I
ICE BEAUTY
If we had not our bewitching autumn foliage, we should still have to credit the weather with one feature which compensates for all its bullying vagaries—the ice-storm—when a leafless tree is clothed with ice from the bottom to the top—ice that is as bright and clear as crystal; every bough and twig is strung with ice-beads, frozen dew-drops, and the whole tree sparkles cold and white, like the Shah of Persia’s diamond plume. Then the wind waves the branches, and the sun comes out and turns all those myriads of beads and drops to prisms, that glow and hum and flash with all manner of colored fires, which change and change again, with inconceivable rapidity, from blue to red, from red to green, and green to gold; the tree becomes a sparkling fountain, a very explosion of dazzling jewels; and it stands there the acme, the climax, the supremest possibility in art or nature of bewildering, intoxicating, intolerable magnificence!—Samuel L. Clemens.
(1476)
Icebergs—See [Gravitation and Icebergs].
IDEAL, DEVOTION TO AN
“It is not our aim to shine in the art of acting; that would be presumptuous and ridiculous in simple country people; but it must be the earnest desire of each one to try and represent worthily this most holy mystery.”
Thus spoke Pastor Daisenberger in his sermon to the peasant actors of Ober-Ammergau before the production of the Passion Play in 1870. In these simple, devout words of their minister, Archdeacon Farrar found the echo of the deeply religious feeling which animates the peasants of the Bavarian village, to which so many of the sordid outer world have thronged. There is no taint of commercialism nor worldly ambition, we are assured, in the hearts of these peasant actors. Time and again have they refused lucrative offers to produce their historic drama elsewhere; and they do not, it is said, yield to the temptation to extort money from the tourists who invariably flock to witness the performance. Even the recent floods have given proof how they can bear adversity.
(1477)
See [Types, Distinct].
IDEAL, THE
A certain congregation could not find a pastor. They knew what they wanted. He must be a sound and able theologian, a literary man, up in science, polished to the last degree, good-looking, genial, a mixer, sympathetic, a hustler, not heady, humble minded, etc. A visiting minister, who knows them, told this story:
“A certain gentleman came to a horse-dealer and gave the following order: ‘I want a young horse with spirit and speed in him—something I’d like to drive myself for my wives and daughters. He must be entirely without blemish and work in single or double harness. He must be a perfect carriage-horse, and also good under the saddle, with several gaits. And he must be absolutely afraid of nothing.’
“‘Ah, I see—I see,’ replied the dealer. ‘You want a hoss without a speck on him; mettlesome, but gentle; young, but easily governed; guaranteed not to shy at anything; perfect any way you want to use him, in single or double harness, or as a saddle-hoss, with all the gaits.’
“‘Yes, yes,’ interrupted the gentleman, ‘that’s what I want exactly.’
“‘My friend,’ answered the dealer, ‘there ain’t no sich hoss!’”
The congregation doubtless caught the point.—Presbyterian of the South.
(1478)
See [Being Before Doing].
IDEAL, THE, ATTEMPTED
Delos was a small but very celebrated island near the center of the Egean Sea. It was a sacred island, devoted to religious rites, and all contention, and violence, and, so far as possible, all suffering and death, were excluded from it. The sick were removed from it; the dead were not buried there; armed ships and armed men laid aside their hostility to each other when they approached it. All was an enchanting picture of peace and happiness upon its shores. In the center of the island was a large natural fountain, from which issued a fertilizing stream; a populous city stood near the port, and the whole island was adorned with temples and palaces of magnificence.
Such an island might our world be were it not for sin and its ravages; were war no more, and were the Fountain of Life permitted to water it. (Text.)
(1479)
Idealism and the Practical Life—See [Practical, The].
IDEALS
What should we do in this world of ours,
Were it not for the dreams ahead?
For thorns are mixed with the blooming flowers,
No matter which path we tread.
And each of us has his golden goal,
Stretching far into the years;
And ever he climbs with a hopeful soul,
With alternate smiles and tears.
To some it’s a dream of high estate,
To some it’s a dream of wealth,
To some it’s a dream of a truce with fate
In a constant search for health.
To some it’s a dream of home and wife,
To some it’s a crown above;
The dreams ahead are what make each life—
The dreams—and faith—and love!
(1480)
See [Aspiration].
IDEALS AND PROGRESS
The Israelites were urged by the voice of God at the Red Sea to go forward. But they were not left without inspiring motives. There was a “promised land,” and to the hope of this Moses could appeal.
Man has not reached a very high life until he can look on to future achievement and blessing, and find in these his highest incentive to go on.
(1481)
Ideas Arousing Genius—See [Arousement by a Thought].
Ideas, Great, Honored—See [Monuments, Meaning of].
IDEAS GUIDING ACTIONS
Logical ideas are like keys which are shaping with reference to opening a lock. Pike, separated by a glass partition from the fish upon which they ordinarily prey, will—so it is said—butt their heads against the glass until it is literally beaten into them that they can not get at their food. Animals learn (when they learn at all) by a “cut and try” method; by doing at random first one thing and another thing and then preserving the things that happen to succeed. Action directed consciously by ideas—by suggested meanings accepted for the sake of experimenting with them—is the sole alternative both to bull-headed stupidity and to learning bought from that dear teacher—chance experience.—John Dewey, “How We Think.”
(1482)
IDEAS, POWER OF
The soul, which vivifies, moves, and supports the body, is a more potent substance than the hard bones and heavy flesh which it vitalizes. A ten-pound weight falling on your head affects you unpleasantly as substance, much more so than a leaf of the New Testament, if dropt in the same direction; but there is a way in which a page of the New Testament may fall upon a nation and split it, or infuse itself into its bulk and give it strength and permanence. We should be careful, therefore, what test we adopt in order to decide the relative stability of things.
Every house, workshop, church, school-room, atheneum, theater, is the representative of an opinion. What the eye sees of them is built of bricks, iron, wood, and mortar by carpenters, smiths, and masons; but the seed from which they grew and the forces by which they are upheld are ideas, affections, conceptions of utility, sentiments of worship. Strike these out of a people’s mind and heart, and its homes, temples, colleges, and art-rooms fall away, like the trunk of the oak when its life-power is smitten, and only the bald, sandy surface of savage life remains.—Thomas Starr King.
(1483)
Ideas, Worthless—See [Disappointment].
IDENTIFICATION
Here is an imitation of Jesus that is worth while. Of Himself He said: “He calleth His own sheep by name”:
Mr. Wanamaker always remembers the men, women, and children of Bethany (Sunday-school and church) in his absences. He carries a little book in which are written the names and addresses of the 1,100 members of the brotherhood, nearly all the 5,400 Sunday-school children, and nearly all of the 3,600 members of the church. These names are arranged alphabetically, and each day when he is traveling he sits down with his book and, beginning the first day with the letter A, utters each name aloud and repeats to himself the individual circumstances of each in which prayer and help are otherwise needed. He continues this daily until he has exhausted the list. His idea in doing this is to recall to his mental vision the face of each. “And thus,” said the one who told me this, “no wonder Mr. Wanamaker knows us all by name, calls us all by our first names—Tom and Harry and Jim—and remembers the particular troubles or joys of each.” (Text.)—The Christian Herald.
(1484)
Identification, Descriptive—See [Individuality].
IDENTIFICATION MARKS
There are men as well as garments whom it would be difficult to identify if they were to be (morally) cleansed.
In foreign countries some strange methods are adopted for identifying the contents of the wash-tub. In some parts of France linen is defaced with the whole name and address of the laundry stamped upon it, and an additional geometrical design to indicate the owner of the property. In Bavaria every patron of the wash-tub has a number stamped in large characters on his linen. In Bulgaria every laundry has a large number of stamps engraved with designs, and in Russia the laundries mark linen with threads worked in arrow shapes. In some Russian towns the police periodically issue regulations for laundries. In Odessa books of marks are furnished annually to the laundry proprietors, and these marks and no others can be used to identify them.—Albany Journal.
(1485)
IDLENESS
Says George S. Hilliard:
The ruin of most men dates from some vacant hour. Occupation is the armor of the soul, and the train of idleness is borne up by all the vices. I remember a satirical poem in which the devil is represented as fishing for men and adapting his bait to the taste and temperament of his prey; but the idler, he said, pleased him most, because he bit the naked hook.
(1486)
Killing time? I would as soon think of cutting an angel’s throat that I met on God’s highway, coming straight from His throne. Pleasure-mongering! Somebody to entertain them! As if life were a cheese and men were maggots boring in it! Are there not thousands of foreigners asking to be taught? Are not the Spaniards knocking at our door, asking us to organize for them a school of morals, a Bible school, a school of religion, a school of patriotism, on Sunday afternoon? Are there not social settlements that ask for hundreds of workers and teachers? How would it look if a regiment of soldiers at a critical moment at Gettysburg had sat down on the grass and looked for a cool tree and paid some man to come in with a jew’s-harp and play to them, while the struggle for liberty went on? (Text.)—N. D. Hillis.
(1487)
Idol-worship—See [Fetishism].
Idols Destroyed—See [Renunciation, Complete].
IDOLS IN CHRISTIAN SERVICE
Havelock, the English general in India, once held a wonderful prayer-meeting in the idol temple at Rangoon. In the hand of each of the idol gods that lined the sides of the great apartment, his men put a torch, and by the light of these torches in the idols’ hands they held their worship.
(1488)
IGNORANCE
The contrast between heathen and civilized men is indicated by this incident:
“Why did we not think of heating the hard stuff,” the natives exclaimed when they saw the welding of iron, “instead of beating it with stones?”
(1489)
However wise a man may himself be, he does well to guard himself against the ignorance of others:
Ah Wing Lee was walking down the street the other morning when a dog ran up behind him, yelping and barking horribly. The end of the Celestial’s pigtail rose in the breeze as he leapt aside in great alarm.
A benevolent passer-by, seeing the terror painted upon the yellow countenance, hastened to pat him reassuringly on the shoulder.
“Come, come, my friend, you need not be afraid. The dog won’t hurt you. Don’t you know the old proverb, ‘A barking dog never bites?’ Surely you—”
“That’s all velly good,” interrupted Ah Wing doubtfully; “you knowee ploverb and me knowee ploverb, but do the dog knowee ploverb?” (Text.)
(1490)
Stauber, the Lutheran minister who first ministered to the five villages in the Swiss mountains, which he afterward persuaded Oberlin to take as his parish, tells this incident to show the character of the people:
The Ban de la Roche, as you may know, is on a spur of the Vosges Mountains about twelve leagues from Strasburg. The people are very wild and ignorant. When I (Monsieur Stauber) first went there I visited the only school. A number of children were gathered together in a miserable cottage. As I entered I heard an appalling noise of scuffling, quarreling, and shouting.
“‘Silence, children, silence!’ I cried. ‘Where is your master?’ One of the children pointed to a little old man who was lying on a bed in the corner of the room.
“‘Are you the master of this school?’ said I, in some dismay.
“‘Yes, I be the master, sir—I be.’
“‘Humph! But don’t you teach the children anything?’
“‘No! I don’t teach the children nothing—for a good reason.’
“‘It must be a very good reason, indeed. What is it, my friend?’
“‘Well, I don’t know nothing myself, sir; so how am I to teach?’
“‘But, my good friend, why did they send you here, then?’
“‘Because, sir, I be too old to take care of the pigs?’”
(1491)
An English army officer and a foreign missionary met on an ocean steamer. The army officer contemptuously said he had lived in India thirty years and had never seen a native Christian. Shortly afterward, he recited with gusto his success in tiger-hunting, declaring that he had killed no less than nine tigers. “Pardon me,” said the missionary, “did I understand you to say that you have killed nine tigers in India?” “Yes, sir,” pompously replied the colonel. “Now that is remarkable,” replied the missionary, “for I have lived in India thirty years and have never seen a tiger.” “Perhaps, sir,” sneered the colonel, “you didn’t go where the tigers were.” “Precisely,” was the bland answer of the missionary, “and may not that have been the reason why you never saw any native converts?”
(1492)
An Italian tailor living at West Hoboken, N. J., appeared before Judge Carey and made application for citizenship. He told the judge he had been in this country twenty-two years.
“Do you know who Abraham Lincoln was?” asked Judge Carey.
“No, I don’t know who he was.”
“You don’t know who Abraham Lincoln was?” repeated the judge.
“No; does he live in West Hoboken?” asked the applicant.
“He is dead,” said Judge Carey.
“Well, I never heard of him,” continued the Italian. “Was he a tailor?”
