satisfied with the moral, educational and religious state of his countrymen to make a little journey through this black country. He will find that the amiable enthusiasts who meet every May at Exeter Hall to consider on the best means of converting certain Aboriginal tribes in Africa, India and the islands of the Pacific need not go so far to find human beings more barbarous and yet more easily reclaimed. The people of this district are engaged in coal mining, in ironworks, in making nails and many other articles or parts of articles for the Birmingham trade. Their wages are, for the most part, good. Fuel is cheap. Well supplied markets and means of obtaining the best clothing are close at hand. But within sixty years a vast, dense population has been collected together in districts which were but thinly inhabited as long as the value lay on the surface instead of in the bowels of the earth. The people gathered together and found by the churches nor schools nor laws nor customs nor means for cleanliness at first nor even an effective police to keep order and thus they became one of the most ignorant, brutal, depraved, drunken, unhealthy populations in the kingdom unless it be a set of people in the same occupations in the neighbourhood of Manchester. We shall never forget some five and twenty years ago passing near Bilston on a summer's holiday buying a great red-pied bull, foaming and roaring and marching round a ring in which he was chained while a crowd of men, each with the demon-narcle-looking bulldog in his arms and a number of ragged women with their hair about their ears, some of them also carrying bulldog pups, yelled about the baited bull. He gave us an awful fright and haunted our childish dreams for years after.  The cholera of 1832 which decimated Bilston and Wensbury did something towards calling attention to the grievous social and sanitary wants of this district. In that pestilence several clergymen and medical men died like heroes in the discharge of their duties. Some churches were built, some schools established, but an immense work remains to be done. Bull-baiting has been put down, but no rational amusements have been substituted for that brutal and exciting sport. In the northern Coalfields, near Newcastle and Pontine especially, we have noticed that when the miner ascends from the pit in the evening, his first care is to wash himself from head to foot, then to put on a clean suit of white flannel. As you pass along the one street of a Pitman's village, you will see the father reading a chamber's journal or a cheap religious magazine at the door of his cottage while smoking a pipe and nursing a child or two on his knee. And through the open door, a neat four-post bed and an oak or mahogany chest of drawers bear witness to his frugality. In Wensbury, Bilston and all that district, when work is over, you will find the men drinking in their dirty clothes and with grimy faces at the beer-shop of the butty. That is to say the contractor or middleman under whom they work, according to the system of the country, and the women hanging about the doors of their dingy dwellings, gossiping or quarrelling, the old furies and the young slathons. In the face of such savagery, so evidently the result of defective education, two opposite and extreme parties in the state, the anti-church miles and the pro-church Anthony Denison's, combined to oppose the multiplication of education that teaches decency if it teaches nothing else. One great step has been made by the Health of Towns Act, which is about to be applied to some of these coal towns, and railways have rendered the whole district so accessible that no foul spot can long remain unknown or unnoticed. Walsall, eight miles from Birmingham, the first town on our way, which may be reached directly by following the South Staffordshire or by an omnibus travelling half a mile from Bescott Bridge, lies among green fields, out of the bounds of the mining country, although upon the edge of the Warwickshire and Staffordshire coalfield. Indeed the parliamentary borough includes part of the rough population just described. It is very clean, without antiquities or picturesque beauties, and contains nothing to attract visitors except its manufacturers, of which the best known is cheap saddlery for the American, West Indian and Australian markets. They make the leather and wooden parts as well as stirrups and bridles. Also, gunlocks, bits, spurs, spades, hinges, screws, files, edge tools, and there is one steel pen manufacturer, besides many articles connected with the Birmingham trade, either finished or unfinished, the number of which is constantly increasing. Walsall is celebrated for its pig market, a celebrity which railroads have not destroyed as was expected, but rather increased. Special arrangements for comfortably disembarking these, the most interesting strangers who visit Walsall, have been made at the railway station. The principal church with a handsome spire stands upon a hill and forms a landmark for the surrounding country. The ascent to it by a number of steps, as, according to popular prejudice, produced an effect upon the legs of the inhabitants more strengthening than elegant, which has originated the provincial phrase of Walsall-legged, but this is no doubt a libel on the understandings of the independent borough. The houses are chiefly built of brick, but it seems as if some years ago the inhabitants had been seized by an architectural disease which has left its marks in the shape of an eruption of stucco-porticoes and one or two pretentious mansions, externally resembling jails or infirmaries, internally boasting halls which bear the same proportion to the living rooms as false-nars gallon of sack to his apeneworth of bread. No doubt there are persons whom this style of house exactly suits. The portico represents their pride, the power, their economy. What was intended for the Walsall Public Library consists of a thin closet behind a gigantic ionic portico now tottering to its fall, and in like manner a perfectly dungeon-like effect has been given to the principal hotel by another portico which affords a much better idea of the charges than of the accommodation to be found within. As a general rule in travelling we pass by all hotels with porticoes to take refuge in more modest green dragons or blue boars. Walsall has a municipal corporation of six Alderman and eighteen councillors. The reform bill, to increase the troubles of this innocent borough, placed it in Schedule B, and gave it the privilege of making one Member of Parliament. Fierce contests at every general election have been the result in which some blood, much money and more beer have been expended, but neither party has thought it worthwhile to make the education of the savages of the black country a piece of politics, and if anyone did he would only be torn to pieces between church and dissenters. Dudley, in Worcestershire, about six miles from Walsall by the South Staffordshire Railway, has a castle and more than one legend for the antiquarian, a cave and limestone pits full of fossils for the geologist and his special interest for the historical economist being the centre of the district where the first successful attempts were made to smelt iron by coal, a process which has contributed almost as much as our success in textile manufacturers to give this small island a wealth and power which a merely agricultural non-exporting community could never have attained. Iron was manufactured with charcoal in England from the time of the Romans till the middle of the eighteenth century, when the timber of many counties had been entirely exhausted by the process. In 1558 in the reign of Elizabeth it was enacted that no timber of the breadth of one foot square at the stub and growing within fourteen miles of the sea or any part of the river Thames or Seven or any other river, creek or stream by the which carriage is commonly used by boat or other vessel to any part of the sea and now be converted to coal or fuel for making iron and in 1581 a further act was passed to prevent the destruction of timber. For remedy whereof it was enacted that no new iron work should be erected within twenty-two miles of London nor within fourteen miles of the river Thames nor in the several parts of Sussex near the sea therein named. This act not to extend to the woods of Christopher Durrell in the parish of Newdigate within the wheel of Surrey which woods have been coppiced by him for the use of his iron works in those parts. At the same period we find from a letter in the straddling correspondence that while iron was made in Surrey, Sussex and Kent where not a pound is now manufactured in Glamorganshire at present a great seat of iron manufacturer iron was so scarce that an anvil was leased out at the rent of three shillings and fourpence a year a rent at which taking the then value of money a very tolerable anvil could now be purchased. When the woods of the kingdom began to be exhausted attention was turned to pit coal which had long been in use for fuel in the counties where it was plentifully found. A curious account of the first successful experiments is to be found told in very quaint language in the Metallum Martis of Dudley-Dudley son of Lord Edward Dudley an ancestor of the late Earl Dudley and Ward and of the present Lord Ward who now enjoys the very estates referred to and derives a princely income from the mineral treasures the true value of which was discovered by his unfortunate ancestor published in the reign of Charles II This Mr. Dudley was an early victim of the patent laws which to this day have proved to be for the benefit of lawyers and officials and the tantalisation of true inventors and discoverers The following extracts contain his story and enable us to compare the present with the then state of iron manufacturer Having former knowledge and delight in iron works of my fathers when I was but a youth afterwards at twenty years old was I fetched from Oxford then of Balliol College, Anne O. 1619 to look after and manage three iron works of my fathers one furnace and two forges in the chase of Pensnell in Worcestershire but wood and charcoal growing very scanty and pit coals in great quantities abiding near the furnace did induce me to alter my furnace and to attempt by my new invention the making of iron with pit coal and found at my trial or blast Facchere est adere inventioni After I had proved by a second blast and trial the feasibility of making iron with pit coal and with sea coal I found by my new invention the quality good and profitable but the quantity did not exceed above three tonnes a week After this the inventor obtained a patent from King James I for thirty-one years in the nineteenth year of his reign but the year following the grant there was so great a flood of rain to this day called the great May Day flood