The Story of the Christmas Ship

Title: The Story of the Christmas Ship by Lilian Bell (1867-1929)

Location: Google Books       Date: 1913

CHAPTER XIV

How Chicago’s City Council Indorsed The Christmas Ship

THERE is not room in this book to tell of even a tithe of the generosity which filled the Jason’s hold with gifts.

I sit and pore over the files of newspapers which daily keep arriving, and I select with care all I feel I must use. Then I am appalled by the bulk of material.

So I go over and over it, weeding out, cutting down. If I didn’t, this book would be the size of a dictionary and would have to be issued in sections—like Balzac’s complete novels, that you buy on the installment plan and think you will read on rainy nights.

In Chicago the City Council came in, and not only promised to work but were singularly unanimous in praising the thought of the Christmas Ship:

“The Christmas Ship idea is a glorious one,” said Alderman Nance. “What cheer it will carry to those in the very shadow of the great war, whose cups of sadness and desolation are overfull! The movement inaugurated by the Herald should become nation-wide and all citizens should esteem it a privilege to have a part in its work. Especially should the children be interested in the plan. The whole idea spells a spirit of generosity and brotherly love.”

Alderman Merriam said that at Christmas time no greater expression of good will could be shown than by the sending of the ship.

“The idea carries out the ‘Peace on earth, good will toward men,’” said Alderman Merriam, “and no better time for this will be found than the time the ship reaches the war country.”

“A beautiful sentiment,” was the way Alderman Harding expressed himself. “This should have the approval and aid of all.”

“One of the most high-minded ideas,” said Alderman Littler.

“Nothing can do more to cultivate the international spirit,” said Alderman Krause. “The plan is a splendid one, and I for one will do all I can to make it a success.”

“Anything that will bring joy to orphans at Christmas time,” said Alderman Bergen, “deserves the help of every one.”

“Everybody should get back of this plan and make it a complete success,” said Alderman Norris. “This plan is wonderful.”

“I believe the undertaking is something that appeals to the mind and heart of every American man, woman, and child,” said Alderman Kearns. “The substantial things it aims to accomplish need but little comment.”

“I think the idea is a grand one,” said Alderman Capitain, “and should be encouraged by the grown-ups as well as by the children. It is a big undertaking, and should have the support of all.”

These men, who have so much power in the city government, are in the habit of looking at ideas as to their influence and productiveness of good or evil. Therefore their recognition of the moral uplift and spiritual import contained in the idea back of the work conducted so ably by the Herald, indicated that they were awake to the sublime results which would emanate from the Christmas Ship in the hearts and lives of the children of the United States.

A few weeks later, in regular session, Alderman Nance introduced a resolution, followed by these most significant words: “The city council of the city of Chicago hereby indorses the laudable project and urges the generous cooperation of all citizens in making it an unqualified success.”

It was with these words that the city’s official representatives made history.

“It is rare in the annals of municipal government, either in America or abroad, that a great city has thought the suffering of other nations of concern immediate enough to inspire action toward its alleviation,” said Alderman Nance after the session.

” Never before in the history of war has a great city initiated action, or indorsed action initiated by others, to offset even in part the ur aappiness and misery which follow in the wake of war.

“That the council of the city of Chicago has taken such action is a fact not only of importance as an aid in the loading of the ship but also as a great moral step in the direction of the realization of civilization’s ideal of universal peace.

“The fact that one of the world’s largest and most cosmopolitan cities has deemed international sympathy and brotherhood of sufficient importance to merit official action, is an influence for good which will reach not only the people of Chicago but in time all the people of the world.”

Even more explicitly expressed is the commendation of the general superintendent of the United Charities of Chicago:

“Christmas Ship Editor of the Herald:

“Permit me to express my keen interest in your Christmas Ship idea. Charity workers know what fatherless homes mean to family life. They spell grief, gloom, and want. Now comes your plan to throw among these stricken little ones a kind of rainbow of cheer. It is a great idea, and I want to add my little word of encouragement. Two fairies in our own home, as I write, are busy at the front lawn to earn contributions to the cause.

“Of course this will mean money taken out of Chicago, where the needs of the poor are so great, but I am confident there will be plenty left for all. Chicago is rich, her people are generous, and their means are sufficient to meet all reasonable calls. How fitting that cosmopolitan Chicago, harboring peoples from every nation, should look with compassion upon the stricken children of all the many countries at war. Social workers ought to, and I am sure will, say Godspeed to your brilliantly conceived project.