The judge advised him to go home and study up on history and geography, and said: “No man who does not know who Abraham Lincoln was is fit to enjoy the privilege of American citizenship.”
When asked to name six of the United States, he answered, “New Jersey, New York, Boston, West Hoboken, Union Hill, and Hoboken.”
(1493)
One day recently a hard-working woman, the wife of a New York tailor in a small way, went out to market. In her hurry she left the apartment door ajar. Moreover, she forgot to replace, under the mattress, the red-flannel bag in which she and her husband kept their savings of fifteen years—some diamonds, a gold watch, and $1,400 cash.
Only a quarter of an hour later she came back—but the red-flannel savings-bank was gone. At last reports the police detectives had not recovered the money.
The pity of such a loss is more than personal. It is a national calamity. The vague distrust of all banks follows the popular ignorance of the difference in nature between a business man’s bank and a true savings-bank. Ignorance was the root of this small tragedy.—Review of Reviews.
(1494)
Many of us are as foolish as a poor immigrant who was discovered walking on the tracks of the Lehigh Valley Railroad in New Jersey. On his back he carried a huge package containing household utensils, as well as clothes. He seemed tired, tho he trudged sturdily on. He had not, however, acquired the veteran tramp’s skill in walking on the ties, and his journey was evidently telling on his physical powers more than the same distance by the roadway would have done. An agent stopt him and ordered him off the track, telling him that he was liable to arrest for trespass, besides incurring the risk of being killed by a train.
The man, who was a Hungarian, demurred, and produced a railroad ticket, good from Jersey City to Scranton, Pa. The agent looked at him in amazement, and asked why he was walking when he might ride. The Hungarian replied that he thought the ticket gave him only the privilege of walking over the road. His right was explained to him, and the tired man delightedly boarded the first train that stopt. (Text.)—Louis Albert Banks.
(1495)
See [Christianity and Civilization]; [Fear].
IGNORANCE, DIETARY
The untrained housekeeper is responsible for the sheer waste of one-fifth of the average salary—wasted because she does not know how to buy her foods, in quantity or quality; because she has not known what kind of foods to give to produce the best results; because, as a bargain-hunter, she is the cause of the great quantities of “material just like the goods, but at a cheaper price” which flood our markets and lack durability.
No man would employ a purchasing agent who did not know the materials he was to buy; yet woman, with the greatest purchasing power, goes at it without knowledge.
We find that the majority of young men in the universities who go wrong are of those who live in boarding-houses where landladies know little of the choosing and preparing of foods. An inadequate lunch is followed by hunger during the middle of the afternoon, with the resultant glass of beer to satisfy the appetite for the time being.
(1496)
IGNORANCE, DISADVANTAGE OF
Frederick of Prussia had a great mania for enlisting gigantic soldiers into the Royal Guards, and paid an enormous bounty to his recruiting officers for getting them. One day the recruiting sergeant chanced to espy a Hibernian who was at least seven feet high. He accosted him in English and proposed that he should enlist. The idea of a military life and a large bounty so delighted Patrick that he at once consented.
“But unless you can speak German the king will not give you so much.”
“Oh, be jabbers,” said the Irishman; “sure it’s I that don’t know a word of German.”
“But,” said the sergeant, “I know you can learn in a short time. The king knows every man in the guards. As soon as he sees you he will ride up and ask you how old you are; you will say, ‘twenty-seven years’; next, how long you have been in the service; you must reply, ‘three weeks’; finally, if you are provided with clothes and rations; you answer, ‘both.’”
Pat soon learned to pronounce his answers, but never dreamed of learning the questions.
In three weeks he appeared before the king in review. His Majesty rode up to him. Paddy stept forward with “present arms!”
“How long have you been in the service,” said the king.
“Twenty-seven years,” said the Irishman.
“How old are you?” asked his Majesty.
“Three weeks,” said the Irishman.
“Am I or you a fool?” roared the king.
“Both,” replied Patrick, who was instantly taken to the guard-house, but pardoned by the king after he understood the facts of the case.—Judge’s Magazine.
(1497)
IGNORANCE, HUMILIATION OF
An incident in a trial for a capital offense, in Nashville, Tenn., is thus spoken of in a news item:
A splendid, clean-looking young man was under examination and Mr. Fitzhugh, of Memphis, of the prosecution, got to the point of asking him which newspapers he had read at the time of the Carmack killing. The talesman had testified that he was thirty-one years old, a farmer, and the father of three children. His answers had been bright and his face sparkled with intelligence. But he hesitated when the interrogation concerning the newspapers was put to him.
“I haven’t read any about it in the newspapers. We don’t take any newspapers in our house. I—I kain’t read and I kain’t write, but I can farm. I never got the show to go to school but two or three days in all my life.”
A blush mantled his cheeks and for an instant there was a glistening in his eyes, then, throwing back his head, he left the witness-stand and marched out of the court-room, his expression of defiance silencing the laughter of the unthinking ones in the crowd. And this was only one of more than a score of examples of illiteracy.
How many a life is thus handicapped. It is not a commendation of parenthood that the child should thus be distinguished against in this age of widespread learning. On the other hand, all honor is to be given to the man who through diligent application in after life is able to surmount the difficulty of scanty knowledge.
(1498)
IGNORANCE IS BLISS
It is sometimes best not to alarm persons in peril by revealing the danger, as is illustrated by the Rev. Asa Bullard in the following incident:
On our way down the Ohio River one day, in a thunder-shower, my brother requested me to remind him on reaching Cincinnati to reveal a secret to me. That secret was, as I learned on reaching the city, that we were then sitting directly over several casks, not of whisky, but of gunpowder! He was acquainted with some of the officials of the steamer, and tho it was unlawful to carry that article on the boat, they had told him of the fact. When asked why he had seated himself in such a dangerous place, his reply was that “if the boat should be struck by lightning, or if for any cause the powder should be exploded, we were probably as safe there as we should be in any part of the steamer.”—“Incidents in a Busy Life.”
(1499)
Ignorance Mystified—See [Enlightenment].
Ignorance of Money—See [Money, Ignorance of].
IGNORANCE OF ORIGIN AND DESTINY
We know no more of our beginning and end, of what preceded the one and will round off the other, than King Alfred did. “Our life,” said he to his nobles one evening, as they were sitting beside the great fireplace, “is something that is bounded by impenetrable obscurity. A little bird flies from the darkness of the outside night into the brightness of this room, flutters a minute or two in the warmth and light, and then flies through the opposite window into the night once more.” Nearly two thousand years have gone by since Alfred delivered himself of this fable, but the centuries have brought us no new wisdom.—San Francisco Chronicle.
(1500)
See [Unknown Realities].
IGNORANCE, PALLIATIONS OF
In “Gloria Christi,” we read the following:
The change in methods inaugurated by modern medicine in Syria is shown by an anecdote. It is said that once when Dr. Jesup was visiting Beirut, a native doctor asked him for an American newspaper. He secured it, and some days after came back for another. “What do you do with them?” asked Mr. Jesup. “Oh,” he said, “I tear them in pieces, soak them in water, and feed them in oil to my patients. It cures them all right!”
The palliatives of ignorance everywhere abound. As they are in medicine, so they are in morals.
(1501)
IGNORANCE, THE COST OF
The tree-butcher ruined many valuable shade-trees last fall (1909) and it is hoped that he will find steady employment at some other kind of work before spring arrives. Shade-trees are usually pruned by some one temporarily out of employment. His only qualification is the possession of an ax and saw. He needs work, so he finds some property owner who has some nice shade-trees and importunes him to have them cut back. The owner consents. The axman is to receive so much for the job and the wood the limbs make. The workingman at once sees that it is to his advantage to cut the limbs off close to the trunk of the tree, because he can complete the job quicker with no dangerous climbing, and by so doing he gets more wood. Consequently, the tree is ruined. Shade-trees should be trimmed up when young, so the top will be at least twelve feet above the walk. After this all that is necessary is to cut out the dead and superfluous branches.—Charles C. Deam, Secretary Board of Forestry.
(1502)
ILLITERACY
While a policeman was covering his beat near Delaware Avenue and Dickinson Street, says the Philadelphia Times, he came across a dead dog.
Taking out his book and pencil, he wrote the following:
“Dead dog at Delaware Avenue and Dick——” and stopt.
Picking up the dog by its tail, the policeman carried it to Tasker Street, where he dropt it. Here he took his pencil and book out again and wrote:
“Dead dog at Delaware Avenue and Tasker Street.”
A passer-by asked the policeman what made him carry the dog to Tasker Street, to which he replied:
“Well, I couldn’t spell Dickinson, so I took the cur a square down to an easier street.”
(1503)
ILL-FORTUNE BECOMING GOOD-FORTUNE
An Australian miner had reached the very last of his resources without finding a speck of gold, and there was nothing for him to do but to turn back on the morrow, while a mouthful of food was left, and retrace his steps as best he might do to the nearest port. He flung down his tools in despair that last night, and staggered over the two or three miles of desert to the camp-fire. Next morning, early, after a great deal of sleep and very little food, he braced himself up to go back for his tools, knowing that they might bring the price of a meal or two when it came to the last. As he stumbled back that hot morning the way seemed very long, for his heart was too heavy to carry. At last he saw his wheelbarrow and pick standing upon the flat plain a little way off, and was wearily dragging on toward them, when he caught his toe against a stone deeply embedded in the sand, and fell down. This was the last straw that broke the camel’s back. He lay there and curst his luck bitterly, to think that he should nearly break his toe against the only stone in the whole district after all his failure to find gold. He felt like a passionate child who kicks and breaks the thing which has hurt him, and he had to beat that stone before he could feel quiet. It was too firm in the sand for his hands to get it up; so in his rage he dug it up with his pick, intending to smash it; but it would not smash, for it was solid gold, and nearly as big as a baby’s head. (Text.)—Louis Albert Banks.
(1504)
ILL LUCK
There was a man during the reign of Kaiser Otho, who wore puffed breeches. Puffed breeches then were filled with flour, and when the wearer of the breeches sat down on a seat he sat down on a nail, and the nail tore the breeches and the rent emitted three pecks of flour. Why he should have sat down at that particular time, and in that particular place, is a mystery; and why there should have been a nail there, is to me an inscrutable mystery; but there is the fact, and the sufferer I consider an ill-used man.—George Dawson.
(1505)
ILL-PAID WORK
Generally, good, useful work, whether of the hand or head, is either ill-paid, or not paid at all. I don’t say it should be so, but it always is so. People, as a rule, only pay for being amused or being cheated, not for being served. Five thousand a year to your talker, and a shilling a day to your fighter, digger, and thinker, is the rule. None of the best head work in art, literature, or science is ever paid for. How much do you think Homer got for his “Iliad?” or Dante for his “Paradise?” Only bitter bread and salt, and going up and down other people’s stairs. In science, the man who discovered the telescope, and first saw heaven, was paid with a dungeon; the man who invented the microscope, and first saw earth, died of starvation, driven from his home. Baruch, the scribe, did not get a penny a line for writing Jeremiah’s second roll for him, I fancy; and St. Stephen did not get bishop’s pay for that long sermon of his to the Pharisees; nothing but stones. For, indeed, that is the world-father’s proper payment.—John Ruskin.
(1506)
ILLUMINATION
The Railway and Locomotive Engineering says:
Some of the principal requirements of a locomotive headlight are that the light from it shall be powerful enough to illuminate the track far enough ahead to permit of an emergency stop; that the light shall not be so brilliant as to cause temporary blindness or bewilderment in those upon whom it falls; that in the matter of signal observance it must not alter or modify the colors of the lesser lights which come into its field, and that it shall be as effective a form of light as can be devised for foggy or snowy weather.
(1507)
When Moses returned from communion with God his face shone so brightly that a veil was needed. There was another transfiguration which is the result not of glory reflected but of grace transfused. “Be ye transformed (lit. transfigured) by the renewing of your mind,” says the apostle.
The visitor to the beautiful church of St. Paul without the walls at Rome is sure to be asked by the sacristans to notice the wonderful columns of pure alabaster which are among the splendors of that edifice. The guide brings a lighted taper which he places behind one of these massive pillars. The translucent alabaster immediately glows with the light that seems to play all through it with lambent effulgence. The solid mass glorifies the flame, as the flame illumines the solid substance. (Text.)
(1508)
See [Light].
ILLUSION, SPIRITUAL
Worldly men on first coming into the spiritual life often misjudge the values and dimensions of Christian realities. Only long Christian experience enables men to get the right perspective of Christian realities.