that it ruined the author's iron works and inventions and at a market town called Sturbridge in Cometartou begoni one resolute man was carried from the bridge in the daytime As soon as the author had repaired his works he was commanded to send all sorts of barrahan up to the tower of London fit for the making of muskets and carbines and the iron being so tried by artists and smiths that the iron masters and iron mongers who had complained that the author's iron was not merchantable were silenced until the twenty-first of King James At the then parliament all monopolies were made null and divers of the iron masters endeavored to bring the invention of making iron with pit coal within the compass of a monopoly but the Lord Dudley and the author did prevail yet the patent was limited to continue but fourteen years this exception in the statute of monopolies which incontestably proves the claim of the Dudley family to the honour of having invented the art of smelting iron with coal runs in the following terms provided also that this act shall not extend to or be prejudicial to a grant or privilege for the melting of iron ewer and of mauling the same into sea-coals or pit-coals by his majesty's letters patterned under the great seal of England made or granted to Edward Lord Dudley after the passing of the act it seems that Dudley Dudley made great store of iron and sold it at twelve pounds a ton and also cast iron-wares as brewing-systems, pots, mortars but being our sider whose works he set up again a furnace at Himmley in the county of Stafford at Himmley Hall is the present residence of Lord Ward the representative of the Dudley family from that time forward the life of the unfortunate inventor was but one series of misfortunes under Charles I he got into lawsuits was the victim of riots set on by the charcoal iron-masters and was eventually lodged in prison in the compter then came the great rebellion during which he had the disadvantage of being a royalist as an inventor and having Cromwell with major wild-men and many of his officers as opponents in rival experiments tried in the Forest of Dean where they employed an ingenious glass-master Edward Dagney, an Italian then living in Bristo but they failed and so he was utterly ruined on the accession of Charles II he petitioned and eventually sent in the statement from which the preceding extracts have been made frankly without any success the king was too busy making dukes and melting the Louis-door of his French penchant to think of anything so common as iron or so tiresome as gratitude the iron manufacture for want of the art of smelting by coal and of a supply of wood which the march of agriculture daily diminished dwindled away until in the middle of the 18th century it was revived at Coalbrook Dale by the Darbys in the intermediate period we were dependent on Russia, Spain and Sweden for the chief part of the iron used in manufacturers but one of the most curious passages in Dudley's Metalamatis is the following picture of the Dudley Coalfield now let me show you some reasons that induced me to undertake these inventions well knowing that within ten miles of Dudley Castle there be near twenty thousand smiths of all sorts and many ironworks within that circle decayed for want of wood yet formerly a mighty woodland country secondly Lord Dudley's woods and works decayed but pit coal and ironstone or mines are bounding upon his lands but of little use thirdly because most of the coal mines in these parts are coals ten, eleven and twelve yards thick fourthly under this great thickness of coals are many sorts of ironstone mines fifthly that one third part of the coals gotten under the ground are small when the coals are forced to sink pits forgetting of ten yards thick and of little use in an inland country unless it might be made use of by making iron therewith sixthly these coals must cast these coals and slack out of their ways which becoming moist, heat naturally and kindle in the middle of these great heaps often setting the coalworks on fire and flaming out of the pits and continue burning like Etna in Sicily or Heckler in the Indies at present for more than ten miles round Dudley Castle ironworks of one kind or another are constantly at work no remains of mighty woodland are to be found the value of the ten yard coal is fully appreciated but the available quantity is far from having been worked out the untouched mineral wealth of Lord Ward in this district was valued ten years ago at a million sterling the small coal is no longer wasted but carefully raised from the pits and conveyed by the numerous canals tram roads and railroads to ironworks, glassworks and chemical works but still heaps of waste moistened by rain do smoke by day and flaming by night in conjunction with hundreds of fiery furnaces and natural gases blazing do produce on a night's journey from Dudley to Wolverhampton not the effect of one Etna or Heckler but of a broad inferno from which even Dante might have gathered some burning notions the political croakers who are constantly predicting that the last inevitable change whether it be municipal corporation reform a tithe commutation or a corn tax repeal will prove the ruin of England should study the geographical march of our manufacturers and mark how on the whole population the rise of a new staple in one district or the invention of a new art constantly creates a new demand for labour the exhaustion of our forests instead of destroying founded one great element of our worldwide commercial influence we make no apology for this digression knowing that to many minds facts connected with the rise of the iron trade will have as much interest as notes on the scene of a battle or the birthplace of a second rate poet besides as we omit to say what we do not know it is necessary that we should say what we do besides mining and smelting iron ore a considerable population in and around Dudley is engaged in the manufacture of glass and of nails the latter being a domestic manufacture of which men women and children all work at home the castle dates from a Saxon prince Dodo, AD 700 but like the bird of the same name the original building is extinct but very interesting ruins of a Norman gateway tower and keep are in existence and form with the caves a show place leased by the South Staffordshire as an attraction to their excursion trains the caves are lighted up on special occasions and were honoured by a visit from the geologists of the British Association when last they met at Birmingham a fossil called the Dudley Locust is found in great quantities and varieties in the limestone quarries which form part of the mineral wealth of the neighbourhood the broad gauge line through Birmingham and Oxford will shortly afford Dudley a direct and rapid communication with London the passengers this will be a great convenience but a mode of conveyance so unwieldy clumsy and costly is singularly ill-fitted for a mineral district as experience among the narrow tramways of the North has amply proved Dudley returns one member to Parliament whose politics must it is supposed be those of the holder of the ward estate returning from Dudley through Walsall to Bescott Bridge the rail pursues its course through a mining country Bilston and Wolverhampton on the road we pass in sight of the Birmingham canal one of the finest works of the kind in the kingdom an enormous sum was spent in improving this navigation in order to prove that any railway was unnecessary the proprietors under the influence of their officials a snug family party shut their eyes and spent their money in opposing the inevitable progress of locomotive power to the last possible moment even when the first London and Birmingham Railway was nearly open a scheme for a new canal was industriously hawked round the county and although there were not enough subscribers found to execute the work a small percentage was sufficient to furnish a surveyor's new house very handsomely still there is no probability of the canal ever ceasing to be an important aid to the coal trade in heavy freight Wensbury, pronounced Widgebury and spelt Wedner's Berry in Doomsday Book stands at the very heart of the coal and iron district and is as like Tipton, Darleston, Bilston and other towns where the inhabitants are similarly employed as one sweep is like another Birmingham factors depend largely on wedgebury for various kinds of ironwork and heavy steel toys the coal pits in the neighbourhood are of great value and there is no better place in the kingdom to buy a thoroughbred bulldog that will kill or die on it but never turn tail the name is supposed to incorporate that of the Saxon god Woden whose worship consisted in getting drunk and fighting and to this day that is the only kind of relaxation which many of the inhabitants ever indulge the church stands upon a hill where Ethel Fleeder, Lady of Mercia built a castle to resist the Danes, AD 914 about the time that she erected similar bulwarks at Tamworth and other towns in the Midland Counties but there are no antiquities worth the trouble of visiting Parties who take an interest in the progress of education in this kingdom, among those classes where it is most needed that is to say masses of miners and mechanics residing in districts from which all the higher and most of the middle classes have removed where the clergy of few, hardworks and ill-paid where the virtues of a thinly peopled agricultural district have been exchanged for the vices without the refinements of a crowded town population should traverse this part of Staffordshire on foot they will own that in spite of the praiseworthy labours of both church and descent in spite of the progress of temperance societies and savings banks a crowd of children are daily growing up in a state of ignorance, dirt and degradation fearful to contemplate to active philanthropists not to seekers of the picturesque archaeologists and antiquarians do we address ourselves still we ought to add that in the ironworks and rolling mills there are studies of half-naked men in active motion at night with effect of red fire night and dark shade in which the power of painting flesh and muscular development might be more effectively displayed than in the perpetual repetition of model eaves and sprawling nymphs Wolverhampton formerly lay away from railroads at a convenient omnibus distance but competition has doubly pierced it through and through one line connects it with Shrewsbury another on the point of completion will connect it with Dudley, Birmingham and Oxford and another with Worcester add to these means of communication the canals existing before railroads commenced extending to Hull, Liverpool, Chester and London and it will be seen that Wolverhampton is most fortunately placed the great railway battle of the gauges commenced at Wolverhampton and has been carried on ever