There are about four people at school who know of a very small, very pink room at the very end of E-building. This room is the deepest one can go into the bowels of IHS. In that room, there are four filing cabinets that contain the annals of IHS Tattler history, going back 125 years. Here follows a selection.
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Note: The current Tattler does not endorse the opinions published in historical Tattlers.
March 1893
March
By W.C. BRYANT
The stormy March is come at last,
With wind, and cloud, and changing skies;
I hear the rushing of the blast,
That through the snowy valley flies
Ah, passing few are they who speak,
Wild, stormy month! in praise of thee;
Yet though they winds are loud and bleak,
Thou art a welcome mouth to me.
The year’s departing beauty hides
Of wintry storms the sullen threat;
But in thy sternest frown abides
A look of kindly promise yet.
Though bring’st the hope of those calm skies,
And that soft time of sunny showers,
When the wide bloom, on earth that lies,
Seems of a brighter world than ours.
March 1898
What Its Coming To
By W.K. STALEY in Cincinnati Times-Star
Two girls stood on a corner,
Engaged in a hot debate
Upon the war in Cuba,
The Maine, and sailors’ fate.
The argument waxed warmer,
Attracting quite a crowd,
Who gathered round to listen
To war-talk fierce and loud.
But still the girls continued,
Their views of war to vent,
And for the hated Spaniards
The hot and heavy went.
A copper interfering,
They turned their fire on him,
And silenced him with broadsides
Of red-hot female vim.
A car at last appearing,
They boarded it for home,
Resolved to take Havana,
And execute DeLome.
Then send a million women,
Who’ll shaky Madrid take,
And o’er the heads of Spaniards
A million broomsticks break.
March 1899
Narcotics
Tobacco is a poison and narcotic which was unknown to Europeans until Columbus discovered America. . . . The most poisonous ingredient of tobacco is nicotine, a dark liquid with pungent taste. This is very deadly in its effect as five drops placed upon the tongue of a dog have been known to produce death. Besides the fatal nicotine of tobacco there are poisons added while it is being prepared for use and opium is sometimes sprinkled over it to soothe the brain and nerves of the user. . . .
The practice of smoking is now one of the greatest curses of the age, and is enslaving its victims by the thousands and leading them to early graves. . . . The ordinary cigarette, although attractive in form, is a great deception. It is made of refuse of tobacco of the cheapest quality and of cigar stubs picked up from the gutters. These are soaked in liquor and then neatly wrapped in white paper which has been previously bleached in a preparation of arsenic to give it a clean appearance.
It is now a very common occurrence to see children of tender years smoking, and in many instances they have permanently stunted their bodies and impaired their intellects as a result of this indulgence. The memory is often weakened so that it seems impossible to retain that which has once been learned, and the hand is so unsteady that it is unable to draw a straight line. . . . After a continued use of tobacco, the victim is afflicted with a loss of appetite, great restlessness, inflamed mouth and throat, impaired vision, weakened heart and paralysis of the nerve centers. Hundreds of its user would gladly free themselves from it but fund they are bound by shackles they are powerless to break.
March 1899
A Trip to Chinatown
By KAPPA SIGMA
The next great place of interest was the theatre. Here our guide procured tickets for us and we entered by the stage entrance, descended ten feet underground through horrible passages to where the actors lived. A chinese troupe received board and lodging aside from salary. The quarters they lived in were something terrible . . . [The performance] was very funny. In the first place, no woman ever acts on the Chinese stage, but you couldn’t have told the men taking female parts from females. . . . They never shift the scenes in a Chinese theatre. If an actor is too lazy to go off the stage, he simply turns his back on the audience, then he is supposed to have left it. The highest salary attained is about $16 a week. This is given to those actors who can play a woman’s part best, but if their voice should happen to break even once the salary drops down half immediately. The audience was of more interest to me than the performance. To see that crowd of Chinese men all together, all with their hats on, and watch the different expressions, was fill of interest. There was not a woman in the body of the house, they were all on one side of the gallery, and smoked too, as just the men did. . . .
After leaving the theatre we went to an opium den. It was a tiny place like a ship’s cabin lined with bunks. On these were men in all stages of the opium feast, one fast asleep, another just going off, etc., each with his pipe and lamp to heat the opium. Th man who kept this den smoked nearly a hundred pipes a day for the benefit of visitors . . . on the receipt of money from our guide he smoked for us… More horrible than this sight to all of us was, I think, the morphine eaters. We saw one who was an American, and such a low face I have never seen. He also on receipt of money injected some morphine in his arm, which was all lumps from previous injections.
In China they have the superstition that if a blind person is allowed to go around that everyone who comes in contact with him will also be blind, and so they shut these poor unfortunates up in an alley; they are never allowed to come out of their rooms and have keepers to take care of them. We went in one room where a poor blind man sixty-eight years of age had been kept thirty-two years; never been in the air even.
Quite the swellest thing we visited was the restaurant. This was, of course, the finest of its kind in Chinatown. He Gen. Grant once banqueted. A dinner in this place cost $25 for ten people and just the same price for one. It consists of seventy-five courses. and takes eight hours to eat it. The only dish that an American would recognize of eat of this whole dinner would be the duck. The banquet hall was magnificent, finish in ebony decorated with gold. The chairs were worth $75 a piece. We saw a table set for dinner, chop sticks and all, and it certainly looked very tempting. What would correspond to our dessert was the only food on the table; this is the Chinaman’s first course.
Of the 30,000 inhabitants in Chinatown only 175 are voters, these being people born on American soil. While there was a great many other places of interest that we visited, it would take too much time to write of them and I think all who read this will agree with me, that they have had enough of Chinatown for a while.
March 1918
HE IS A TRAITOR WHO WASTES.
Merely that the newspaper don’t publish screaming headlines each day of submarine activities does not mean that the U-boat has given up and gone home to port… All neutral nations bordering on Germany and the Allies are practically out of cereals, and we must save to make up for it. . . . You don’t need to starve yourself- for it is essential that every one of us be in good health and have the normal amount of strength; but certain it is that there is many an individual in out country who eats more food than is required to maintain that health and strength. Many can subsist on less, and everyone, beyond any doubt, can substitute other things for those that are vitally needed for export. . . . And you, boys—don’t fear that if peace hasn’t come when you are called upon you will be underweight—though far better that than the other extreme; see how many holes you can put between the end of your belt and the buckle.
Tattles, March 1918
Early issues have a section of short jokes called “Tattles”
A great depends on the dressing, when it comes to women and salads.
Mr. L.: “If you attempt to squeeze a solid body it will invariably resist the pressure.”
McL.: “Then you would not consider a girl a solid body, Mr. L.?”
AND HERE’S A CRUEL ONE: “Why are the Germans like the Ithaca Street Cleaning Department? Because they will never clean up the “allies” (!!)
An advertisement for young men’s clothing, March 1918.
An advertisement for Ithaca Gun, March 1899.
An advertisement for Hickey’s Music House, March 1899.
Advertisement for The Bool Floral Co., March 1918.