If you have always lived in valleys or near the sea level, then you have always been viewing distant objects through a dusty or vaporous atmosphere. If you should go to a mountainous region or an elevated plateau, you would suffer great illusion as to distances. As you would still have the mental standards of the lowlands, very distant objects would seem to be quite near. You would travel all day to reach a mountain that seems but an hour’s walk away.
(1509)
ILLUSIONS, MORAL
A celebrated naturalist tells us that one day he saw a bird drowning in a lake, and he felt sure that the bird had mistaken the water for the sky; it was a bright, transparent day, the clear, calm lake reflected the sky and the whole landscape in its depths, and the bird, not discerning that the world below it was a world of shadows, was betrayed to its doom. So all the glories of the upper world appear inverted in the world of evil. The lofty, the pure, the beautiful, the bright, are all seductively reflected in the depths of Satan; they are exaggerated there, they are seen in surpassing magnitude and splendor; error seems some nobler truth, disobedience some larger liberty, forbidden things seem the sweetest flowers and mellowest fruits of paradise.—W. L. Watkinson, “The Transfigured Sackcloth.”
(1510)
ILLUSIONS, OPTICAL
On the chalk downs of Wiltshire, in sight of the town of Westbury, there appears a great white horse, which presumably marks the sight of one of the battles between Alfred the Great and the Danes. As you look at that white horse upon the hill from the road approaching it it is perfectly drawn—it is so accurate that I doubt if any painter of a horse could improve upon it; but some time ago when I was in that neighborhood, I went up to the white horse to see it on the spot. There I found that this cutting in the green turf which revealed the chalk below was so extensive that if I walked round the outline, I could cover about a mile, and the shape as it lay along the slope of the hill had no resemblance to a horse whatever. Like the long shadows cast by the setting sun, its sprawling limbs went down the hill, and were so much greater than the width of the body that you could not have told in walking over it that the artist—for an artist he was—who designed it could possibly intend to be drawing a horse; that perfect horse upon the hillside, to the traveler approaching from Westbury, appeared to have no existence at all—it was a great perspective drawing upon the hill, which, when seen close at hand, did not even suggest a horse’s form. Taking that as an illustration, does it not often strike you how the whole pageant of earth and sky, which delights our eye, is just as unreal as the scenery of the stage? Those clouds that drape the setting sun, and form lofty mountains and shimmering seas, making a landscape in the sky so beautiful that no painter on earth could reproduce it; those clouds that charm us with their beauty, if we were in the midst of them, would be merely like the drenching rain of an April day, without beauty, without charm. And those starry heavens which are to us all of the earth a subject of endless delight because of their beauty and their incomparable grandeur, are not in the least what they appear.—Robert F. Horton, Christian World Pulpit.
(1511)
The other day I came across the letter which Galileo wrote to Kepler, when he was afraid to publish the discoveries which had been made by the first telescope, and he uses this extraordinary language: “Fearing the fate of our master Copernicus, who, altho he has earned immortal fame among a few, yet, by an infinite number, so only can the number of fools be measured, is hissed and derided.” It was a peril in the seventeenth century even to say what those starry heavens are. They have no relation at all to the objects that we see. That little group of the Pleiades, which look like fireflies hung in a net in the sky, in which a very keen eye can perceive seven distinct stars, is really a group of between 400 and 500 suns, many of them larger than our own. And that genial sun himself, whose light we love, which gives to our planet its life, its warmth and its joy—if we could approach it would terrify us the more we approached it—a mighty mass of incandescent matter so awful that the imagination dare hardly entertain the reality of what it is. It may be said, however, that while these distant objects of the universe possibly mislead us, our eyes at any rate can trust the things which are close at hand. But that is quite a delusion, too. The matter which is close at hand, and which our fathers thirty years ago treated as the one certainty in the world, is a complete illusion. I took up in my hand some time ago a few grains of dried mud from a river-bed. To all appearance they were like grains of gunpowder, but they were put under the microscope, and there to my amazement every one of these tiny grains was a shell, as beautiful and as perfect in form as a nautilus sailing upon the sea. Not only does the matter we see delude us, but the delusion is greater from the fact of what we do not see. Now, the physicist seriously tells us he is using the strict language of science, and not the language of a fairy tale, when he says that all the matter we touch, including our own bodies, is made up of molecules, and the molecule is made up of atoms, an atom far too minute for the eye to see; and yet that atom, of which all matter is built up, is itself composed of electrons, so minute that they dart with inconceivable velocity from end to end of that tiny atom like a mouse in a great cathedral—such is the proportion of the electron to the atom.—Robert F. Horton, The Christian World Pulpit.
(1512)
ILLUSTRATIONS FROM CANDLES
Mr. Spurgeon had occasion, some time ago, says the Hartford Courant, to speak to a company of theological students on the importance of using illustrations in preaching.
A student observed that they found it difficult to get illustrations, whereupon Mr. Spurgeon remarked that illustrations enough might be found in a tallow candle. This was regarded as an extravagance of speech, whereupon the great preacher prepared a lecture to show what might be illustrated by candles. In delivering his lecture he used candles of various sizes and colors, together with lanterns and other suitable apparatus. A nicely japanned but shut-up box filled with fine unused candles illustrated an idle and spiritless church. Several colossal and highly-colored but unlit candles were shown, and with them a tiny rushlight shining as best it could. The big, handsome, unlit candles might be archbishops or doctors of divinity, or other persons of culture without piety, and the bright rushlight might be some poor boy in a workshop whose life is beautiful. Mr. Spurgeon showed an unlighted candle in a splendid silver candlestick, and then a brightly burning one stuck in a ginger-beer bottle. He showed what a few people might do by combining their good efforts, by exhibiting the combined light of twelve candles. The folly of trying to light a candle with the extinguisher still on was shown, and the dark-lantern illustrated the care of people who make no effort to let their light shine before men. The lecturer then placed a candle under a bushel, and afterward placed the bushel-measure under the candle—the point of which was obvious. In snuffing a candle he extinguished it, and remarked that Christians often did a like mischief by unwise rebukes and criticisms. The folly of burning the candle at both ends was illustrated. The last illustration was a number of lighted candles of various hues placed together on one stand, representing the Church’s true diversity in unity, all the different branches burning from one stem, and for one purpose. Some one in the audience asked if the “dips” did not give the best light, whereupon Mr. Spurgeon said he was not sure of that, and thought many of the “dips” would be the better for another dipping.
The man of genius can find illustrations in common things—sermons in stones or in candles. Every preacher should work these mines of natural analogies.
(1513)
ILLUSTRATIONS IN PREACHING
A good illustration is the most powerful “motor” ever invented; it will drag a whole congregation which has drifted into infinite space back again to earth in a twinkling. It comes like a sweet sea-breeze blowing in through the church windows on a hot Sunday, and relaxing the feverish tension of crowded worship.—Mackay Smith, Harper’s Magazine.
(1514)
ILLUSTRATIONS, STRIKING
Colonel Zell, at the time when Grant was up for the Presidency, and when the Democratic watchword was, “Anything to beat Grant,” was addressing an enthusiastic meeting of Republicans, when a Democrat sang out, “It’s easy talkin’, colonel; but we’ll show you something next fall.” The colonel was a great admirer of Grant. He at once wheeled about and with uplifted hands, hair bristling, and eyes flashing fire, cried out: “Build a worm-fence ’round a winter supply of summer weather; catch a thunderbolt in a bladder; break a hurricane to harness; hang out the ocean on a grapevine to dry; but never, sir, never for a moment delude yourself with the idea that you can beat Grant.”—Chambers’s Journal.
(1515)
Image in the Soul—See [Restoring God’s Image].
IMAGE OF GOD REPRODUCED
Star photography is one of the most refined and delicate of the arts of modern science. Two factors enter into the production of the photo. It is the star which makes the picture, but the artist-astronomer is essential also. He has to expose the sensitive plate and to direct the telescope to the star, and the star by its light does the rest.
So when the gaze of the soul is set on God, He reproduces His own likeness by His own light. It is ours to point the telescope; His to paint the picture. (Text.)
(1516)
Imagery—See [Evangelization].
IMAGERY OF THE MIND
Thought is an artist painting its pictures on the mind, so producing its imagery on the walls of one’s immortal nature. If evil, the mind becomes a mystic shrine painted with such figures as were found in some of the chambers of Pompeii, where excavators had to cover up the pictures because they were so foul. If good, the mind is like the cells in the convent of San Marco, at Florence, where Fra Angelico’s holy genius had painted on the bare walls angel imaginings and celestial faces. (Text.)
(1517)
IMAGINATION
Pure and noble imaginings become a power for good. A healthy imagination is a well-spring of pure pleasure, and by reading and keeping our eyes open to the world we store our minds with pictures which will in after life bring great satisfaction. George William Curtis says: “One man goes 4,000 miles to see Italy, and does not see it, he is so short-sighted. Another is so far-sighted that he stays in his room, and sees more than Italy.” We should train our observing faculties to see all of the beauty that lies about us, even to those finer tints, which it is said only the artist’s eye discerns—“the light that never was on sea or land.”—James T. White, “Character Lessons.”
(1518)
See [Dreams]; [Panic Through Fear].
IMAGINATION CAUSING DEATH
The British and Colonial Druggist discust the death of a young woman at Hackney under circumstances in which a certain insect powder largely figured. As the powder appeared by Dr. Tidy’s experiment to be perfectly harmless, the suggestion was not unnaturally made that the deceased, who was possibly of a hysterical, highly imaginative turn of mind, took the powder in the full belief that by its means her death might be accomplished. The writer of the article, we think wrongly, brings forward two remarkable instances of what may be regarded as practical jokes with melancholy terminations. In the case of the convict delivered up to the scientist for the purpose of a psychological experiment (the man was strapped to a table and blindfolded, ostensibly to be bled to death; a siphon containing water was placed near his head and the fluid was allowed to trickle audibly into a vessel below it, at the same time that a trifling scratch with a needle was inflicted on the culprit’s neck; it is said that death occurred at the end of six minutes), fear must have played no inconsiderable share in the fatal result, and we do not know whether all the vital organs were in a sound condition, tho they were presumably so. The old story of the case of a college porter is also one in point. The students entrapt him into a room at night, a mock inquiry was held, and the punishment of death by decapitation decreed for his want of consideration to the students. It is small wonder that, under the dominion of fear and belief in the earnestness of his tormentors, the sight of an ax and a block, with subsequent blindfolding and necessary genuflexion, a smart rap with a wet towel on the back of his neck should have been followed by the picking up of a corpse.—Lancet.
(1519)
A Sioux Indian, who had lost a relative by death, vowed to kill the first living thing he met. This was once not an uncommon practise among our Indians. Issuing from his lodge, he chanced to meet a missionary—a man much beloved by all, from whom this Indian had received many favors. Unwilling, but bound by his vow, he shot his benefactor as he passed. Indian usage did not sanction a bloody retribution on the murderer, since the obligation of his vow was recognized by all. The shaman, however, upbraided him for his act, and pronounced his doom, saying: “You will die within the year.” The Indian, tho apparently a well man at the time, was seized by a wasting disease, and actually did die within the specified time, a victim to his own superstitious imagination.—H. W. Henshaw, The Youth’s Companion.
(1520)
IMAGINATION, LURE OF
A certain legend relates that one of the Piscayan mountains is accurst, and that Satan dwells there. The grass is withered, a sinister hue rests upon everything, the sounds are mournful, the mountain stands a dark fantom in the midst of bedecked nature. But this is not the method of evil. The mountain up which the devil took our Master, and up which he takes us, is bathed in purple; in its rocks gleam jewels, its dust is the dust of gold, in its clefts spring flowers, and from its crest is seen the vision of kingdoms and the glory of them. Things, principles, maxims, amusements, relationships, creeds, ideals, utterly base and vile, are through the power of imagination purged into the lily’s whiteness, perfumed with the violet, steeped in the color of the rose. We are never invited to sin; the things which have ruined generations are prest upon us as nature, freedom, spirit, knowledge, gallantry, beauty, love, and we are deceived through the legerdemain of passion and fancy. (Text.)—W. L. Watkinson, “The Transfigured Sackcloth.”