since at the cost of more than a million sterling in legal and parliamentary expenses besides the waste of capital in constructing three railways where one would have been sufficient and the extra cost of land travelled where a price was paid first for the land, second for the revenue third for compulsion, fourth for influence and fifth for vote if the land owner were a member of either House of Parliament at the end of the battle a competing line to London has been established which will end shortly in a compromise and if one district has two railways others much needing have none the shareholders on both sides have lost their money the engineers have reaped a harvest and the lawyers have realised a fortune the experience of water companies, gas companies rail companies and railway companies has distinctly been that between great moneyed corporations with large capital sunk in plant competition is impossible and must end in a compromise but these contests are profitable to lawyers who must always win whether their clients do or not it is no exaggeration to say that as surely as Spain and Portugal are priest-ridden so surely is Great Britain lawyer-ridden no sooner does the science, the industry and the enterprise of the country carve out some new road to commercial prosperity than the attorney sets up a turnpike upon it and takes toll and if dispute arises as to the right of the road however the contest be decided it ends into a turn is taking toll in chancellery, in the laws affecting patterns of inventions in the laws affecting canals, in railways a standing army of lawyers are constantly engaged in fighting battles which ended our bearing the wounds and their sharing the spoil so it was in these battles of the gauges but to return to Wolverhampton the name of which recalled battles wherein so much useful money has been wasted the town, although of rising importance in a commercial point offers no other attraction to the curious traveller than its numerous manufacturers of hardware and machinery of various kinds including firearms, tindware, locks and keys of extraordinary cheapness gunlocks, files, screws and Japanware the tea trays and other Japanware of Wolverhampton are equal in taste and execution to anything produced in Birmingham indeed it was at the manufactory of the Messers-Waltern that the plan of skillfully copying the landscapes of our best artists on Japan were originated the first tea tray of the kind was copied from one of Turner's Rivers of France by a gentleman who has since taken up a very important position in applying the true principles of art to British manufacturers Wolverhampton and all the towns and villages in the Coal and Iron District are only so many branch Birminghams in that hardware metropolis the greater part of the goods made are ordered and sold the town is of great antiquity although with as few remains as most flourishing towns built of brick where manufacturers have chased away mansions the name is derived from Valfrana a sister of King Edgar who founded a monastery there in A.D. 996 and collected a village round it named Valfrana Hampton which was eventually corrupted into Wolverhampton in the oldest church at St. Peter's there is a pulpit formed of a single stone that is avarically sculptured and a font with curious best relief figures of saints the church is collegiate and the college consists of a dean who holds the pre-bend of Wolverhampton which was annexed by Edward IV to his free chapel of St. George within the castle of Windsor a free grammar school supported by endowments affords a headmaster four hundred pounds a year the second master two hundred and a third master one hundred and twenty pounds some years ago these gentlemen had only seventy scholars to teach but we trust this is or will be amended Wolverhampton was made a parliamentary borough by the Reform Act returning two members from boundaries which include the townships of Bilston Willenhall, Wensfield and the parish of Sedgley the population has increased more than fivefold in the last forty years Byrd the artist Congrive inventor of the rockets which bear his name and Abernethy the eminent surgeon were natives of Wolverhampton Huskison who began the commercial reforms which Peale finished was born at Oxley Hall in the immediate neighbourhood close to the town is a good race course well frequented once a year formerly one of the most fashionable meetings in the country the ladies division of the grandstand used to be a complete parterre of the gayest flowers but railroads which have added to the quantity have very much deteriorated the quality of the frequenters of races and unless a change takes place a grandstand will soon be as dark as busy and as dull as a stock exchange from Wolverhampton a line nineteen miles in length through All Brighton where Staffordshire ends and Shropshire begins and Schiffnell to Wellington shortens the route to Shrewsbury by cutting off an angle but as there is nothing to be said about this route that at All Brighton are the kennels of the hunt of that name a hunt in which the greater or less luxury and horse flesh of the young iron masters affords a thermometer of the state of the iron trade we shall on this occasion take the Stafford line within an easy distance of Wolverhampton are a very large number of the noblemans and gentlemen's seats in which Staffordshire is so rich more than one ancient and dilapidated family has been restored to the progress of smoke-creating manufacturers which have added to the wealth even more than they destroyed the picturesqueness of the country if we were conducting a foreigner over England with the view of showing him the wealth the power and the beauties of our country we should follow exactly the course we have hitherto pursued and after an exhausting inspection of the manufacturers of the coal country should turn off the rail after leaving Wolverhampton to Stafford and visit some of the beautiful mansions surrounded by that rich combination of nature and art which so eminently distinguishes the stately homes of England for instance before reaching Pencrige we pass on the right hand Moseley Court where the ancestors of the proprietors the Whitgreaves concealed Charles II after the Battle of Worcester on the left Roatsley Hall the seat of the scientific nobleman with that name and Chellington Park the residence of the ancient Roman Catholic family of the Giffords where an avenue of oaks the growth of centuries with a magnificent domain stocked with deer and game before the admirers of English scenery delicious vistas of wood, water and rich undulating pasture the contrast between the murky atmosphere and continued roar of the iron-making country and the silence of the deer-haunted streets is most striking and most grateful to eye and ear as we rush along the valley of the pink too rapidly to drink in its full beauties on the right Tedsley Hall the mansion of Lord Hatherton rising above the tops of the trees reminds us that the noble lord's farms are well worth a visit from anyone taking an interest in agriculture poor land has been rendered comparatively fertile and by a complete system of drainage mere marshy rush-growing meadows have been made capable of carrying capital root and wheat crops while the wastewater has been carried to a head and then by a large overshot water-wheel working below the surface of the ground made useful for thrashing chaff and root-cutting and other operations of the farm at Pencrige a rural village of considerable antiquity ten miles from Wolverhampton adorned by a Gothic church and several picturesque houses of the Elizabethan style of domestic architecture it will be convenient to descend if an expedition is intended over Canuck Chase to Bodesert the seat of the Marquis of Anglesey this Canuck Chase completes the singular variations of soil and occupation to be found in Staffordshire from the densely populated iron districts and the model agriculture of disciples of the same school of Lord Hatherton we can turn our faces to a vast moorland forty miles square stretching from where it was first seen on the banks of the railway to the banks of the Trent as wild as any part of Wales or Scotland intersected by steep hills by deep valleys covered with gorse and broom dotted with peat marshes tenanted by wild deer and feathered game and fed over by the famous kink sheep nearly as wild as deer and in flavour rivalling the best mountain mutton this great waste was once covered with dense forests in which the wolf, the bear, the wild boar and the wild bull were hunted by our Saxon kings it is not among the least wonders effected by the locomotive that a short hour can transport us from the midst of the busiest centres of manufacturers to a solitude as complete as is to be found in the prairies of America or Australia unless we by chance stumble upon a prying game-keeper or an idle rustic seeking water buries or snaring hairs on this chase begged by his ancestors from an easy king as a kitchen garden the hero's a light cavalry at Waterloo annually takes his sport mounted on a perfect shooting cob and with eighty years upon his shoulders can still manage to bring down his birds right and left long may such blanks of solitude and wild nature remain among the busy hum of commerce to remind us of what all England once was to afford at a few holidays in the year a free breathing space to the hardworking multitude and to the poet and student that calm delight which the golden fragrance of a gorse-covered moor can bestow before we reach Stafford we leave on the right although not in sight Shugbra, the deserted mansion of the Earl of Litchfield a descendant of the Lord Anson who sailed round the world but was never in it End of The Black Country by Samuel Sidney Recording by Andy Mentor Personal beauty to a late period in life but not to suggest that an American I needs use and cultivation before it can quite appreciate the charm of an English beauty at any age it strikes me that an English lady of fifty is apt to become a creature less refined and delicate so far as her physique goes than anything that we western people class under the name of women she has an awful ponderosity of frame not pulpy like the looser development of our few fat women but massive with solid beef and streaky tallow so that though struggling manfully against the idea you inevitably think of her as made up of steaks and sirloins when she walks her advance is Elephantine when she sits down it is on a great round space of her master's footstool where she looks as if nothing could ever move her she imposes awe and respect by the muchness of her personality to such a degree that you probably credit her with far greater moral and intellectual force than she can fairly claim her visage is usually grim and stern seldom positively forbidding yet calmly terrible not merely by its breath and