“Eugene T. Lies”

While in another issue came this from the secretary of the Illinois Vigilance Association:

“Christmas Ship Editor of the Herald:

“To me the Christmas Ship plan seems one of the greatest influences for good I have heard of since the United States remitted a portion of the war tax on China after the Boxer rebellion. It is an act of kindness and sympathy that will do more than any diplomacy could hope to do. It will do much to quiet the war spirit in Europe and make it almost impossible for any foreign nation to declare war on us while the memory of such a kindness lasts. It is a kindness to mothers and little children that will be a source of happiness to the heart of the giver as well as to the receiver.

“Wirt W. Hallam”

Two hundred women’s clubs of Chicago, through their representatives in the executive committee of the League of Cook County Clubs, enlisted in the work of the Christmas Ship.

Notice of the league’s action was conveyed to the Herald in a letter signed by the president, Mrs. Charles H. Zimmerman, and the corresponding secretary, Mrs. A. P. C. Matson. The letter read as follows:

“At a meeting of the executive committee of the League of Cook County Clubs, held September 15, it was voted to indorse the Christmas Ship movement.”

All the time I was teaching my Santa Claus Class, and 1 wrote for them as I would write had each day’s story been going into a book.

Was there ever a more delightful play-combined-with-work and work-combined-with-play invented than all of us mothers and children sitting down to prepare such a shipload of joy?

Can you imagine what the children of Europe are thinking right this minute? For already thousands know what we are doing.

And the best of it is that we are all happy about it.

For my own part, I wear that smile that won’t come off. I smile when I am with people and when I am alone. Sometimes I get to smiling so in the street car that I have to turn and look out of the window for fear people will think I am not quite right in my mind!

But we Christmas Shippers can’t help smiling, can we?

This smile of ours is one which will circle the earth.

Bell, Lillian (Mrs Bogue) (b.1867-d.1929) Published her first novel at age 26. She wrote mostly from her experience and her travels as the wife of upper-crust Arthur Hoyt Bogue of Chicago. [The couple divorced in 1913] Her father, Maj. William W. Bell, fought in the Civil War, as did did her grandfather, Gen. Joseph Warren Bell  (a Southerner, who sold and freed his slaves before the war, brought his family North, and organized the 13th Illinois Cavalry). Her great – great – grandfather, Captain Thomas Bell, served Virginia in the American Revolution. Lilian Bell was born in Chicago, but she was brought up in Atlanta.

Works include: The Love Affairs of an Old Maid (1893); Hope Loring; A Little Sister to the Wilderness (1895); The Under Side of Things; From a Girl’s Point of View (1897); The Expatriates (1900); Abroad with the Jimmies (1900); At Home With The Jardines (1902); As Seen By Me; Carolina Lee (1907) – Vintage Women’s Books

Chicago Medium Rare

Title: Chicago Medium Rare:When we Were Both Younger by Robert J. Casey

Location: Internet Archive           Date: 1949

“CHICAGO, according to the experts, is a city that took root in a swamp about 1826, grew to noticeable size before 1890 and reached its ultimate magnificence day before yesterday.”

So begins Robert J. Casey’s (1890-1962) recounting of life in Chicago at the turn of the twentieth century. Usually I would provide some biographical material on the author here, but have decided to post that information on The Journal next week. The reader might also note that the illustrations were provided by Ann and John Groth. More on Groth to be posted on The Journal also. In the meantime – enjoy the following story by newspaper man, author, adventurer, Bob Casey! This book is a treat I just had to share.

Bad-News Tillie

THEY were plowing up the last celery patch in Lake View to make room for Weiblinger’s saloon when Bad-News Tillie moved into Ashland Avenue near Cornelia Street. Her advent was considerably more spectacular than the unloading of Gentry Brothers’ Circus half a block down the street, and was reviewed with unmasked interest by all the kids of the neighborhood and most of the adults.

Tillie didn’t bring any moving van filled with the customary oddments of furniture generally revealed on such occasions. She was more practical. She appeared on the scene seated by the side of the driver of a steam roller behind which, on four stonemason’s trucks, was hitched a long, narrow, two-story house. Tillie’s possessions, whatever they were, remained where they had always been inside the house. And nobody got a look at them until long years afterward.

A moving crew got the house onto its waiting foundations before the day was out. In this work they were greatly encouraged by Tillie, who cursed at them with a spectacular vocabulary in English, Polish and German. When they had finished she chased away the observing children and retired through her somewhat accessible front door via a stepladder. The spectators then moved on to the circus which, after Tillie’s show, seemed to be lacking in savor.

Next day it became obvious that Tillie had come to stay. By the time the mannerly little children had gathered around she had a nondescript washing hung on a line in what was to be her backyard, and bricklayers were filling up holes in the underpinning of her house. Moreover, as determined by test, the ladder had been attached to the house with wooden cleats. Public interest waned rapidly.