(1521)
IMITATION
Some men try to imitate good character as precious stones are imitated, according to this description:
The trade in artificial precious stones has become quite important, and the manufacture of them has reached a considerable degree of perfection. The products of some of the shops would almost deceive an expert, but the test of hardness is still infallible. The beautiful “French paste,” from which imitation diamonds are made, is a kind of glass with a mixture of oxide of lead. The more of the latter the brighter the stone, but also the softer, and this is a serious defect. The imitation stones are now so perfectly made and are so satisfactory to those who are not very particular, that their influence begins to be felt in the market for real stones. By careful selection of the ingredients and skill and attention in manipulation, the luster, color, fire and water of the choicest stones are, to the eyes of laymen, fully reproduced.—Popular Science Monthly.
(1522)
Imitation, as we see it in man, seems to extend over a wider range of action and production than in any other animal. It is not confined, as in the monkeys, to the production of like attitudes or bodily acts; it is not confined, as in the birds, to the imitation of sounds; it includes all alike, and is characterized, furthermore, by conscious pleasure in the doing. Every one who has observed children knows the keen delight with which they first perceive the likeness between two things; that to recognize in a picture a thing which they have actually seen is a distinct enjoyment; that in the same way the second telling of a story, or the second playing of a game, seems to give an additional and independent pleasure to the child. And so with ignorant people when they look at pictures, the great, if not the only source of pleasure seems to be the detecting of the likeness to something they know. After the artists of Greece and Rome had reached their highest levels and done their best work, the critic of art found in the exactness of the likeness one of the highest, perhaps the highest element of excellence. The birds that flew to the grapes of Zeuxis, the horse that neighed to the painted horse of Apelles, the painted curtain of Parasius that deceived Zeuxis himself—these seemed to Pliny, and, I suppose, to the ancient world generally, to be the highest tributes to the excellence of the artists.—Lord Justice Fry, Contemporary Review.
(1523)
Our evil deeds as well as our good ones will be imitated, often to our own undoing as in the following incident:
The Green Bag tells of an experience which Nathaniel Whitmore, a prominent Maine lawyer, had with a student who was graduated from his office. When Mr. Whitmore was past sixty this young man started practise in a neighboring town; and the older lawyer gave him charge, as agent, of certain property situated in the town where his former clerk was practising. Everything was drawn up in legal form, and the young man fulfilled his duties most satisfactorily. The rents came regularly, together with full accounts of repairs, which were much less than formerly; tenants were satisfied; the property never paid so well before, and Mr. Whitmore was well pleased. Then came a brief letter stating that the property had been sold for taxes. Dumfounded, Mr. Whitmore hastened to his agent to demand what this meant. “How does this happen that I am sold out for taxes?” he asked. “There was nothing in the agreement about taxes,” explained the young man, handing to his former client the signed agreement. “Had taxes been mentioned, I should have paid them.” “Who bought the houses?” the elder man asked, with a shade of amusement in his tone, as a light began to dawn on his mind. “I did,” replied the young man, modestly. “The devil you did! Where did you learn that trick?” asked Mr. Whitmore, now fully comprehending the situation. “In your office,” came the answer, in the same modest voice. “I look out for a poor client, but a rich lawyer can look out for himself.” The two men shook hands and changed the subject.
(1524)
A beautiful statue once stood in the market-place of an Italian city. It was the statue of a Greek slave-girl. It represented the slave as tidy and well drest. A ragged, uncombed little street child, coming across the statue in her play, stopt and gazed at it in admiration. She was captivated by it. She gazed long and lovingly. Moved by a sudden impulse, she went home and washed her face and combed her hair. Another day she stopt again before the statue and admired it, and she got a new idea. Next day her tattered clothes were washed and mended. Each time she looked at the statue she found something in its beauties until she was a transformed child.
The history of the Christian religion has been a continuous record of men transformed by contemplation of the great Example. (Text.)
(1525)
See [Christ Inviting Men]; [Example, Power of].
IMITATION DISAPPROVED
It is no use to try to get another man’s style, or to imitate the wit or the mannerisms of another writer. The late Mr. Carlyle, for example, did, in my judgment, a considerable mischief in his day because he led everybody to write after the style of his “French Revolution,” and it became pretty tedious. They got over it after a time, however. But it was not a good thing. Let every man write in his own style, taking care only not to be led into any affectation, but to be perfectly clear, perfectly simple.—Charles A. Dana.
(1526)
IMITATION OF GOD
For the Father of all sends sun and rain
On the good and ill and shows that we,
If we would his perfect children be,
Must love not only the good and kind,
Must teach not only the true and wise,
But patience must open the eyes of the blind
And love must conquer her enemies.(Text.)
—Charles William Pearson, “A Threefold Cord.”
(1527)
IMITATION OF NATURE
How far the manual and technical arts of human life owe their suggestion and origin to imitation is a point which, so far as I know, has not been fully considered. That the first canoe was made in imitation of a rotten tree which had served as a ferry-boat; that the first pillar was constructed in the likeness of an erect tree; that the Gothic arch was made to represent the overreaching boughs in some forest glade; that the triglyph in the Doric frieze represents the ends of the cross-beams which rested on the architrave—all this seems very probable, and suggests that further investigation might show that to a great degree imitation of the objects of nature, or of earlier structures, underlies all the various arts and products of human labor.—Lord Justice Fry, Contemporary Review.
(1528)
See [Nature a Model].
IMMANENCE OF GOD
But where shall we look for the highest, the most complete and perfect revelation of God that the human mind is capable of grasping? Grant the truth there is in all the symbols which the imagination of men has produced. The earth is like the little ball you can hold in your hand. The solar system is like the revolving electric lights in the Museum of Natural History. The infinite and eternal energy is like the sun radiating light and heat and life upon the earth. He is like the flaming fire which consumes the evil and purifies the good. He is like the wind and like the ocean and like the most beautiful statue that art can produce. More than that. God is not only like all these symbols; He is in the symbols. God is in the solar system, the very life and soul of the universe. God is in the fire that consumes and purifies. God is in the flower and the bird and the beast.—Frank O. Hall.
(1529)
The immanence of God is illustrated in these lines from an unidentified source:
“Oh, where is the sea?” the fishes cried,
As they swam the crystal clearness through.
“We’ve heard from of old of the ocean’s tide,
And we long to look on the waters blue.
The wise ones speak of an infinite sea,
Oh, who can tell us if such there be?”
The lark flew up in the morning bright,
And sung and balanced on sunny wings;
And this was its song: “I see the light,
I look on a world of beautiful things;
But flying and singing everywhere,
In vain I have searched to find the air.”
(1530)
Immensity of Space Reveals God—See [Converted by the Comet].
Immigrant Savings—See [Prosperity as an Advertisement].
IMMIGRATION
There is an ominous side to immigration, but there are alleviating facts. One of these was thus referred to by Bishop Warren of the Methodist Episcopal Church:
A while ago I was in a small country village in New England. For the first time in my life I looked upon a Methodist Episcopal church, once filled with happy worshipers, but now closed and abandoned. The population of the entire township was declining, and tho a few of the last remaining Methodists had added their help to the older and stronger Congregational church, even this was looking into the future with fear and trembling. Many of the native stock had died or moved away, and “foreigners were creeping in.” I got a boy to guide me to where one of these foreigners—a Finlander—lived. It was a neatly painted home, with a fine garden and an acre of land, all paid for, and occupied by the Finn and his son. All the foreigners in the village were Finns and there were of them just six men and four women. Of the latter, two were wives of two of the men and two were young women serving in American families. And what sort of people were they? One of the six men, I was told, was a lay preacher and, as Sunday services were a long way off and quite irregular, this little homeless community of ten dreaded and shunned immigrants were maintaining a weekly prayer-meeting! (Text.)
(1531)
The total immigration to the United States for 1909 was 751,786. The net gain in foreign population was 718,433. The comparative immigration from the leading countries of the world for three years is shown in the following table:
| RACE OR PEOPLE | 1909 | 1908 | 1907 |
| Italians, North-South | 190,398 | 135,247 | 294,061 |
| Polish | 77,565 | 68,105 | 138,033 |
| German | 58,534 | 73,038 | 92,936 |
| Hebrew | 57,551 | 103,387 | 149,182 |
| English | 39,021 | 49,056 | 51,126 |
| Scandinavian | 34,996 | 32,789 | 53,425 |
| Irish | 31,185 | 36,427 | 38,706 |
| Magyar | 28,704 | 24,378 | 60,071 |
| Slovak | 22,586 | 16,170 | 42,041 |
| Greek | 20,262 | 28,808 | 46,283 |
| Croatian and Slovanian | 20,181 | 20,472 | 47,826 |
| French | 19,423 | 12,881 | 9,392 |
| Scotch | 16,446 | 17,014 | 20,516 |
| Ruthenian | 15,808 | 12,361 | 24,081 |
| Mexican | 15,591 | 5,682 | 91 |
| Lithuanian | 15,254 | 13,720 | 25,884 |
| Finnish | 11,687 | 6,746 | 14,860 |
| Russian | 10,038 | 17,111 | 16,807 |
| Japanese | 3,275 | 16,418 | 30,824 |
The reader sees at once that more immigrants came from Italy than from any other country. In fact, the immigrants from Germany, England, Ireland, Scotland, France and Scandinavia numbered altogether 198,630, while those from Italy alone were 190,398. Of these Italian immigrants 25,150 (in 1908, 24,700 and in 1907, 51,564) came from northern Italy and 165,248 (in 1908, 110,547 and in 1907, 242,497) from southern Italy.
Of the total 751,786 immigrants, 220,865 or 29.4 per cent., declared that the State of New York was their intended place of residence (of Hebrews 60.2 per cent., of Italians 39.9 per cent., of Poles 23.8 per cent.).
(1532)
IMMORTALITY
The heart of man hears the call and feels the attraction of life beyond, as the woodland brook hears the call of the distant sea and hastens on to meet it.
(1533)
The fadeless hope of everlasting life is thus exprest by St. John Adcock:
I, that had life ere I was born
Into this world of dark and light,
Waking as one who wakes at morn
From dreams of night.
I am as old as heaven and earth;
But sleep is death without decay,
And since each morn renews my birth
I am no older than the day.
Old tho my outward form appears,
Tho it at last outworn shall lie,
This that is servile to the years,
This is not I.
I, who outwear the form I take,
When I put off this garb of flesh,
Still in immortal youth shall wake
And somewhere clothe my life afresh.(Text.)
—The Monthly Review.
(1534)
When the late Dr. Reese, of Swansea, preached the last time in North Wales, a friend said to him—one of those who are always reminding people that they are getting old: “You are whitening fast, Dr. Reese.” The old gentleman did not say anything then, but when he got to the pulpit he referred to it and said: “There is a wee white flower that comes up through the earth at this season of the year. Sometimes it comes up through the snow and frost; but we are glad to see the snow-drop, because it proclaims that the winter is over and that the summer is at hand. A friend reminded me last night that I was whitening fast. But heed not that, brother; it is to me proof that my winter will soon be over; that I shall have done presently with the cold east winds and the frosts of earth, and that my summer, my eternal summer, is at hand.” (Text.)—Vyrnwy Morgan, “The Cambro-American Pulpit.”
(1535)
James T. White is the author of the following lines, entitled “A Sea Shell.” They appeared in the New York Tribune:
Imprisoned in the shell
Are echoes of the far-off ocean’s roar.
May not our hopes of immortality,
That deep within us dwell—
Instinctive to the soul, and more and more
Insistent to the heart—may not they be
Soul-echoes of the swell
That ceaseless beats on an eternal shore?
(1536)
IMMORTALITY, A SYMBOL OF
This apostrophe to a butterfly was written by Alice Freeman Palmer:
I hold you at last in my hand,
Exquisite child of the air;
Can I ever understand
How you grew to be so fair?
You came to this linden-tree
To taste its delicious sweet,
I sitting here in the shadow and shine
Playing around its feet.
Now I hold you fast in my hand,
You marvelous butterfly,
Till you help me to understand
The eternal mystery.
From that creeping thing in the dust
To this shining bliss in the blue!
God, give me courage to trust
I can break my chrysalis, too!
(1537)
IMMORTALITY, EVIDENCE OF
Man, who builds bridges, sails ships, fights battles for liberty, erects cathedrals, writes hymns and prayers, founds homes, is given a little handful of thirty or forty years. Nor can the bulk of the elephant above man’s size ever explain the two hundred years given to some Jumbo munching hay, or the three thousand years given to some tree that is dead, inert and voiceless. The architect builds a marble palace for centuries, stores it with art treasures, that all the generations may throng in and out, feeding the eye and feasting the hunger for beauty, in form and color. But God spent millions of years upon this body, fearfully and wonderfully made, storing the soul’s temple with intellect, memory and judgment, with conscience, affections and moral sentiments. And did He build this soul that goes laughing, weeping, inventing, praying, through life, for that goal named a black hole in the ground?—N. D. Hillis.