weight of feature but because it seems to express so much well-defined self-reliance such acquaintance with the world its toils troubles and dangers and such sturdy capacity for trampling down a foal without anything positively salient or actively offensive or indeed unjustly formidable to her neighbors she has the effect of a 24 gun time of peace for while you assure yourself that there is no real danger you cannot help thinking how tremendous would be her onset if pugnaciously inclined and how futile the effort to inflict any counter injury she certainly looks tenfold nay a hundredfold better able to take care of herself than our slender framed and haggard woman kind I have not found reason to suppose that the English Dowager of fifty has actually greater courage fortitude and strength of character than our women of similar age or even a tougher physical endurance than they morally she is strong I suspect only in society and in the common routine of social affairs and would be found powerless and timid in any exceptional straight that might call for energy outside of the convention alities amid which she has grown up you can meet this figure in the street and live and even smile at the recollection but conceive of her in the ballroom with the bare brawny arms that she invariably displays there and all the other corresponding development such as is beautiful in the maiden blossom but a spectacle to howl at in such an overblown cabbage rose as this yet somewhere in this enormous bulk there must be hidden the modest slender violet nature of a girl whom an alien mass of earthiness has unkindly overgrown for an English maiden in her teens though very seldom so pretty as our own damsels possesses to say the truth a certain charm of half blossom and delicately folded leaves and tender womanhood shielded by maidenly reserves with which somehow or other our American girls often fail to adorn themselves during an appreciable moment it is a pity that the English violet should grow into such an outrageously developed peony as I have attempted to describe I wonder whether a middle-aged husband ought to be considered as legally married to all the accretions that have overgrown the slenderness of this bride since he led her to the altar and which make her so much more than he ever bargained for is it not a sounder view of the case that the matrimonial bond cannot be held to include the three fourths of the wife that had no existence when the ceremony was performed and as a matter of conscience and good morals ought not in English married pair to insist upon the celebration of a silver wedding at the end of 25 years in order to legalize and mutually appropriate that corporeal growth with which both parties have individually come into possession since they were pronounced one of the British matron. This recording is in the public domain. Constitution of the State of California of 1849 Article 1 Declaration of Rights This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Article 1 Declaration of Rights Section 1 All men are by nature free and independent and have certain inalienable rights among which are those of enjoying and defending life and liberty acquiring, possessing and protecting property and pursuing and obtaining safety and happiness. Section 2 All political power is inherent government is instituted for the protection, security and benefit of the people and they have the right to alter or reform the same whenever the public good may require it. Section 3 The right of trial by jury shall be secured to all and remain inviolable forever, but a jury trial may be waived by the parties in all civil cases in the manner to be prescribed by law. Section 4 The free exercise and enjoyment of religious profession and worship without discrimination or preference shall forever be allowed in this state and no person shall be rendered incompetent to be a witness on account of his opinions on matters of religious belief. But the liberty of conscience secured shall not be so construed as to excuse acts of licentiousness or justify practices inconsistent with the peace or safety of this state. Section 5 The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require its suspension. Section 6 Excessive bail shall not be required nor excessive fines imposed nor shall cruel or unusual punishments be inflicted nor shall witnesses be unreasonably detained. Section 7 All persons shall be bailable by sufficient sureties unless for capital offenses when the proof is evident or the presumption great. All persons shall be held to answer for a capital or otherwise infamous crime except in cases of impeachment and in cases of militia when in actual service and the land naval forces in time of war or which this state may keep with the consent of Congress in time of peace and in cases of petty larceny under the regulation of the legislature unless or indictment of a grand jury and in any trial in any court whatever the party accused shall be allowed to appear and defend in person and with counsel as in civil actions. No person shall be subject to be twice put jeopardy for the same offense nor shall he be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation. Section 9 Every citizen may freely speak, write, and publish his sentiments on all subjects being responsible for the abuse of that right and no law shall be passed to restrain or abridge the liberty of speech or of the press. In all criminal prosecutions on indictments for libel the truth may be given in evidence to the jury and if it shall appear to the jury that the matter charged as libelous is true and was published with good motives and for justifiable ends the party shall be acquitted and the jury shall have the right to determine the law and the fact. Section 10 The people shall have the right freely to assemble together to consult for the common good to instruct their representatives and to petition the legislature for redress of grievances. Section 11 All laws of a general nature shall have a uniform operation. Section 12 The military shall be subordinate to the civil power. No standing army shall be kept up by this state in time of peace and in time of war no appropriation for a standing army shall be for a longer time than two years. Section 13 No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house without the consent of the owner nor in time of war except in the manner to be prescribed by law. Section 14 Representation shall be apportioned according to population. Section 15 No person shall be imprisoned for debt in any civil action on mean or final process unless in cases of fraud and no person shall be imprisoned for a malicious fine in time of peace. Section 16 No bill of attainer ex post facto law or law impairing the obligation of contracts shall ever be passed. Section 17 Foreigners who are or who may hereafter become Bonafide residents of this state shall enjoy the same rights in respect to the possession, enjoyment and inheritance of property as native-born citizens. Section 18 Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude unless for the punishment of crimes shall ever be tolerated in this state. Section 19 The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects against unreasonable seizures and searches shall not be violated and no warrant shall issue but on probable cause supported by oath or affirmation particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons and things to be seized. Section 20 Treason against the state shall consist only in leveying war against it adhering to its enemies or giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless the evidence of two witnesses or confession in open court. Section 21 This enumeration of rights shall not be construed to impair or deny others retained by the people. End of Constitution of the State of California 1849 Article 1 Declaration of Rights Recording by Elaine Hamby in California. The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County by Mark Twain This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County by Mark Twain 1835-1910 From the Saturday Press November 18th, 1865 published in The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County and Other Sketches 1867 by Mark Twain All of whose works are published by Harper and Brothers. In compliance with the request of a friend of mine who wrote me from the east, I called on good-natured garrulous old Simon Wheeler and inquired after my friend's friend, Leonidas W. Smiley, as requested to do, and I hereon to append the result. I found that Leonidas W. Smiley is a myth, and that my friend never knew such a personage and that he only conjectured that if I asked old Wheeler about him it would remind him of his infamous Jim Smiley and he would go to work and bore me to death with some exasperating reminiscence of him as long and as tedious as it should be useless to me. If that was the design, it succeeded. I found Simon Wheeler dozing comfortably by the bar-room stove of the dilapidated tavern in the decaying mining-camp of Angels and I noticed that he was fat and bald-headed and had an expression of winning gentleness and simplicity upon his tranquil countenance. He roused up and gave me good day. I told him a friend had commissioned me to make some inquiries about a cherished companion of his boyhood named Leonidas W. Smiley, Reverend Leonidas W. Smiley, a young minister of the gospel who he had heard was at one time a resident of Angels Camp. I added that if Mr. Wheeler could tell me anything about this reverent Leonidas W. Smiley I would feel under many obligations to him.  He never smiled, he never frowned, he never changed his voice from the gentle flowing key to which he tuned his initial sentence. He never betrayed the slightest suspicion of enthusiasm but all through the interminable narrative there ran a vein of impressive earnestness and sincerity which showed me plainly that so far from his imagining that there was anything ridiculous or funny about his story he regarded it as a really important matter and admired its two heroes as men of transcendent genius in finesse.  