Sifting Through the Sands of Time from the Courier Archives

130 Years Ago 2 July 12, 1879

A Warning

A ten-dollar bill, with the following words written across the face, was passed over an Ithaca counter the other day:

"This is the last of a fortune of $100,000 left to me by my uncle. Jasper Could.

"Beware of women and wine."

Rather let a man beware of indulging his passions until they become ungovernable. Neither women nor wine are responsible for Jasper Gould's poverty; Jasper himself is alone to blame.

90 Years Ago 2 July 11, 1919

The Summer Visitors

Putnam County was crowded with summer guests over the Fourth and for the weekend. The boarding houses are beginning to fill up for the season.

The only reason there are not more of these city people with us in Putnam County in summer time is because we have not the accommodations for them and are not so well advertized as are the other counties up the state. So far as mileage is concerned we have the transportation advantages and the three railroads divide the county nicely. Even the slow trains on the Putnam make us hours nearer to the great city than Sullivan County, the Catskills, or the Adirondack Mountains. We have the scenery in mountains, valleys, and lakes, surpassing many of the better known sections. A little real publicity would bring the crowds to our hills and fill our valleys to overflowing.

80 Years Ago 2 July 12, 1929

Wanted: A Brave Man

The scientific book on disease of the skin recognizes the fact that the cause of wart is unknown. The wart, it is known, represents a thickening of certain layers of the skin with projection upward. This process is initiated by an irritation which may be due to poison, to bacteria, to mechanical action or possibly to nerve disturbances.

Says Dr. Morris Fishbein, editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association: "There is one excellent way, however of proving promptly that touching a toad will not produce warts- that is to get a toad and touch it. It is a safe bet warts will not appear in the vast majority of cases when this experiment is tried."

This sounds very convincing.

We are modern, progressive, and far from superstitious. Yet… we would rather someone else made the test.