(1538)
IMMORTALITY, FEELING OF
Living on the surface of the earth sense impressions constrain us to regard the earth as flat and still, and the sun and other heavenly bodies as moving across the heavens above our heads. But astronomers know that by long watching of the heavenly bodies an observer comes often to feel the motion and sense the rotundity of the earth.
So of the man who will live in the spiritual altitudes. He reasonably believed before in the future life, but all his impressions have been earthly, materialistic. But on the higher level he actually “lays hold on the powers of an endless life.”
(1539)
IMMORTALITY, INTIMATIONS OF
Eugene Field is the author of this:
Upon the mountain height, far from the sea,
I found a shell;
And to my listening ear the lonely thing
Ever a song of ocean seemed to sing,
Ever a tale of ocean seemed to tell.
How came the shell upon that mountain height?
Ah, who can say?
Whether there dropt by some too careless hand,
Or whether there cast when ocean swept the land,
Ere the eternal had ordained the day.
Strange, was it not! Far from its native deep,
One song it sang—
Sang of the awful mysteries of the tide,
Sang of the misty sea, profound and wide,
Ever with echoes of the ocean rang.
And as the shell upon the mountain height
Sings of the sea,
So do I ever, leagues and leagues away—
So do I ever, wandering where I may,
Sing, O my home! sing, O my home! of thee. (Text.)
(1540)
A solemn murmur in its soul
Tells of the world to be,
As travelers hear the billows roll,
Before they reach the sea.
(1541)
IMMORTALITY OF INFLUENCE
Richard Watson Gilder writes this verse about a dead poet:
I read that, in his sleep, the poet died
Ere the day broke;
In a new dawn, as rose earth’s crimson tide,
His spirit woke.
Yet still with us his golden spirit stayed,
On the same page
That told his end, his living verse I read—
His lyric rage.
Behold! I thought, they call him cold in death;
But hither turn,
See where his soul, a glorious, flaming breath,
Doth pulse and burn.
This is the poet’s triumph, his high doom!
After life’s stress—
For him the silent, dark, o’ershadowing tomb
Is shadowless.
And this the miracle and mystery—
In that he gives
His soul away, magnificently free,
By this he lives. (Text.)
—The Outlook.
(1542)
IMMORTALITY, PROOF OF
“Proof,” asks the Soul, “that that which is shall be?
That which was not, persist eternally?
Faith fails before the mortal mystery.”
Yet more miraculous miracle were this:
The mortal, dreaming immortality;
The finite, framing forth infinity;
The shallow, lightly plumbing the abyss;
Ephemeral lips, creating with a kiss;
The transient eye, fixt on eternity! (Text.)
—Grace Ellery Channing, The Century.
(1543)
Immunity from Colds—See [Vitality Low].
IMMUNITY FROM DISEASE
The island of Barbados, in the West Indies, is remarkably free from malaria, and this immunity from a disease which is so common in the tropics has been attributed to a species of fish that inhabits the waters of that island, and whose chief food is the larvæ of the mosquito. These fish are tiny minnows, never exceeding an inch and a half in length, and are generally known as “millions,” altho they bear a most impressive scientific name. They belong to the family of “top minnows,” feeding on the surface of the water, and their diminutive size enables them to swim over lily-pads and similar vegetation, which is covered only by a thin film of water, and there feast upon mosquito larvæ and other insects.
These fish thrive in stagnant or running water, and whether it is fresh or brackish appears to have no effect upon them. The minnows will swim up stream against a strong current and then enter the smaller rivulets, thus distributing themselves over an entire water system. The young of these fish are not hatched from eggs, but are born alive.
The Panama Canal Commission has decided to employ these minnows in the fight to rid the Isthmus of the malarial mosquito, and has imported a great quantity of the little fish. There are mosquito-eating fish in the Panama waters, but they are not sufficiently numerous to be of much value. However, a systematic stocking of the lakes and streams in the Canal Zone with the “millions” from Barbados should act as a severe check on the mosquito population of Panama, and indirectly aid in stamping out malaria.—Harper’s Weekly.
(1544)
See [Disease, Exemption from].
Immutability—See [Individuality of Germs].
IMPARTIALITY
Lieut. Edmund Blaney, of the Atlantic Avenue police station, Brooklyn, who locked up his son brought in on the charge of fighting, is to be commended for his determination that his own shall be treated no better than others. It is a gratifying instance of the absence of “pull” and a delightful example of paternal willingness to see that punishment is meted out when it should be. Lieutenant Blaney could have let his fighting son, a man of twenty-three, and the other prisoner go upon their promise to appear in court, and no one would have taken exception to such a display of fatherly interest, but he preferred the Spartan attitude. The public need not expect this rule to be generally followed, for not many parents have the firmness to deal out the same degree of severe treatment to their own offspring as to those of others. A not to be overlooked feature of the case is the evident reduction of the young man’s opinion of his ability to violate the law and escape the consequences. He thought, or said, that he could not be arrested because he was an officer’s son. That was yesterday. To-day he is wiser and it is hoped a slightly better citizen from a forced realization that ordinances are intended for all alike.—Brooklyn Standard Union.
(1545)
Impartiality of God—See [Privilege].
IMPATIENCE
Victor Hugo pictures a man who is so maddened by failure and misfortune that he resolves on suicide. He is at the end of his resources, and he capitulates to death. No sooner has he committed suicide than the postman drops a letter in at his door which contains the information that a distant relative has left him a large fortune. If he had waited but one hour longer! For want of patience he lost all!
(1546)
Sergeant Cotton in his book “A Voice from Waterloo,” tells us what Wellington thought Napoleon ought to have done:
Napoleon never had so fine an army as at Waterloo. He was certainly wrong in attacking at all. He might have played again the same defensive game in the French territory which he had played so admirably the year before; that campaign of 1814 I consider the very finest he ever made. He might have given us great trouble and had many chances in his favor. But the fact is he never in his life had patience for a defensive war.
(1547)
IMPATIENCE OF REFORMERS
The besetting sin of the reformer is his impatience. The world must be redeemed at once. “The trouble seems to be,” said Theodore Parker of the anti-slavery cause, “that God is not in a hurry, and I am.” “If my scheme is not sufficient to redeem society,” said a labor leader not long ago, “what is yours?” as tho every self-respecting man must have some panacea of social salvation. The fact is, however, that a time like ours, whose symptoms are so complex and serious, is no time for social panaceas. As one of the most observant of American students of society has remarked: “When I hear a man bring forward a solution of the social question, I move to adjourn.” Jesus proposes no surgical operation which at one stroke can save the world. He offers no assurance that the tares of the world shall be exterminated by one sweep of the scythe. He adds faith to patience.—Francis Greenwood Peabody, “Proceedings of the Religious Education Association,” 1904.
(1548)
IMPERFECTION IN NATURE
It is constantly felt by thoughtful minds that nothing is complete in this universe. We wait for perfection and can not know it in this life or in this world.
In the world of flowers there are three primary colors, of which many broken shades form a countless number of secondary tints. But the scientific botanist points out a remarkable fact: many flowers are of compound colors. Some are red and blue; some are red and yellow; some are blue and yellow; but there never has been such a thing as a plant whose flowers burst into all three of the primary tints. Roses are red in various shades, and yellow also in many shades. But that is all; no florist has ever been able to produce a really blue rose. The same fact applies to the chrysanthemum; it may be red in some shade or other, or it may be yellow in a whole range of alternative tints; but the vain dream of the Japanese is to find the fabled “blue chrysanthemum.” A great fortune would await any one who could produce by his art a blue rose or a blue chrysanthemum. Nature denies to flowers the ability to range through the whole gamut of the colors of the rainbow.
(1549)
IMPERFECTION, MAN’S
Upon all man’s works we write one word—imperfect. Full as our world is of the beautiful and the useful, it also holds much of immaturity, wreckage and failure. The scientist insists that there is not one perfect leaf in the forest, not a red rose but holds some blemish, not a cluster or bunch but has suffered some injury. The winters chill the roots, untimely frosts bite the seed, rude storms strain the boughs. What Nature offers man is not perfection, but enough of use and beauty to satisfy to-day’s hunger, and to allure man to something better. Dwelling, therefore, under skies that oft are unfriendly, we perceive that even man’s best work shares in imperfection. His trains jump the track, his bridges break, his ships sink, rust destroys his tools, fire smites his factories, epidemics shorten his life. His fine arts are elective, representing the selection of the best elements carried up to the ideal conditions, and yet even man’s arts represent many forms of injury. All the treasure-houses of the world fail to show one statue that is perfect. The Winged Victory is without a head, the Venus di Milo is without arms, the Minerva has a black stain on the forehead, while only the torso of Jupiter remains, all else having gone.—N. D. Hillis.
(1550)
Imperfection, Value of—See [Diverse Influences].
IMPERFECTIONS CORRECTED
Some years ago I visited Albany, N. Y., when the Capitol was not finished. I saw men at work, apparently, removing stones from the wall on one side. When I asked about it, a workman said: “When that wall was erected they were unable to get granite of the right quality and color to complete the architect’s design. In order that the work might not be delayed, some blocks of wood were used temporarily. Now they have the quality and color of granite required, and are taking out those wooden blocks and replacing them with granite.” The Capitol was being built up, after the fashion of the architect’s ideal.
So it is to-day with us. In the temple, our character, which is His dwelling-place, there are faulty stones. As we come to a clearer knowledge of the person of Jesus we perceive these imperfections and replace them with alabaster hewn from the Rock of Ages, “carved as the angels carved their crowns in the fadeless days of June.” If we are living up to the requirements of our profession, we are thus being built up in Him, continually approaching the ideal of the Master architect. (Text.)—H. G. Furbay.
(1551)
Imperfections in Character—See [Diverse Influences].
Imperviousness—See [Evil, Repellence of].
Impoliteness—See [Politeness].
Importance, not Size—See [Work Despised].
IMPOSSIBLE, ACHIEVING WHAT SEEMED
Hon. Richmond P. Hobson gives his impressions of army achievements as he recalls his prison experiences in a Spanish fortress, and has this to say:
From my prison window in Santiago, which was but little in the rear of the Spanish line of entrenchments, I saw the Spaniards fortifying the city for twenty days. I watched them with critical interest. I saw them bring up guns from the ships and place them. Then I saw our men come up and drive the Spaniards into those entrenchments, and when they had driven them into the entrenchments I saw them go on and try to take the entrenchments themselves. It looked to be an impossible thing, but as yet the artillery was silent. The men came on up the hill and the artillery opened, and my heart sank when I saw that it was flanking artillery. For a moment the American fire ceased as tho the enemy’s guns had been a signal. “Now, then,” said I to myself, “this is the place where the individuality of the soldier will appear, for each man there knows that he is just as likely as any other man to be struck with that shrapnel.” None of them had ever been under fire before; they could not be put to a harder test; but how did they respond to it? Instantly after the lull a more rapid fire set in, and a more rapid rush of men up to the trenches. In spite of flanking artillery we had taken those fortified trenches with unsupported infantry—a thing that army experts the world over said could not be done.
(1552)
IMPOSSIBLE, NOTHING
At the dedication of the Bunker Hill monument, when it appeared that an accident was imminent by the surging of the crowds against the speakers’ platform, Webster requested the people to kindly move back. A man in the crowd answered back: “It is impossible!” Thereupon the great Massachusetts statesman cried out: “Impossible! Impossible! Nothing is impossible on Bunker Hill!”—Charles E. Locke.
(1553)
IMPRECATION IN PSALMS
Said one Unitarian minister to another, about the time when the breaking out of our Civil War exposed the wickedness of its instigators: “I never before felt so much like swearing.” “Well,” was the reply, “I felt as you do; but I turned to the Old Testament, and picked out one of good old David’s imprecatory Psalms. I read it twice aloud, and since then I have felt much better.”
(1554)
IMPRESS
I took a piece of plastic clay
And idly fashioned it one day,
And as my fingers prest it still,
It moved and yielded to my will.
I came again when days were past;
The bit of clay was hard at last,
The form I gave it still it bore,
But I could change that form no more.
I took a piece of living clay,
And gently formed it day by day,
And molded it with power and art—
A young child’s soft and yielding heart.
I came again when years were gone;
He was a man I looked upon;
He still that early impress wore.
And I could change him never more.(Text.)