Reverend Leonidas W. Hmm. Reverend Lee. Well, there was a feller here once by the name of Jim Smiley in the winter of forty-nine or maybe it was the spring of fifty. I don't recollect exactly somehow though what makes me think it was one or the other is because I remember the big flume wasn't finished when he first came to the camp but anyway he was the curiousest man about always betting on anything that turned up you ever see if he could get anybody to bet on the other side and if he couldn't he'd change sides. Anyway that suited the other man would suit him anyway just so he got a bet he was satisfied but still he was lucky uncommonly lucky he most always was a winner he was always ready and laying for a chance there couldn't be no solitary thing mentioned but that feller had offered a bet on it and take any side you please as I was just telling you if there was a horse race you'd find him flush or you'd find him busted at the end of it if there was a dog fight he'd bet on it if there was a cat fight he'd bet on it if there was a chicken fight he'd bet on it why if there was two birds setting on a fence one would fly first or if there was a camp meeting he would be there regular to bet on parson walker which he judged to be the best exhorter about here and he was too and a good man if he even see a straddle bug start to go he would bet you how long it would take him to get to wherever he was going to and if he took him up he would follow that straddle bug to Mexico but what he would find out where he was bound for long he was on the road lots of the boys here has seen that smiley and can tell you about him why it never made no difference to him he'd bet on anything the dangest fellow parson walker's wife laid very sick once for a good while and it seemed as if they weren't going to save her but one morning he came in and smiley up and asked him how she was and he said she was considerable better thank the lord for his infinite mercy and coming on so smart he sat with the blessing of providence she'd get well yet and smiley before he thought well I'll risk two and a half she don't anyway this year smiley had a mare the boys called her the 15 minute nag but that was only in fun you know because of course she was faster than that and he used to win money on that horse for all she was so slow and always had the asthma or the distemper or the consumption or something of that kind they used to give her two or three hundred yards start and then pass her under way but always at the fag end of the race she'd get excited and desperate like and come cavorting and straddling up and scattering her legs around limber sometimes in the air and sometimes out to one side amongst the fences and kicking up more dust and raising more racket with her coughing and sneezing and blowing her nose and always fetch up at the stand just about a neck ahead you could cipher it down and he had a little small bullpup that to look at him you'd think he weren't worth a cent but to set around and look ornery and lay for a chance to steal something but as soon as money was up on him he was a different dog his under-jawed begin to stick out like the folksle of a steamboat and his teeth would uncover and shine like the furnaces and a dog might tackle him and bully rag him and bite him three times and Andrew Jackson which was the name of the pup Andrew Jackson would never let on but what he was satisfied and hadn't expected nothing else and the bet's being doubled and doubled on the other side all the time till the money was all up and then all of a sudden he would grab that other dog just by the joint of his hind leg and freeze to it not jaw you understand but only just grip and hang on till they throw it up the sponge if it was a year Smiley always come out a winner on that pup till he harnessed a dog once that didn't have no hind legs because they'd been sawed off in a circular saw and when the thing had gone along far enough and the money was all up and he'd come to make a snatch for his pet-holt he'd see in a minute how he'd been imposed on and how the other dog had him in the door so to speak and he peered surprised and then he looked sort of discouraged like and so he got shucked out bad he gave Smiley a look as much as to say his heart was broke and it was his fault for putting up a dog that hadn't no hind legs for him to take hold of which was his main dependence in a fight and then he limped off a piece and laid down and died it was a good pup, was that Andrew Jackson and would've made a name for himself if he lived for the stuff was in him and he had genius opportunities to speak of and it don't stand to reason that a dog could make such a fight as he could under them circumstances if he hadn't no talent it always makes me feel sorry when I think of that last fight of his and the way it turned out well this year Smiley had rat terriers and chicken cocks and Tom cats and all of them kind of things till you couldn't rest and you couldn't fetch nothing for him to bet on but he'd match you a frog one day and took him home said he'd calculated to educate him and so he never done nothing for three months but sat in his back yard and learned that frog to jump and you bet he did learn him too he'd give him a little punch behind and the next minute you'd see that frog whirling in the air like a donut see him turn one summer set or maybe a couple if he got a good start and come down flat footed and all right like a cat he got him up so in the matter of catching flies and kept him in practice so constant that he'd nail a fly every time as far as he could see him Smiley said all the frog wanted was education and he could do most anything and I'd believe him why I've seen him sit Danelle Webster down here on this floor Danelle Webster was the name of the frog and sing out flies Danelle flies and quicker and you could wink he'd spring straight up and snake a fly off in the counter there and flop down on the floor again as solid as a gob of mud and fall to scratching the side of his head with his hind foot as indifferent as if he hadn't no idea he'd been doing anymore and a frog might do you never see a frog so modest and straightforward as he was for all he was so gifted and when it come to fair and square jumping on a dead level he could get over more ground at one straddle than any animal of his breed you ever see jumping on a dead level was his strong suit you understand and when it come to that Smiley would ante up money on him as long as he had a red Smiley was monstrous proud of his frog and well he might be for fellers that had traveled and been everywhere all said he laid over any frog that ever they see well Smiley kept the beast in the little lattice box and he used to fetch him downtown sometimes and lay for a bet one day a feller in the camp he was come across him with his box and says what might be that you've got in the box and Smiley says sort of indifferent like it might be a parrot or it might be a canary maybe but it ain't it's only just a frog and the feller took it and looked at it careful and turned it round this way and that and says hmm so it is well what's he good for Smiley says easy and careless he is good enough for one thing I should judge he can out jump any frog in Calaveras County the feller took the box again and took another long particular look and gave it back to Smiley and says very deliberate well he says I don't see no pints about that frog that's any better than any other frog maybe you don't Smiley says maybe you understand frogs maybe you've had experience and maybe you ain't only an amateur as it were anyways I've got my opinion and I'll risk $40 that he can out jump any frog in Calaveras County and the feller studied a minute and then says kind of sad like well I'm only a stranger here and I ain't got no frog but if I had a frog I'd bet you and then Smiley says that's all right if you'll hold my box a minute I'll go and get you a frog and so the feller took the box and put up his $40 along with Smiley's and sat down to wait so he sat there a good while thinking and thinking to himself and then he got the frog out and prized his mouth open and took a teaspoon and filled him full of quail shot filled him pretty near up to his chin and set him on the floor and slopped around in the mud for a long time and finally he catched a frog and fetched him in and gave him to this feller and he says now if you're ready set him alongside of Danil with his four paws just even with Danils and I'll give the word then he says one, two, three get and him and the feller touched up the frogs from behind and the new frog hopped off lively but Danil give a heave on his shoulders so like a Frenchman but it weren't no youth he couldn't budge he was planted as solid as a church and he couldn't know more stir than if he was anchored out Smiley was a good deal surprised and he was disgusted too but he didn't have no idea what the matter was of course the feller took the money and started away and when he was going out at the door he sort of jerked his thumb over his shoulder so at Danil and says again well he says I don't see no points about that frog that's any better than any other frog Smiley he stood scratching his head and looking down at Danil a long time and at last says I do wonder what in the nation that frog throwed off for I wonder if there ain't something to matter with him he appears to look mighty baggy somehow and he catched Danil up by the nap of the neck and hefted him and he says why blame my cats if he don't weigh five pounds and turned him upside down and he belched out a double handful of shot and then he see how it was and he was the maddest man he set the frog down and took out after that feller but he never catched him and here Simon Wheeler heard his name called from the front yard and got up to see what was wanted and turning to me as he moved away I'm sure you are a stranger and rest easy I ain't going to be gone a second but by your leave I did not think that a continuation of the history of the enterprising vagabond Jim Smiley would be likely to afford me much information concerning the reverent Leonidas W. Smiley and so I started away at the door I met the sociable Wheeler returning and he button-holed me and recommend well the seer Smiley had a yaller one-eyed cow that didn't have no tail only just a short stump like a banana and however lacking both time and inclination I did not wait to hear about the afflicted cow and took my leave end of the celebrated jumping frog of Calaveras County by Mark Twain read by Kara Schallenberg www.kray.org June 31, 2007 I grew up in Calaveras County The Cliff Dwellers from Arizona sketches Chapter 12 by Joseph A. Monk read for LibriVox.org by James Christopher in Phoenix, Arizona, USA in the canyons of the Colorado River and its tributaries are found the ruins of an ancient race of cliff dwellers these ruins are numerous and are scattered over a wide scope of country which includes Arizona New Mexico many of them are yet in a good state of preservation but all show the marks of age and decay they are not less than 400 years old and are in all probability much older their preservation is largely due to their shelter position among the rocks and an exceptionally dry climate the houses are invariably built upon high cliffs on shelving rocks in places that are almost inaccessible in some instances they can only be reached by steps cut into the solid rock, which are so old and worn that they are almost obliterated their walls so nearly resemble stratified rocks upon which they stand that they are not easily distinguished from their surroundings the cliffs are often sloping, sometimes