The house, when it was permanently emplaced, looked like what it was a large square box, badly in need of the coat of paint it was never going to get. But Tillie had some eye for improvement. Maybe she found it inconvenient to get in and out of the place on a ladder. Anyway, at the end of the week a brewery truck arrived at her address carrying a spiral staircase of rusted iron.

Afterward came workmen who argued for a long time with Tillie about what they were going to do with the staircase. It was too long to serve the front door, the foreman mentioned in two languages. It couldn’t be cut off with a hacksaw because it was the wrong curve. It was going to look pretty ghastly no matter what was done with it. And he suggested that maybe she might throw the thing away and get somebody to make her some stairs and a porch out of wood.

Tillie solved the problem with the directness that the neighborhood was presently to recognize as her most charming characteristic.

“Run it up to the second floor and make a door out of the upstairs front window on the east,” she directed in German. “Then you can nail up the front door downstairs. I won’t be needing it.”

The foreman translated this order to his workmen and thereby let the neighborhood know what to expect. “She’s certainly going to have a fine-looking place,” he mentioned to give the message a personal touch. And he was right about that.

The result was something that people came from miles around to see. The little children would linger for hours just to observe Tillie making her exits and entrances. Unfortunately they were never around when she emerged at night swinging a lantern in front of her 200 pounds of bulk. John Spetti and Mike Mullen, conductors on the Ashland Avenue car line, who were frequent witnesses to this odd procedure, christened her place “The Ashland Avenue Lighthouse.” And the name stuck.

In time, from one source or another, we learned the name of our new neighbor. She was Mrs. Herman Gratzburg. She had come from Bowmanville. And she had a wispy little husband whose apparent object in life was to keep out of her way.

“He’s fine man,” Tillie told Mrs. Volk in the grocery store across the street. “He’s good to me. Never sticks around the house. Never bothers me. Just fine man.”

That was her last observation on the subject, but a few of the neighbors began to draw conclusions from what they could see for themselves.

Mr. Gratzburg sometimes got up enough initiative to get drunk at Schulze’s saloon no great distance away. But he never was sufficiently ingenious to enlarge on the program. He would come home, find himself unable to negotiate the winding stairs and sit all night on the bottom step. Next morning he would appear on the street with a black eye or a bandaged head. He worked somewhere as a freight-elevator operator, but nobody ever found out much about that.

Before coming to Ashland Avenue the Gratzburgs had lived near some carbarns in Clark Street and, whether because of this proximity or not, Tillie had developed a definite allergy toward streetcars.

There was a story that some conductor had once given her a misdated transfer or maybe had refused to accept a misdated transfer from her. There was a further report that in retaliation she had assaulted the motorman and broken some windows. These allegations were never proved. But it is true that she had been known to the trade in the old neighborhood as “Bad-News Tillie” for a considerable time.

She was some fifteen years in the Ashland Avenue Lighthouse and had an eventful life. Every now and then the police came from Town Hall station to arrest her for throwing rocks at passing streetcars or for one thing or another. But nothing came of it.

Tillie acquired a dog that seemed to have been trained to detest blue uniforms. But inasmuch as few trolley-car crewmen ever went by her house except in streetcars, the dog had a lonesome time of it. After a year or so in a mistaken moment he bit a policeman and died. The hazard of riding through the 3500 block in Ashland Avenue decreased from that day forward.

So, with little change in routine, the years went by until one night Herman Gratzburg made friends with a streetcar conductor named William Gavin in Schulze’s bar. When Herman decided it was time to go home Gavin escorted him not only to the foot of the iron stairs but all the way up to the second-floor door. A bucket of water barely missed him on his way down.

The next day, July 15, 1905, was to be memorable in the neighborhood. Tillie appeared in Volk’s grocery store and bought a bar of soap.

“He’s no good,” she told Mr. Fred Volk, the proprietor.

“Who?” inquired Volk.

“Herman, my old man,” explained Tillie patiently. “All the time with streetcar conductors he runs around. So now I guess I kill him.”

“So?” inquired Volk “And how are you going to do it?”

“With this,” said Tillie. And she held up the cake of soap.

Volk repeated the conversation with considerable amusement to everybody he saw that day, including the policeman on the beat.

But the next day he would have had difficulty reconstructing a smile. Toward evening of that day Mrs. Gratzburg was back in the store, looking fairly happy.

“Well, I do it,” she said. “The old man. Now he’s dead. No more streetcar conductors for him.”

Volk took a second look at her and called Town Hall station.

The police came. They found Herman in a bathtub with the back of his head caved in. It seemed likely that he had slipped on a cake of soap which they found underwater at the bottom of the
tub. A detective asked Tillie about it.

“Sure,” she said in German. “I guess maybe he slips on that. I try hard to fix him up again. But he don’t pay no attention to me. He just lies there.”

“And when was this?” inquired the detective.

“Three days ago,” said Tillie.