(1555)
IMPRESSION BY PRACTISE
A native Korean, who was told to memorize the entire Sermon on the Mount, did so with remarkable exactness. When asked how he accomplished it, he said: “My teacher told me to learn it with my heart as well as with my memory, so I hit on this plan. I would try to memorize a verse, and then find a heathen neighbor of mine and practise it on him. I found the verse would stick after I had done that, and I couldn’t forget a word of it.”
(1556)
IMPRESSIONS
On almost any sea beach you may see lying together smooth white pebbles, and ragged sponges, both drying in the sun and waiting the return of the tide. But when the tide comes and strikes the pebbles not a drop of the water enters them, thousands of years they have rolled up and down there, wearing smoother and growing more impervious all the time. But at the first touch of the incoming tide the sponges drink themselves full.
There is the same difference in men. Tides of spiritual influence flow around some men and they keep growing harder—the same tides fill and transform others.
(1557)
IMPRESSIONS, EARLY
The things children most quickly note and in which they take most interest may indicate their bent of mind and help parents and instructors to shape their education along lines of least resistance. Thus R. H. Haweis says:
“Long before I had ever touched a violin I was fascinated with its appearance. In driving to town as a child—when, standing up in the carriage, I could just look out of the window—certain fiddle-shops hung with mighty rows of violoncellos attracted my attention. I had dreams of these large editions—these patriarchs of the violin, as they seemed to me. I compared them in my mind with the smaller tenors and violins. I dreamed about their brown, big, dusty bodies and affable good-natured-looking heads and grinning faces. These violin shops were the great points watched for on each journey up to London from Norwood, where I spent my early days.”
(1558)
Impressions Permanent—See [Teachers’ Function, The].
Impression, Vivid—See [Reminder, Severe].
IMPRISONED LIVES
In the Persian desert the sad sight may be seen of brick pillars in which many an unfortunate victim has been walled up alive, as a horrible method of inflicting capital punishment. Some awful tales of cruelties perpetrated here are told. The victim is put into the pillar, which is half built up in readiness, then, if merciful, the executioner will cement quickly up to the face, when death comes speedily; but sometimes the torture is prolonged, and the inmate has been heard groaning and calling for water for three days.
How many lives are walled lives—built around and bricked in by torturing limitations that suffocate joy and hope, and are no more than a lingering death!
(1559)
IMPROVED CONDITIONS
In a district of Glasgow where the death-rate used to be forty in a thousand, sanitation has brought it down to twenty-eight, and it has been brought down to seventeen or eighteen in some parts of London. Boston reduced its death-rate from thirty-one to twenty, and Croydon, Eng., from twenty-eight to thirteen. Even the friction-match has had its share in prolonging life. “Doubtless many a fatal pneumonia and pleurisy has been contracted when the luckless householder’s lire had died out overnight, and he was struggling with flint, steel and tinderbox.” In London during the last century nearly two hundred thousand persons perished of smallpox. Macaulay says that a person without a pitted face was the exception. But, thanks largely to vaccination, in a recent year there were only fourteen cases of smallpox among New York’s inhabitants, and in the German army, where vaccination is compulsory, the dread disease has been eradicated. The production of pure water by distillation has done much to abolish alimentary diseases among sailors at sea, and lime-juice defends them from scurvy. When the first emigrant ships went out to Australia, one-third of the passengers perished on the voyage, but when the ship-owners were forced to alter their terms and receive pay only for those they landed safely, the death-rate became smaller than when these same persons were living upon shore. In Queen Elizabeth’s time, one in two thousand of her London subjects was murdered annually. At the same rate there would be 2,500 murders every year in London now, whereas the number is no more than twelve. This is what the lighter street and a more efficient police have done for the British metropolis. Facts like these are a most wholesome and agreeable corrective for the lament over the departure of the “good old times,” so much affected by the cynic and the pessimist.—Boston Journal.
(1560)
IMPROVEMENT
He came to my desk with a quivering lip,
The lesson was done—
“Dear teacher, I want a new leaf,” he said,
“I have spoiled this one.”
In place of the leaf so stained and blotted,
I gave him a new one all unspotted,
And into his sad eyes smiled—
“Do better now, my child.”
I went to the throne with a quivering soul,
The old year was done—
“Dear Father, hast Thou a new leaf for me,
I have spoiled this one?”
He took the old leaf, stained and blotted,
And gave me a new one all unspotted,
And into my sad heart smiled—
“Do better now, my child.”
(1561)
We can all help make the world better, as suggested by Annie Aldrich in these verses:
Make the world a little better as you go;
And be thoughtful of the kind of seed you sow;
Try to make some pathway bright
As you strive to do the right,
Making the world a little better as you go.
Make the world a little better as you go;
You may help to soothe some fellow-creature’s wo;
You can make some burden light,
As you try with all your might
To make the world a little better as you go.
Make the world a little better as you go;
As you meet your brother going to and fro,
You may lend a friendly hand,
Lift the fallen! Help them stand!
Make the world a little better as you go.
(1562)
If Christian methods of felling the tree of evil had advanced as far as the art of tree-cutting described below, we should soon be rid of bad institutions and tendencies:
“It is reported in the German press,” says Forestry and Irrigation, “that successful experiments have been made in various forests of France in cutting trees by means of electricity. A platinum wire is heated to a white heat by an electric current and used like a saw. In this manner the tree is felled much easier and quicker than in the old way, no sawdust is produced, and the slight carbonization caused by the hot wire acts as a preservative of the wood. The new method is said to require only one-eighth of the time consumed by the old sawing process.”
(1563)
Some day we shall be wise enough to utilize the hint suggested in the extract, by caring as much at least for improving the human race as we now care for improving our domestic animals:
A. Ogerodnikoff, a wealthy Russian dealer in furs in Vladivostok, while visiting San Francisco, told an interesting story of experiments made by his cousin, Rachatnikoff, who has been devoting himself for years to the propagation of a beautiful race of people. Ogerodnikoff, according to the press reports, said:
“Years ago Rachatnikoff attracted to his estate especially handsome men and girls of more than usual beauty by offering free land to forty or fifty men carefully picked from among a large number of applicants and selecting for them as wives fine-looking young women from different parts of Russia. This selected colony has flourished beyond all expectation, and over a hundred children have been raised from these unions.
“These children are so pretty as to make the Rachatnikoff estate famous.” (Text.)
(1564)
Improvement, Material—See [Advancement, Rapid].
Improvement Meeting With Disfavor—See [Safety Valves].
IMPROVING TIME
One of the most important books on British ornithology is Gilbert White’s “Natural History of Selborne.” This work is made up of the jottings and notes of the author concerning the animals he saw in his daily walks through the woods and fields in the immediate vicinity of his little country parish, which he seldom left. (Text.)
(1565)
IMPUDENCE, BRAZEN
Unblushing assurance in rascality is not a new thing in the world.
A firm of shady outside London brokers was prosecuted for swindling, says Everybody’s. In acquitting them, the court, with great severity, said:
“There is not sufficient evidence to convict you, but if any one wishes to know my opinion of you I hope that you will refer to me.”
Next day the firm’s advertisement appeared in every available medium, with the following well displayed: “Reference as to probity, by special permission, the Lord Chief Justice of England.”
(1566)
Impulsiveness—See [Suspicion].
IMPURE THOUGHTS
A man went to his friend and asked the loan of a barrel. “Certainly,” was the reply, “if you will bring it back uninjured.” The man used the barrel to hold brandy until he could get certain bottles from the factory, when he filled them and returned the barrel to his friend. But the barrel smelled of brandy, and the owner sent it back with the request that it be cleansed. Boiling water was poured into the barrel, but it still smelled of brandy. Acids and disinfectants were put in, but the smell of the brandy could not be removed. It was left out in the rain, but all to no purpose; the smell of the brandy still remained. So it is with impure thoughts; when they are once admitted they remain and taint the whole life.—James T. White, “Character Lessons.”
(1567)
IMPURITIES
Should not men be as careful of the moral atmosphere of their lives as of the air in their rooms?
Mr. John Aitken, a well-known investigator of the atmosphere, made a series of experiments on the number of dust particles in ordinary air. His results show that outside air, after a wet night, contained 521,000 dust particles per cubic inch; outside air in fair weather contained 2,119,000 particles in the same space; that near the ceiling contained 88,346,000 particles per cubic inch. The air collected over a Bunsen flame contained no less than 489,000,000 particles per cubic inch. The numbers for a room were got with gas burning in the room, and at a height of four feet from the floor. These figures, tho not absolute, show how important is the influence of a gas-jet on the air we breathe, and the necessity for good ventilation in apartments. Mr. Aitken remarks that there seem to be as many dust particles in a cubic inch of air in a room at night when gas is burning as there are inhabitants in Great Britain, and that in three cubic inches of the gases from a Bunsen flame there are as many particles as there are people in the world.—Cassell’s Family Magazine.
(1568)
Impurities, Atmospheric—See [Soot].
Impurities Tested—See [Tests].
INADEQUACY OF NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS
Dr. H. O. Dwight was telling us of a voyage that he took in the Levant with a Turkish official; and as they sat down in the cabin at the dinner table the Turkish official, inviting Dr. Dwight to drink with him, said: “You may think it strange that I, a Mohammedan, should ask you, a Christian, to drink with me, when wine-drinking is forbidden by our religion. I will tell you how I dare to do this thing.” He filled his glass, and held it up, looking at the beautiful color of it, and said: “Now, if I say that it is right to drink this wine, I deny God’s commandments to men, and He would punish me in hell for the blasphemy. But I take up this glass, admitting that God has commanded me not to drink it, and that I sin in drinking it. Then I drink it off, so casting myself on the mercy of God. For our religion lets me know that God is too merciful to punish me for doing anything which I wish to do, when I humbly admit that to do it breaks His commandments.” His religion furnished this pasha with no moral restraints or power for true character.—Robert E. Speer, “Student Volunteer Movement,” 1906.
(1569)
Inattention Overcome—See [Rank, Obsequiousness to].
Inborn, The—See [Innate, The].
Incantation—See [Birth Ceremonies]; [Exorcism].
Incense—See [Offerings, Extravagant].
Incentive—See [Heaven].
INCENTIVES
The most interesting chapel in Italy is the Santa Maria Novella, in Florence. In this edifice is a famous picture. On the right-hand side is a female figure with three children at her knee; she is holding in one hand a little rod, and in the other a golden apple; and she is pointing to an exceedingly narrow door.
Yes, the gate of life is narrow, and rod and apple—chastisement and reward—are necessary incentives urging entrance. (Text.)
(1570)
INCERTITUDE
The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle is responsible for the following story from Washington:
“Jadam,” said Major McDowell, the clerk of the House of Representatives, to J. Adam Bede, of Minnesota, yesterday, “that was a fine speech you made to-day, a fine speech.” “Yes, I thought it was a pretty good speech,” Mr. Bede assented modestly. “It was an extremely fine speech. It was logical and had wit in it, and was delivered with great declamatory effect. I listened to it with much pleasure.” “I am glad you liked it,” chirruped Mr. Bede. “Indeed I did,” the Major continued, “and now, if it is betraying no confidence, I’d like to ask you a question.” “Why, my dear Major,” exclaimed Bede, “of course I shall be glad to do anything I can for you. Go ahead.” “Well, Jadam,” and the Major put a fatherly hand on Bede’s shoulder. “I wish you would tell me which side of the question you are really on.”
(1571)
The representative of an English newspaper, sent some time since to Ireland to move about and learn by personal observation the real political mind of the people there, reported on his return that he had been everywhere and talked with all sorts, and that as nearly as he could make out the attitude of the Irish might be stated about thus: “They don’t know what they want—and they are bound to have it.”—Joseph H. Twichell.
(1572)
See [Duality].
Incitement—See [Inspiration, Sources of].
INCITEMENT
Very much of human discontent arises from first hearing our wrongs described by others:
Rufus Choate, the American lawyer, defended a blacksmith whose creditor had seized some iron that a friend had lent him to assist in the business after a bankruptcy. The seizure of the iron was said to have been made harshly. Choate thus described it: “He arrested the arm of industry as it fell toward the anvil; he put out the breath of his bellows; he extinguished the fire upon his hearthstone. Like pirates in a gale at sea, his enemies swept everything by the board, leaving, gentlemen of the jury, not so much—not so much as a horseshoe to nail upon the door-post to keep the witches off.” The blacksmith, sitting behind, was seen to have tears in his eyes at this description, and a friend noticing it, said: “Why, Tom, what’s the matter with you? What are you blubbering about?” “I had no idea,” said Tom in a whisper, “that I had been so abominably ab-ab bused.” (Text.)—Croake James, “Curiosities of Law and Lawyers.”
