Grandpa’s book of clippings
Nowadays, some tuck away good ideas and clever sayings on Pinterest. Others create a Vision Board to manifest their personal future.
A hundred years ago, though?
My grandpa had a Clippings Book.
This 6″x9″ idea keeper is a scrapbook, really. It’s fascinating to gently leaf through the brittle pages and see what was important to Grandpa as a young man.
Dad’s dad (my Grandpa Vayo, see The family scholar for his story) was born in Maine in 1899. As a 21-year-old college student, he started collecting sayings and advice from local newspapers:
The next few pages of clippings include poems, folksy comic strips, and all sorts of advice, such as:
HEALTH IS YOUR GREATEST ASSET.
Guard it as you would your pocketbook in a crowded streetcar.
A-ha! There’s even a newspaper clipping that features Grandpa! It seems our grandpère was in the process of finishing his college degree:
Next, Grandpa’s interests turned to his chosen career, advertising. One clip urged him to write ads using an editorial style.
Another states:
When others imitate your advertising they acknowledge your superiority and confess their own confusion. They are telling the public that second fiddle is their forte.
Here’s one more:
“If you don’t burn up when you’re writing an advertisement, people won’t burn up when they read it. A simple, direct style is the style which should be developed. That which is ably conceived expresses itself simply.” – Arthur Brisbane
Toward the end of the pages of clippings is the sad obituary of Achille Plante, who was to be Grandpa’s father-in-law.
Great-grandpa Achille Octave Plante died at age 51, one-hundred years ago this week.
Seven months later, Grandpa and Grandma married.
As we come to the end of Grandpa’s Clipping Book, several postcards depict scenes from World War I. And inside the back cover, there’s a Christmas card from his longtime friend, Fr. Robert Murphy. Signed: Your pal, Bob.
Here’s one last bit of wisdom Grandpa clipped, surely never dreaming how many generations to come would someday read it:
The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one.
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