“Well,”  snapped the policeman, “where’s that cake of soap you bought day before yesterday from Volk?”

“Oh, that,” said Tillie. “That’s right here.” And she produced the cake of soap from the kitchen sink.

So they buried Gratzburg. Then they took Tillie in for mental tests. And they turned her loose again.

At last reports she was living on a little truck farm near Bensenville.

“I like it here,” she reported to one of her old German friends. “It’s a nice place. No policemen, no streetcars, no streetcar conductors. And there’s no way you can get drowned in the bathtub
because there isn’t any bathtub. There’s just some water that squirts in from a thing up near the ceiling. And I wonder what those policemen wanted with me when Herman died.”

“I don’t know,” said the friend. And, for that matter, neither does anybody else.

The Autobiography of Gurdon Saltonstall Hubbard

Title: The Autobiography of Gurdon Saltonstall Hubbard: Pa-Pa-Ma-Ta-Be, “The Swift Walker” by Gurdon Hubbard

Location: Google Books     Date: 1911

Introduction by Caroline M. McIlvaine, Librarian of the Chicago Historical Society

PROBABLY no one life presented so many of the phases of Chicago’s life-drama as did that of Gurdon Saltonstall Hubbard. The brief autobiography here reprinted deals with the earlier years only. It remains for us to round out the picture by a swift review of the later scenes, and to try to so adjust the focus that we may see the picture as a whole and realize its relation to our own lives. Born in Vermont, a descendant of the Connecticut colonial governor, Gurdon Saltonstall, who was great-grandson of Sir Richard Saltonstall, Gurdon Hubbard bore, so far as ancestry is able to imprint it, the stamp of the metal from which America has been molded. But there was something else about Gurdon Hubbard than that which can be accounted for by ancestry.

Leaving his adopted home in the Canadian wilderness at the age of sixteen, to descend with the voyageurs of the American Fur Company through the waters traversed only a trifle over a century before by the explorers La Salle and Tonty, intimate as a brother with the Indians, and yet able to defend the whites from their treachery, possessed of the strength and skill of the former, with the diplomacy and aplomb of the latter, swift of foot, huge of stature, Hubbard seems as he looms up in history like the survivor of some former race, —a giant whose youthful adventures might have been passed on by tradition, as of a being more than human. Something he undoubtedly imbibed from the Indians, which, added to his own firm fiber, made him the hero that he was in the estimation of his contemporaries, and rendered him, in a very true sense, a representative American. That he was able to adapt himself to civilization, and to infuse into others something of the fire which burned within him, is in large part, we believe, the secret of much of Chicago’s extraordinary advance. If we have moved at a rapid pace, it is perhaps because that pace was set by Pa-pa-ma-ta-be, “The Swift Walker.”

Chicago by Hobart Chatfield Chatfield-Taylor

Full Title: Chicago  by Hobart Chatfield Chatfield-Taylor;  Drawings by Lester G. Hornsby

Location: Internet Archive      Date Published: 1917

ONE night, after a supper given by Richard Mansfield to Coquelin the Inimitable, I stood beside Sarah Bernhardt on the balcony of a Chicago hotel. The moon had laid a silver trail across the lake, the buildings of the city loomed shadowy in the night. Below us blazed the lights of Michigan Avenue ; from its pavement came the rumble of many cabs speeding to places of revelry. A moment of silence had come to appease the fatigue of speaking in a foreign tongue ; but it was broken by the surpassing woman beside me. ” I adore Chicago,” she exclaimed. “It is the pulse of America.”

Today’s Library selection was chosen not for its prose, but its pictures. Hobart Chatfield-Taylor wrote a beautifully penned love letter to the city, but the sketches are what caught my eye. I have not found any biography of the illustrator, Lester Hornsby. Strangely, and I’m not sure why, the drawings seem to bring to mind the art work described by Theodore Dreiser  for his major character (Eugene Witla) in The Genius.

Hornsby is listed as the illustrator for other urban themed works such as Rambles Around Old BostonbyEdwin M. Bacon (1914). He is also listed as an illustrator in the October, 1918 issue of  The Century Magazine( 7 drawings by Lester G. Hornby titled “Paris Vistas”) Unfortunately, that is all I know of Mr. Hornsby – except that I enjoy his work. Here are several more examples:

Time was when I knew a goodly pro-
portion of the passers-by in the downtown
streets — men, like myself, of New Eng-
land blood, whose fathers felled our forests
and tilled our prairie land. Now, as I
stroll through the heart of

the city at the
hour when the great office buildings and
department stores are emptying them-
selves, I search the scurrying crowds in
vain for a familiar face; and as I am borne
on by the human torrent gushing from the
crag-like walls about me, I feel that, like
my Puritanical traditions, I belong to an-
other age.