(1573)
See [Inspiration].
Incitement to Evil—See [Responsibility Evaded].
INCONSISTENCY
An anonymous writer in The Independent tells the following story as illustrating Mr. Hearst’s belief that “money will buy the fruit of any man’s work”:
Some time ago a young writer applied to him for employment on his New York newspaper, and was engaged to fill a position which would become vacant at the end of a week, but in the interval the fact came to the attention of a university professor who had always taken an interest in his advancement.
“I am sorry,” said the good man, “that you should have chosen that particular school of journalism for your professional start.” And he proceeded to descant upon the responsibility a journalist owed to society, the influence of one educated youth’s example upon others of his class, the tone a writer inevitably took from the character of the journals he worked for, etc. “And your untarnished sense of self-respect, my young friend,” he concluded, “will be worth more to you, when you reach my time of life, than all the salaries an unprincipled employer can pour into your purse.”
So imprest was the neophyte with this lecture in morals that he called upon Mr. Hearst the next morning and announced that he had changed his mind about accepting the proffered position. The editor scanned his face shrewdly, and then inquired the reason. After much hesitancy the young man told him the whole story, and started to leave.
“Ah,” said Mr. Hearst. “Be seated a moment, please!” And, turning to his secretary, he added: “Write a letter at once to Professor X. Y., present my compliments, and say that I should be pleased to receive from him a signed article of five hundred words—subject and treatment to be of his own choosing—for the editorial page of next Sunday’s paper. Inclose check for $250.
“Now,” he remarked, with a cynical smile, as he bade his caller good-by, “you can see for yourself what comes of that.”
He did. The Sunday issue contained a signed article, which gave the paper the reflection of a good man’s fame, and spread the influence of his example among other university professors, and—did what to his self-respect?—all at the rate of fifty cents per word! (Text.)
(1574)
See [Injustice].
INCONSPICUOUS WORKERS
Most of this world’s work is done by the people who will never be known. To every worthy worker, however, a mede of credit is due, and sometimes it finds recognition, as in the instance here recorded:
An officer who was at West Point a generation ago tells of the influence Miss Susan Warner had on the boys of the Academy in the ’70’s and ’80’s. “The Wide, Wide World,” by Miss Warner, was a popular book then with the cadets’ mothers, who would urge their sons to visit Constitution Island and write home a description of the author. So many boys would visit the Island. Every Sunday afternoon the Warner sisters would send their man-of-all-work in a boat to the Point to bring over a load of cadets. The boys would gather around Miss Susan as she sat on the lawn and listen to her read the Scriptures and explain them in a bright, cheerful view of religion and life. After the talks would come a treat of tea and home-made gingerbread. She was very delicate and frail and often her talks would completely exhaust her. She kept up correspondence with many of the visiting cadets long after they had become distinguished officers. Her last letter to one just before her death had a pathos known only to her cadet friends. It read: “I no longer have the strength to cross the river to meet the boys, and the superintendent we now have will not allow them to come to me, so my usefulness with them seems to be at an end.”
(1575)
Incorruptible, The—See [Purity].
Increase by Civilization—See [Conservation].
Increasing and Decreasing—See [Self-estimate].
INCREDULITY
Dr. W. H. Thomson, in his book on “What is Physical Life,” says that “once, while talking to a roomful of the naturally bright people of a town in Mount Hermon about the achievements of Western civilization, I happened to tell a toothless old man present that in our country we had skilled persons who could make for him an entirely new set of teeth. Glancing round the room, I noticed some listeners stroking their beards in a fashion which I knew meant that I was telling a preposterous yarn. Fortunately I had with me an elderly Scotch friend who had a set of false teeth, and on explaining the situation to him, he forthwith opened his mouth and pulled the whole set out. The Arabs jumped to their feet in fright, not sure but he might start to unscrew his head next, for had any of their venerated ancestors ever seen such an uncanny performance with teeth? They afterward said that never would they have believed this if they had not seen it.”
(1576)
See [Christianity and Civilization].
INDECISION
When the King of Sparta had crossed the Hellespont and was about to march through Thrace, he sent to the people in the different regions, asking them whether he should march through their country as a friend or as an enemy. “By all means as a friend,” said most of the regions; but the King of Macedon replied, “I will take time to consider it.” “Then,” said the King of Sparta, “Let him consider it, but meantime we march, we march.” (Text.)
(1577)
See [Sentiment, Mixed].
Indestructibility of Man—[See Man Indestructible].
INDIA, MEDICAL OPPORTUNITIES IN
I wish it were possible for me to give you some idea of the amount of suffering and misery there is in India to-day; but I fear that I can not do it, for you have seldom been where you could not obtain the services of a good physician in time of need, or even be taken to a hospital, if it were desirable. But there are millions of people in India who have no such resources as that. Shall I tell you of a man who came to our hospital some time ago suffering from a cataract in one eye? He was an intelligent man, well educated, and he wanted to save his eyesight. He employed some of the native doctors to treat the eye, and when he came to us he said that he thought he had had at least twenty-five pounds of medicine put in his eye. That sounded like such a large story that we asked for the particulars, and I think he was about right. It was all to no purpose, however, so that he changed doctors and got a new remedy that was guaranteed. They opened his eye and sifted it full of pounded glass. If you have ever had a cinder in your eye, perhaps you can to some small extent imagine the agonies which that man endured before he came to us. That is not an uncommon case, and frequently when I go into the dispensary in the morning I find there mothers with their little children. They hold them out to me in their arms and say, “Won’t you look at this child’s eyes?” I say, “Well, mother, what is the matter with the eyes?” “Oh, about two or three weeks ago the child’s eyes were red and it cried a little bit, and we tried to open them to see what was the matter, but the child made so much fuss we couldn’t do anything. Now, they have been shut so long that we are afraid there is something the matter; we want you to look and see.” I open those eyelids with my fingers; I know what I am going to see. The front part of the eyeball is gone—sloughed away, rotted out just in those few days. A few simple remedies, a little cleanliness at the proper time, would have saved those eyes, but often I have to say to those mothers, “Your child is blind for life.” There are many thousands of such little children in India to-day sitting by the side of the road waiting for the coppers which the passer-by will fling to them, and which they must find by feeling around in the dust. It is a very common practise on the part of the native physicians to apply as a counter-irritant to the surface of the body a material which burns like a red-hot iron; and if you have burned your finger recently, you can imagine how it would be to be burned in stripes from the nape of your neck right down to your heels, or to have patterns worked on your body with that fiery material. If you have suffered recently from such a simple ailment as a toothache, imagine a land without any dentists or other means to relieve that ache. The tooth must ache in India, until nature brings its own remedy, and the tooth drops out.—A. S. Wilson, “Student Volunteer Movement,” 1906.
(1578)
Indian, The—See [Conservation].
Indian, The Word of an—See [Promise, an Indian’s].
INDIANS, AMERICAN
“The ‘noble’ red man of traditional lore was usually a very low-bred, dirty savage, uninteresting except for his blood-thirstiness and capacity for rum and mischief.” What education, mostly under government supervision, has been able to do with the Indian is shown in the extract:
Supt. Friedman of the Carlisle Indian School remarks that thirty years have elapsed since the first group of eighty-two Sioux Indians from the Pine Ridge and Rosebud Reservations of South Dakota arrived at Carlisle, Penn., to receive the benefit of a civilized education. Out of this beginning an elaborate system of Indian schools has grown, including 167 day-schools, 88 reservation boarding schools and 26 non-reservation schools, so that to-day 25,777 Indian students are being educated under the Government’s immediate patronage, at a cost for the fiscal year 1909 of $4,008,825. The students in the contract schools and missions swell this total to 30,630. The Carlisle school, the largest of all, has an enrolment of 1,132, which is not much below the enrolment of Princeton College.—New York Times.
(1579)
Indians’ Receptiveness to the Gospel—See [Father, Our].
INDICATOR, AN INSECT
One of the simplest of barometers is a spider’s web. When there is a prospect of rain or wind the spider shortens the filaments from which its web is suspended and leaves things in this state as long as the weather is variable. If the insect elongates its thread it is a sign of fine calm weather, the duration of which may be judged of by the length to which the threads are let out. If the spider remains inactive it is a sign of rain; but if, on the contrary, it keeps at work during the rain the latter will not last long, and will be followed by fine weather. Other observations have taught that the spider makes changes in its web every twenty-four hours, and that if such changes are made in the evening, just before sunset, the night will be clear and beautiful.—La Nature.
(1580)
Indifference—See [Ballot, A Duty].
Indifference to Strangers—See [Confidence].
INDIFFERENCE TO THE GOOD
Zion’s Herald prints this significant poem:
People tell the story yet,
With the pathos of regret,
How along the streets one day,
Unawares from far away,
Angels passed with gifts for need,
And no mortal gave them heed.
They had cheer for those who weep,
They had light for shadows deep,
Balm for broken hearts they bore,
Rest, deep rest, a boundless store;
But the people, so they say,
Went the old blind human way,—
Fed the quack and hailed the clown
When the angels came to town.
It has been and will be so:
Angels come and angels go,
Opportunity and Light,
’Twixt the morning and the night,
With their messages divine
To your little world and mine.
And we wonder why we heard
Not a whisper of their word,
Caught no glimpse of finer grace
In the passing form and face;
That our ears were dull as stones
To the thrill of spirit tones,
And we looked not up, but down,
When the angels came to town.
(1581)
INDIFFERENTISM
A German professor of theology is reported to have said in lecturing to his students on the existence of God, that while the doctrine, no doubt, was an important one, it was so difficult and perplexed that it was not advisable to take too certain a position upon it, as many were disposed to do. There were those, he remarked, who were wont in the most unqualified way to affirm that there was a God. There were others who, with equal immoderation, committed themselves to the opposite proposition—that there was no God. The philosophical mind, he added, will look for the truth somewhere between these extremes.—Joseph H. Twichell.
(1582)
INDIVIDUAL INFLUENCE
I met, the other day, a learned judge who told me that for more than twenty years he had met every winter, in his own library, once a week, a club of his neighbors, men and women, who came, and came gladly, that he might guide them in the study of history. “And all those people,” said he, laughing—there are three or four hundred of them now, scattered over the world—“they all know what to read, and how to read it.” You see that village is another place because that one man lived there.—Edward Everett Hale.
(1583)
Individual Initiative—See [Need, Meeting Children’s].
Individual, Seeking the—See [Personal Evangelism].
Individual Value—See [Collective Labor].
INDIVIDUAL, VALUE OF THE
This fine verse is from Canon Farrar:
“I am only one,
But I am one.
I can not do everything,
But I can do something,
What I can do
I ought to do
And what I ought to do
By the grace of God I will do.” (Text.)
(1584)
Individualism—See [Initiative].
INDIVIDUALISM, EXCESSIVE
Haydon, the painter, was an ill-used man; but it was purely his own fault. He would paint high art when people did not want it—would paint acres of hooked-nosed Romans, and bore the public with Dentatus, Scipio and Co., when they wanted something else. He was like a man taking beautiful pebbles to market when people wanted eggs, and telling that they ought not to want eggs, because they led to carnality and had a nasty and disgusting connection with bacon. But people would not have it—eggs they wanted, and eggs they would have, how beautiful soever the pebbles might be. So with Haydon. He persisted that the people ought to have what they did not want, and he went from a prison to a lunatic asylum, and died a suicide.—George Dawson.
(1585)
INDIVIDUALITY
Rembrandt paints all in a shadow, and Claude Lorraine in sunny light. Petrarch frames with cunning skill his chiming sonnets, and Dante portrays with majestic hand, that makes the page almost tingle with fire, his vision of the future. Shakespeare, with a well-nigh prescient intelligence, interprets the secrets of history and of life, and reads the courses of the future in the past, and Milton rolls, from beneath the great arches of his religious and cathedral-like soul, its sublime oratorios. And the copiousness of experience, the variety, affluence, multiformity of life, as it exists upon earth and arrests our attention, is derived altogether, in the ultimate analysis, from this personal constitution of each individual.—Richard S. Storrs.
(1586)
Jesus said of the Good Shepherd, “He calleth his own sheep by name.” We have each his own personal marks, and are never lost in the mass of humanity.