overhanging but more frequently perpendicular the weather erosion of many centuries has caused the softer strata of exposed rocks in the cliffs to disintegrate and fall away which left numberless caverns wherein this ancient and mysterious people chose to build their houses with the eagles the houses are built of all shapes and sizes and apparently were planned to fit the irregular and limited space of their environment circular watchtowers look down from commanding heights which, from their shape and position, were evidently intended to serve the double purpose of observation and defense in the search for evidence of their antiquity it is believed that data has been found which denotes great age in the construction of some of their houses notably those in the mancos canon is displayed a technical knowledge of architecture and the mathematical accuracy which savages do not possess and the fine masonry of dressed stone and superior cement seem to prove that Indians were not the builders on the contrary, to quote a recent writer the evidence goes to show that the work was done by skilled workmen who were white masons and who built for white people in a prehistoric age in this connection it is singular if not significant that the natives when first discovered believed in a bearded white man as the Fair God of whose existence they had obtained knowledge from some source and in whose honor they kept their sacred altifiers burning unquenched the relics that have been found in the ruins are principally implements of the stone age but are a significant variety to indicate a succession of races that were both primitive and cultured and as widely separated in time as in knowledge the cliff dwellings were not only the abodes of their original builders but were occupied and deserted successively by the chip stone implement maker of hard stone, the basket maker and the weaver among the relics that have been found in the ruins are some very fine specimens of pottery which are as symmetrical and well finished as if they have been turned on a potter's wheel and covered with an opaque enamel of stanaferrous glaze composed of lead and tin that originated with the Phoenicians and is as old as history can it be possible that the cliff dwellers are a lost fragment of Egyptian civilization the cliff ruins in Arizona are not only found in the cannons of the Colorado River but also in many other places the finest of them are Montezuma's castle on Beaver Creek and the Casablanca in Cangan de Chile numerous other ruins are found on the Rio Verde Healer River, Walnut Cannon and elsewhere the largest and finest group of cliff dwellings are those on the Mesa Verde in Colorado they are fully described in the great work of Norton Skull who spent much time among them the different houses are named after some peculiarity of appearance or construction like the Cliff Palace which contains more than 100 rooms Longhouse, Balcony House Spruce Tree House, etc he obtained a large quantity of relics which are also fully described consisting of stone implements pottery, cotton and feather cloth Oster and palmino mats Yucca sandals weaving sticks, bone awls corn and beans many well preserved mummies were found buried in graves that were carefully closed and sealed and wrapped in a fine cotton cloth of drawn work which was covered by a coarser cloth resembling burlap and all enclosed in a wrapping of palmino matting tied with a cord made of the fiber of cedar bark the hair is fine and of a brown color and not coarse and black like the hair of the wild Indians mummies have been exhumed that have red or light colored hair such as usually goes with a fair skin this fact has led some to believe that the cliff dwellers belong to the white race but not necessarily so their hair also belongs to albinos who doubtless lived among the cliff dwellers as they do among the moquis and zunis at the present day and explains the peculiarity of hair just mentioned these remains may be very modern as some choose to believe but in all probability they are more ancient than modern mummies encased in wood and cloth have been taken from the tombs of Egypt in an almost perfect state of preservation which cannot be less than 2000 years old and are perhaps more than double that age as there is no positive knowledge as to when the cliff dwellers flourished one man's guess on the subject is as good as another's an important discovery was recently made near Mancos, Colorado where a party of explorers found in some old cliff dwellings graves beneath graves that were entirely different from anything yet discovered they were egg shaped, built of stone and plastered smoothly with clay they contain mummies, cloth sandals beads and various other trinkets there was no pottery but many well made baskets and their owners had been called the basket makers there was also a difference in the skulls found the cliff dwellers skull is short and flattened behind while the skulls that were found in these old graves were long, narrow and round on the back Reverend H. M. Baum who has traveled all over the southwest and visited every large ruin in the country considers it canon to cellae and its branch, Del Muerto is the most interesting prehistoric locality in the United States the Navajos who now live in the canon have a tradition that the people who occupied the old cliff houses were all destroyed in one day by a wind of fire the occurrence evidently was similar to what happened recently on the island of Martinique when all the inhabitants of the village of Saint Pierre perished in an hour by the eruption of Montpellet contemporaneous with the cliff dwellers there seem to have lived a race of people in the adjoining valleys who built cities until the soil judged by their works they must have been an industrious intelligent and numerous people all over the ground are streamed broken pieces of pottery that are painted in bright colors and artistic designs which after ages of exposure to the weather look as fresh as of newly made the relics that have been taken from the ruins are similar to those found in the cliff houses and consist mostly of stone implements and pottery in the healer valley near the town of Florence stands the now famous Casa Grande ruined which is the best preserved of all these ancient cities it was a ruin when the Spaniards first discovered it and as a type of the ancient communal house its thick walls are composed of a concrete adobe that is as hard as rock and its baselines conform to the cardinal points of the compass it is an interesting relic of a past age and an extinct race and if it cannot yield up its secrets to science it at least appeals to the spirit of romance and mystery irrigating ditches which were fed from reservoirs supplied their fields and houses with water portions of these old canals are yet in existence and furnished proof of the diligence and skill of their builders the ditches were located on levels and not be improved upon for utilizing the land and water to the best advantage modern engineers have not been able to better them and in many places the old levels are used in new ditches at the present time whatever may have been the fate of this ancient people their destruction must be sought in natural causes rather than by human warfare an adverse fate probably cut off their water supply and laid waste their productive fields with their crops of failure and all supplies gone what else could the people do but either starve or move and as to the nature of the exodus history is silent just how ancient these works are might be difficult to prove but they are certainly not modern the evidence denotes that they have existed a long time where the water in a canal float over solid rock the rock has been much worn portions of the old ditches are filled with lava and houses lie buried in the vitreous flood it is certain that the country was inhabited prior to the last lava flow whether that event occurred hundreds or thousands of years ago it is claimed that the Pueblo Indians and cliff dwellers are identical and that the latter were driven from their peaceful valley homes by a hostile foe to find temporary shelter among the rocks but such a conclusion seems to be erroneous in view of certain facts the cliff dwellings were not temporary camps as such a migration would imply but places of permanent abode the houses are too numerous and well constructed to be accounted for on any other hypothesis a people fleeing periodically to the cliffs to escape from an enemy could not have built such houses indeed they are simply marvelous when considered as to location and construction the time that must necessarily have been consumed in doing the work and the amount of danger and labor involved labor in preparing and getting the material into place and danger in scaling the dizzy heights over an almost impassable trail it seems a boldest assumption to assert that the work was done by a fleeing and demoralized mob again it would be a physical impossibility for a people who are only accustomed to agricultural pursuits suddenly and completely change their habits of life such as living among the rocks would necessitate only by native instinct and daily practice from childhood would it be possible for any people to follow the narrow and difficult paths which were habitually traveled by the cliff dwellers it requires a clear head and steady nerves to perform the daring feet in safety to the truth of which statement modern explorers can testify who have made the attempt in recent years at the peril of life and limb while engaged in searching for archeological treasures judged by the everyday life that is familiar to us it seems incredible that houses should ever have been built or homes established in such hazardous places or that any people should ever have lived there but that they did is an established fact as there stands the houses which were built and occupied by human beings in the midst of surroundings that might appall the stoutest heart children played and men and women wrought on the brink of rightful precipices in space so limited and dangerous that a single misstep made it fatal it is almost impossible to conceive of any condition in life or combination of circumstances and the affairs of men that should drive any people to the rash act of living in the houses of the cliff dwellers men will sometimes do from choice what they cannot be made to do by compulsion it is easier to believe that the cliff dwellers being free people chose of their own accord the sight of their habitation rather than that from any cause they were compelled to make the choice their preference was to live upon the cliffs as they were fitted by nature for such an environment for no other reason apparently do the moquis live upon their rocky and barren maces away from everything which the civilized white man deems desirable yet in seeming