Relic on the Lethe

While correcting a local newspaper, I took a break from the endless news of Civil War pardons to switch to the Poet's Corner and peruse the offering of the day. The poem selected for the Winchester News of August 18, 1865 is an ode to the printing press as a means to redress wrongs (fitting for a newspaper still stinging over the recent Confederate defeat). The poem, in its entirety, runs thus: Song of the Type Click, click, click,  List to the Song of the Type,  Now breathing as soft and as light,  As a sigh from the heart’s first emotion,  Now swelling in grandeur and might  As billows that roll on the ocean.  Far reaching, eternal, its tones,  From its clime where the ice-mountains shine  Are borne over earth’s ample zones  To the land of the myrtle and vine. Click, click, click,  List to the Song of the Type,  To the nations down-trodden, oppressed,  It speaks like the voice of a God,  Of the wrongs of the people redr...

In the early 1900s, reports of animals - primarily dogs - being killed by an unknown creature around Suffolk and Norfolk were attributed to a nebulous Great Dismal Swamp Monster. The first wave took place in 1902, with stories originating in Suffolk. The Times printed a story that ran one day earlier in the local paper of a strange creature that has been attacking people and dogs around Nansemond in February of 1902: The Strange Monster That Eats Dogs in Nansemond. (Special Dispatch to The Times.) The strange Dismal Swamp monster, which one day this week killed seven of Ed. Smith's dogs, ate two of them, and later attacked Mr. Smith, himself, has been seen again. Mr. Smith lives about twelve miles from Suffolk. Last night L. Frank Ames, a merchant, who lives near Bennett's Creek, saw the same thing and suffered from its ravages. Hearing a strange noise, Mr. Ames went out with a pistol. He thought at first it was a strange dog. When he learned it was the much-sought monster Mr....