contentment the supais likewise choose to live alone at the bottom of cataract canon where they are completely shut in by high cliffs their only road out is by a narrow and dangerous trail at the side of the canon which is little traveled as they seldom leave home and are rarely visited to affirm that the cliff dwellers were driven from their strongholds and dispersed by forces pure fiction nor is there any evidence to support such a theory that they had enemies no one doubts but being in position of an impregnable position where one man could successfully withstand a thousand to surrender would have been based cowardice and weakness was not a characteristic of the cliff dwellers the question of their sustenance is likewise a puzzle they evidently cultivated the soil where it was practicable to do so as fragments of farm products have been found in their dwellings but in the vicinity of some of the houses there is no tillable land and the inhabitants must have depended upon other means for support the wild game which was doubtless abundant furnished them with meat and edible seeds fruit and roots from native plants like the ping and pine and mesquite which together with sagaro and mescal supplied them with a variety of food sufficient for their sustenance as they do in measure the wild indian tribes of that region at the present day end of the cliff dwellers from Arizona sketches chapter 12 by Joseph A. Monk this recording is in the public domain the devil's dance chamber from myths and legends of our own land volume one the Hudson and its hills by Charles M. Skinner read for LibriVox.org by M. L. Cohen originally from Newburgh, New York United States of America most storied of our new world rivers is the Hudson historic scenes have been enacted on its shores Dutchman, Briton and American have invested it with romance it had its source in the red man's fancy in a spring of eternal youth giants and spirits dwell in its woods and hills and before the river Shadamook king of streams the red man called it had breaking through the highlands those mountains were a pint for spirits who'd rebelled against the manateau after the waters had forced a passage to the sea these evil ones sought shelter in the glens and to the right and left along its course but in time of tempest when they hear manateau riding down the ravine on wings of storm dashing thunderbolts against the cliffs it is the fear that he will recapture them and force them into lightless caverns to expiate the revolt that sends them huddling them on the rocks and makes the hills resound with roars and owls at the devil's dance chamber a slight pateau on the west bank between Newburgh and Crom Elbow men perform semi-religious rites as a preface to their hunting and fishing trips or ventures on the warpath they built the fire painted themselves and then that frenzy into which savages are so readily lashed and that is so like to the action of mobs and trousers they tumbled, leaped, danced, yells sang grimace and gesticulated until the manateau disclosed himself either as a harmless animal or a beast of prey if he came in the former shape the doggery was favorable but if he showed himself as a bear or panther it was a warning of evil that they seldom dared to disregard the crew of Hudson's ship, the Half Moon having chanced on one of these orgies were so impressed by the fantastic spectacle that they gave the name Doi Evo's Don Comer to the spot years afterward, when Stuyvesant ascended the river his dowdy retainers were horrified by Doi Evo Don's Comer to discover hundreds of painted figures frisking there in the firelight a few surmised that they were but a new generation of savages holding a powwow but most of the sailors fancied that the assemblage was demonic and that the figures were spirits of bad Indians repeating a scalp dance and reveling in the mysterious fire water that they had brought down from the river source in jars and skins the spot was at least once profaned for young Dutchman and his wife of Albany were captured here by an angry Indian and although the young man succeeded in stabbing his captor to death he was burned alive on the rock by the friends of the Indians whose wrath he had provoked the wife after being kept in captivity for some time was ransomed end of story this recording is in the public domain the first world war selections from the Manchester Guardian this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer visit LibriVox.org this reading by Carl Manchester 2007 Tuesday, August the 18th 1914 proposed battalion of Manchester Clarks and Warehousemen the following is a copy of an announcement that Manchester employers are being asked to sign and post up calling upon employees for voluntary service a battalion is being raised composed entirely of employees in Manchester's offices and warehouses upon the ordinary conditions of enlistment in Lord Kitchener's army namely for three years all the duration of the war the battalion will be clothed and equipped accepting arms by a fund being raised for the purpose we therefore desire to call the attention of all our employees between the ages of 19 and 35 years to the call of Lord Kitchener which was emphasised by the Prime Minister in the House of Commons for further recruits and in order to encourage enlistment we're prepared to offer all employees enlisting within the next two weeks the following conditions one, four weeks full wages from date of leaving two, re-engagement on discharge from service guaranteed three, half pay during absence on duty for married men from the date that full pay ceases to be paid to the wife four, special arrangements made for single men who have relatives entirely dependent on them five, the above payments only apply to those enlisting in the ranks and not to anyone who may obtain a commission otherwise than by promotion from the ranks but each case, if any of those obtaining a commission will be treated on its merits six, the above offer is for voluntary service only and should the government decide on compulsory training later the offer will not apply to those affected by such compulsion names should be sent to your employer recruiting for this battalion will take place at the artillery headquarters Hyde Road, Ardwick daily from 9am to 6pm it is hoped that all employers will fall in with the above scheme and do all they can to encourage their employees to enlist Tuesday, August 18th, 1914 with the guns D. H. Lawrence the reservists were leaving for London by the 9 o'clock train they were young men some of them drunk there was one bawling and brawling before the ticket window there were two swaying on the steps of the subway shouting and ending let's go and have another before we go there were a few women seeing off their sweethearts and brothers but on the whole the reservist had been a lodger in the town and had only his own pals one woman stood before the carriage window she and her sweetheart were being very matter of fact cheerful and bumptious over the parting well so long she cried as the train began to move when you see him let him have it aye, no fear shouted the man and the train was gone the man grinning I thought what it would really be like when he saw him last autumn I followed the Bavarian army down the Isar valley and near the foot of the Alps then I could see what war would be like an affair entirely of machines with men attached to the machines as the subordinate part thereof as the butt is a part of the rifle I remember standing on a little round hill one august afternoon there was a beautiful blue sky and white clouds from the mountains away on the right amid woods and cornclad hills lay the big Stanberg lake this is just a year ago but it seems to belong to some period outside of time on the crown of the little hill were three quick firing guns with the gunners behind at the side perched on a tiny platform at the top of a high pair of steps was an officer looking through a fixed spyglass a little further behind lower down the hill was a group of horses and soldiers every moment came the hard tearing hideous voice of the German command from the officer perched aloft under the range of the guns and then the sharp cry fire there was a burst something in the guns started back the faintest breath of vapor disappeared the shots had gone I watched but I could not see where they had gone nor what had been aimed at evidently they were directed against an enemy a mile and a half away men unseen by any of the soldiers at the guns whether the shot they fired hit or missed killed or did not touch I and the gun party did not know only the officer was shouting the range again the guns were again starting back we were again staring over the face of the green and dappled inscrutable country into which the missiles sped unseen what work was there to do only mechanically to adjust the guns and fire the shot what was there to feel only the unnatural suspense and suppression of serving a machine which for all we knew was killing our fellow men whilst we stood there blind without knowledge or participation subordinate to the cold machine this was the glamour and the glory of the war blue sky overhead and living green country all around but we amid it all apart in some iron insensate will our flesh and blood our soul and intelligence shed away and all that remained of us a cold metallic adherence to an iron machine there was neither ferocity nor joy nor exaltation nor exhilaration nor even quick fear only a mechanical expressionless movement and this is how the gunner would let him have it he would mechanically move a certain apparatus when he heard a certain shout of the result he would see and know nothing he had nothing to do with it then I remember going at night down a road whilst the sound of guns thudded continuously and suddenly I started seeing the bank of the road stir it was a mass of scarcely visible forms lying waiting for a rush they were lying under fire silent, scarcely stirring a mass if one of the shells that was supposed to be coming had dropped among them it would have burst a hole in the mass who would have been torn, killed no one would have known they would just have been a hole in the living shadowy mass that was all who it was did not matter there were no individuals and every individual soldier knew it he was a fragment of a mass and as a fragment of a mass he must live and die or be torn he had no rights, no self, no being there was only the mass lying there solid and obscure along the bank of the road in the night this was how the gunner would let him have it a shell would fall into this mass of vulnerable bodies there would be a torn hole in the mass this would be his letting him have it and I remember a captain of the Bersaglieri who talked to me in the train in Italy when he had come back from Tripoli the Italian soldier, he said was the finest soldier in the world at a rush but, and he spoke with a certain horror that cramped his voice when it came to lying there under the snider fire you had to stand behind them with the revolver and I saw he could not get beyond the agony of this well, I said that is because they cannot feel themselves part of a machine they have all the old natural courage when one rushes at one's enemy but it is unnatural to them to lie still under machine fire it is unnatural to anybody war with machines and the machine predominant is too unnatural for an Italian it is a wicked thing a machine and your Italians are too naturally good they will do anything to get away from it let us see our enemy and go for him but we cannot endure this taking death out of machines and giving death out of machines our blood cold without any enemy to rise against I remember also standing on a little hill crowned by a white church the hill was defended surrounded by a trench half way down in this trench stood the soldiers side by side down there in the earth a great line of them the night came on suddenly on the other side high up in the darkness burst a beautiful greenish globe of light and then came into being a magic circle of countryside set in darkness a greenish jewel of landscape splendid bulk of trees a green meadow the ball fell and it was dark and in one's eye remained treasured the little vision that it appeared far off in the darkness then again a light ball burst and sloped down there was the white farmhouse with the wooden slanting roof the green apple trees the orchard paling a jewel a landscape set deep in the darkness it was beautiful beyond belief then it was dark then the searchlights suddenly sprang upon the countryside revealing the magic fingering everything with magic pushing the darkness aside showing the lovely hillsides the sable bulks of trees the pallet of corn a searchlight was creeping at us it slid up our hill it was upon us we turned our backs to it it was unendurable then it was gone then out of a little wood at the foot of the hill came the intolerable crackling and bursting of rifles the men in the trenches returned fire nothing could be seen I thought of the bullets that would find their marks but whose bullets and what mark why must I fire off my gun in the darkness towards a noise why must a bullet come out of the darkness breaking a hole in me but better a bullet than the laceration of a shell if it came to dying but what is it all about I cannot understand I am not to understand my God why am I a man at all when this is all this machinery piercing and tearing it is a war of artillery a war of machines and men know more than the subjective material of the machine it is so unnatural as to be unthinkable yet we must think of it Saturday November the 25th 1916 the danger of infection from Germans when the question was raised yesterday at the annual meeting in London of the Association of Poor Law Unions as to the source of venereal infections it was stated that it was well known that Germans were very amenable to the disease by the looseness of their moral code Germans had, it was argued a high scientific process to deal with contagion but said the reverend RT Takon they do not apply that in the channel which is the most important I have four sons in the army and I don't want them to be contaminated I would rather that we could infect the German with good, healthy English blood he added that the danger of foreign infection was not absent even now because he knew of Germans employed at an hotel who had now conveniently become Swiss the meeting decided that it would be no harm to have detention of infected cases but that the natural disinclination of affected persons to declare their disease rendered the notification condition a negation of the good object in view the discussion arose out of a letter from the Salford Board of Guardians calling for the internment of all Germans as a source of infection approving the idea the conference instructed the Executive Council to take all the necessary steps to give effect to this view Wednesday December the 19th, 1917 a reminder of the need for a Christmas fund we have a visitor in Manchester he is staying in Albert Square between the stone figures of John Bright and Bishop Fraser and hopes to spend a profitable week in this city the sight of that squat brown guest of ours cannot fail to bring thoughts of the whole family of tanks which, far from being fated in an English town are plowing their way over the desolate fields of France our thoughts go out to the soldiers who are trudging after them to many thousands of these men the thought of this new recruit to warfare settled comfortably on the flags of our square will bring very vivid thoughts of home they will remember the times they waited for cars in that very place or put their watches right by the town hall clock they will recollect at once that the bells used to play Robin Adair or the minstrel boy each day at one o'clock and probably they will wonder if the symbol of conflict in those familiar surroundings is reminding us at home of the men to whom a tank means something more sinister than a sound bank by our contributions this week while our guest is with us and the fund for the Lancashire and Cheshire battalions payment is still open we can prove our thoughts for them contributors are asked carefully to note all contributions, whether of articles or money should be sent to the Manchester Guardian offices three Cross Street, Manchester payment should be made by checks or postal orders which should be made payable to the Manchester Guardian Limited and crossed the name and address of the sender and the character of the articles within should be marked on the outside of each parcel the articles asked for cigarettes, cigarette papers tobacco, shag tobacco pipes, clay and briar tobacco pouches, pipe lighters matches, candles mufflers, socks mittens, gloves sleeveless sweaters shirts, singlets, bootlaces balaclava caps bachelor's buttons ketosh capes handkerchiefs soap shaving soap safety razors nail scissors boot polish black toothbrushes boot brushes safety pins antifrost bite grease insect powder combination knife, fork and spoon needles sewing cotton biscuits chocolate peppermints tinned meats and fish sweets cafe au lait writing pads writing paper envelopes pencils mouth organs gramophones gramophone records indoor games footballs magazines and other reading matter steel mirrors toothpaste pipe cleaners and tinned milk Wednesday December the 29th 1920 The Pity of War CP Poems by Wilfred Owen London Chateau and Windus 33 pages 6 shillings net Lieutenant Wilfred Owen, MC an officer of the Manchester Regiment was killed in action on the Sombra Canal a week before the Armistice aged 25 The 23 poems of his collection are the fruit of not quite two years active service less than half of it in the field but they are enough to rank him a very few war poet whose work has more than a passing value Others have shown the disenchantment of war have un-legended the rose-light and romance of it but none with such compassion for the disenchanted or such sternly just and justly stern judgment on the idolisers To him the sight and sound of a man gassed suffice to give the lie to dulce at the quorum and the rest of it the atrophy that he damns is not that of the men who fought having seen all things red the eyes are red of the hurt of the colour of blood for ever it is the atrophy of those who quote by choice make themselves immune from whatever shares the eternal reciprocity of tears if he glorifies the soldier and he does gloriously it is as victim not as victor not as the hero achieving but as one who sacrificial love passes the love of women oh love your eyes lose lure when I behold eyes blinded in my stead heart you were never hot nor large nor full like hearts made great with shot and though your hand be pale paler are all which trail your cross through flame and hail weep you may weep for you may touch them not his verse as he says in his preface is all of the pity of war and quote except in the pity end quote there is no poetry but it is a heroic exception for the pity gets itself into poetry in phrases which are not the elegant chasing of ineffectual silver but the vital unbeautiful beauty of unwashed gold it is the poetry of pain searing and piercing to pity it is the poetry of the tragic muse whose visage though quote marred more than any man end quote is yet transfigured in the sorrow of song he has revealed the soul of the soldier as no one else has revealed it not because his vision of the externals was less vivid and cleaving but because to that vision he added an imagination of the heart that made him sure of his values except you share with them in hell the sorrowful dark of hell whose world is but the trembling of a flare and heaven but the highway for a shell you shall not hear their mirth you shall not come to think them well content by any jest of mind these men are worth your tears you are not worth their merriment irony his poetry has and grim humour but the spirit of the pitties always breathes through the humour and the irony and keeps their bitterness sweet sometimes as in mental cases the pain is too poignant even for pity and moves only to the anger of despair but more often the anger gives place to a beneficent impulse as in strange meeting the first and one of the finest of his poems then when much blood had clogged their chariot wheels I would go and wash them from sweet wells even with truths that lie too deep for taint this poem happens also to be a good example of technical innovation that is rather puzzling enough has been quoted to show that Owen uses traditional meters and rhymes but as here he also uses and uses throughout the poem a device which is neither rhyme nor assonance it is not assonance because the vowels are different and in any case it could not be rhyme because the initial consonants are alike spoiled spilled laughed left grained ground it looks like a subtly contrived escape from tonal completeness a calculated deflection from the kindred points of heaven and home which are rhymes lest the musical significance should soften the conscious starkness of his treatment but the result gain is more than doubtful the thing affects you as the baffling elusiveness of a fugitive pun or the half foiled meeting of two stanzas of a sestina and just because of the baffling and the foiling it fails in its artistic purpose it is significant that it is not used in his greatest poems such as Apologia pro Poemati Mio and Greater Love and one cannot help feeling that fine as it is strange meeting would have been finer without it this trick apart Owen uses words with the poet's questioning instinct for the heart of things and his homing instinct for the heart of man his work will not easily die end of the first world war selections from the Manchester Guardian