An inspector of police and, in general, every person unfamiliar with the application of the “verbal portrait,” tho possessing the photograph of an individual, will pass by that individual without recognition, if the photograph is a few years old or if the general appearance has been altered by a gain or loss of flesh, or by a change in the beard or the hair or even the clothes. On the other hand, descriptive identification, which means an accurate description of the immovable parts of the face (forehead, nose, ears, etc.), enables those who are sufficiently familiar with the method to identify a person with certainty, not only with the aid of a photograph, but also simply by means of a printed description of those characteristics of the person in question which are out of the ordinary. (Text.)—L. Ramakers, The Scientific American.
(1587)
No rainbow that paints its arch upon the cloud, no river that courses like liquid silver through emerald banks, no sunset that opens its deeps of splendor, with domes of sapphire and pinnacles of chrysolite, hath any such beauty to him who surveys it as the poem or discourse which speaks the peace, or the triumphing hope, of another human soul. For forever is it true that the life in each stands apart from the life in every other. It hath its center, tho not its cause, within itself; is full-orbed in each; commingled with that of no other being; as separate in each, and as purely individual, as if there were no other besides it in existence!—Richard S. Storrs.
(1588)
Students of social phenomena must allow for the personal equation. Men are certainly as individual as birds:
Every bird sings his own song; no two sing exactly alike, ... the song of every singer is unique. There are, of course, similarities in the songs of birds of the same species.... For lack of intimate acquaintance with the music of a particular bird, we think he sings just like the next one. Why! do all roosters have the same crow? No; any farmer knows better than this.... Every individual sings his own song.
(1589)
See [Originality]; [Personal Element].
INDIVIDUALITY IN INTERPRETATION
On the question as to how far it is permissible for the actor’s own personality to enter into his interpretation of Shakespearian characters, Mr. Herbert Beerbohm Tree said:
“Certain it is that while the actor’s self-suppression is among the most essential factors of success in his art, so also his own individuality, his own personality—in a word, his humanity—are all-important. I mean, you can not imagine a characterless person playing the great characters of Shakespeare. You say: ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter! Shakespeare has taken care of all that!’ ‘Yes,’ I reply, ‘but it requires individuality to interpret individuality—power, force, character, to realize the creations of the master brain.’ Nothing else than individuality will make the humanity of these characters stand out sharp and clear from the mass of humanities grouped behind it.” (Text.)—The Fortnightly Review.
(1590)
Individuality in Nature—See [Animism].
INDIVIDUALITY OF GERMS
Change is stamped upon life, but according to science, the opposite also is true. Life, in its minutest subdivisions, is true to itself. It knows no variation nor shadow of turning. Dr. Stirling remarks concerning protoplasm:
Here are several thousand pieces of protoplasm; analysis can detect no difference in them. They are to us, let us say, as they are to Mr. Huxley, identical in power, in form, and in substance; and yet on all these several thousand little bits of apparently indistinguishable matter an element of difference so pervading and so persistent has been imprest, that of them all, not one is interchangeable with another! Each seed feeds its own kind. The protoplasm of the gnat will no more grow into the fly than it will grow into an elephant. Protoplasm is protoplasm; yes, but man’s protoplasm is man’s protoplasm, and the mushroom’s the mushroom’s.
(1591)
INDIVIDUALS, GOD’S CARE OVER
Mrs. Julia Ward Howe was in Washington and brought a case of need before a distinguished Senator, who excused himself, writing that he was so taken up with matters of wide public interest that he could not look after individual cases. Mrs. Howe wrote in her note-book that “at last accounts the Lord God Almighty had not attained to that eminence.” (Text.)—Franklin Noble, “Sermons in Illustration.”
(1592)
Indolence Forerunner of Dishonesty—See [Dishonesty].
INDORSEMENT
Old Gorgon, apropos of letters of introduction, hands out a whole string of neat conclusions. “Giving a note of introduction is simply lending your name with a man as collateral, and if he’s no good you can’t have the satisfaction of redeeming your indorsement even; and you’re discredited.... I reckon that the devil invented the habit of indorsing notes and giving letters to catch the fellows he couldn’t reach with whisky and gambling.”—George Horace Lorimer, “Old Gorgon Graham.”
(1593)
Industrial Church Training—See [Practise and Industrial Training].
INDUSTRIAL TRAINING
The boy utterly unable, even if he were studious, to keep up in book knowledge and percentage with the brighter boys, becomes discouraged, dull, and moody. Let him go to the work-room for an hour and find that he can make a box or plane a rough piece of board as well as the brighter scholar, nay, very likely better than his brighter neighbor, and you have given him an impulse of self-respect that is of untold benefit to him when he goes back to his studies. He will be a brighter and better boy for finding out something that he can do well.—American Magazine.
(1594)
INDUSTRY AND LONGEVITY
Capt. Robert McCulloch, who was elected president of the United Railways Company at the age of sixty-seven, was asked recently why he does not retire and live comfortably on his income. As general manager of the $90,000,000 corporation, Captain McCulloch is frequently at his office at 5 A.M. and remains until late in the evening.
“I had a friend once,” said Captain McCulloch, answering the inquiry, “who started in life in a very modest way. He sold railway supplies, and to help him along I bought some of his goods. Eventually he branched out, became the general manager of a railway-supply house, and in time got rich.
“I met him two weeks before his fiftieth birthday. He told me he had acquired a competency, having several hundred thousand dollars invested in gilt-edged securities, besides his magnificent home in Chicago, and that on his fiftieth birthday he was going to retire and enjoy life.
“Just a year later I received his funeral notice. If he had kept on working like I have, he would be living yet. Work is necessary to enjoyment, good health, and length of days. That’s why I don’t quit. I prefer to live a while longer, and know I would die if I quit.”—St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
(1595)
INDUSTRY OF BEES
It is estimated that, to collect one pound of honey, 62,000 heads of clover must be deprived of their nectar, necessitating 3,750,000 visits from bees. It would seem from this that the reputation of the wonderful little insect for industry has not been overrated. Wax is a substance secreted by the bees, and is analogous to the fat of higher animals. To produce a single pound of wax, the bees must consume from fifteen to twenty pounds of honey. This expensive substance is used by the thrifty little insects with the greatest economy. (Text.)—Public Opinion.
(1596)
INDUSTRY OF BIRDS
“Our hours,” said a nature student, “are nothing to the birds. Why, some birds work in the summer nineteen hours a day. Indefatigably they clear the crops of insects.
“The thrush gets up at 2:30 every summer morning. He rolls up his sleeves, and falls to work at once, and he never stops until 9:30 at night. A clean nineteen hours. During that time he feeds his voracious young two hundred and six times.
“The blackbird starts work at the same time as the thrush, but he ‘lays off’ earlier. His whistle blows at 7:30, and during his seventeen-hour day he sets about one hundred meals before his kiddies.
“The titmouse is up and about at three in the morning and his stopping time is nine at night. A fast worker, the titmouse is said to feed his young four hundred and seventeen meals—meals of caterpillar mainly—in the long, hard, hot day.”—Green’s Fruit Grower.
(1597)
INDUSTRY VERSUS IDLENESS
There was a great painter named Hogarth, who painted a series of pictures. The first of the series shows two lads starting in life as apprentices under the same master. They are about the same age, are equally clever, and have the same prospect of getting on. Yet in the other pictures, one apprentice, whose name is Tom Idle, is shown to neglect his work for bad company of every kind, gradually sinking from idleness into every crime. The other apprentice, Frank Goodchild, is depicted as always industrious and attentive to his business, and becoming prosperous and rich. Another picture shows that Tom has sunk into poverty and misery; another picture shows that Frank has become a great merchant. One of the last pictures shows Tom in the hands of the constables, brought before Alderman Goodchild, who is now high sheriff, and who is pained and distrest in recognizing his old fellow apprentice in the prisoner at the bar.—James T. White, “Character Lessons.”
(1598)
INEBRIETY, INCURABLE
Is the drunkard curable? Dr. Gill, a British expert, in a recent report says that mental recoveries in a considerable number never go beyond a certain point, and he classes nearly 50 per cent of his patients as higher-grade imbeciles, while many others are weak-minded and unable to work—perhaps congenital neurasthenics. He goes on to say:
Even in the smaller number classed as normal men, the mental recovery is very slow, so that the advertised methods of quick cure are fallacious. Notwithstanding the fact that men of great or average intelligence might be afflicted, most of our inebriates are congenital defectives—even the drunken genius is a warped mental specimen. The inebriety is a result of their condition and not a cause. How dishonest, then, it is, to hold out the promise of cure, as many of the sanatoriums do! The present trend of thought among lawmakers is in the direction of the confinement of inebriates for life, and it seems to be founded on sound pathologic findings.
(1599)
INEQUALITIES
Twenty little maidens
Sighing at a hop,
Wishing twenty fellows
Would come there to stop.
Twenty dapper clerklings
Sitting in a row,
Dipping pens in ink-stands,
Much would like to go.
Ah! this world’s an odd one,
Things don’t even up;
When we want a quartful,
We only get a cup.
(1600)
Inexperience Re-enforced—See [Encouragement].
INFANTICIDE IN CHINA
Missionaries see little bodies floating upon the scum of the ponds or thrown out by the roadside and half-eaten by the wolfish dogs. It is not necessary to open the little bundle of matting lying by the side of the city wall to know what it contains. Shanghai has its hexagonal tower into which their bodies can be cast. Nanking has its temple to which may be brought any little dead body which the parents care not to bury themselves.
(1601)
INFIDELITY ANSWERED
While Ingersoll was still living, in answer to an inquiry by some of his students as to whether the arguments of Ingersoll are unanswerable, a college president answered them in the Andover Review as follows:
An infidel is an abnormal growth, and nature feels funny once in a while and creates a freak, e.g., the living skeleton; the fat woman, the two-headed girl. So there is about one infidel to a million sane men. The most of these noisy fellows are amateur infidels. They talk Ingersoll in fair weather and pray themselves hoarse every time it thunders. A well-developed case of cholera morbus will knock their infidelity out of them, and leave them in a cold sweat like a china dog in an ice-house. I know them. The most of them are like the boy who runs away from home, and comes back to stay with his father nights. Then, again, boys, take a look around you when you invest another fifty cents to hear Ingersoll talk on “liberty,” and compare the crowd with the kind of people you find in almost any church. Is it the odor of sanctity you smell? Hardly, boys, hardly. But you can eat peanuts there, and choke on the shells, while you applaud the funny jokes about heaven where you know in your hearts your dear mother is; or hear the humble Nazarene ridiculed, who, you think, and always will think, gave a home to your weary old father when he left the earth.
(1602)
INFIDELITY REPULSIVE
The nurse who waited upon Voltaire, the French infidel, during his last hours, was requested a few months later to attend another infidel in the same city. Her answer was, “I would not wait upon another infidel for all the gold of Paris.” All infidelity is repulsive. (Text.)
(1603)
Infinitesimal, The—See [Little Things].
Infirmity, Blind to—See [Considerateness].
INFLUENCE
A little clock in a jeweler’s window in a certain Western town stopt one day for half an hour, at fifteen minutes of nine. School-children, noticing the time, stopt to play; people hurrying to the train, looking at the clock, began to walk leisurely; professional men, after a look at the clock, stopt to chat a minute with one another; working men and women noted the time and lingered a little longer in the sunshine, and all were half an hour late because one small clock stopt. Never had these people known how much they had depended upon that clock till it had led them astray.
Many are thus unconsciously depending upon the influence of Christians; you may think you have no influence, but you can not go wrong in one little act without leading others astray.—Seattle Churchman.
(1604)
See [Individual Influence]; [Mother’s Influence].
INFLUENCE, BAD
As these wild cattle mentioned below soon demoralize the domestic herds, so one or two wild youths may draw away many others from safe paths.
Much has been written lately about wild horses infesting certain mountain ranges of the West and menacing the interest of stockmen. A report from a district in the Shasta National Forest of California states that wild cattle have become a nuisance.
These animals are the descendants of domestic cattle, but having run without restraint for several generations, have become as wild as deer. Stockmen will not apply for ranges infested by these cattle, since tame cattle soon adopt the habits of their wild relatives and become equally as unmanageable. It is impossible to gather young stock in the fall, which have run with these animals even for a season.
The majority of the stockmen desire to shoot them, but certain mountain-dwellers claim them, and shoot an occasional one for winter beef. The forest officers will, in conjunction with the stockmen interested, investigate the matter, and decide upon some plan of ridding the forests of this pest.
(1605)
INFLUENCE, CORRUPT
An American traction-owner, visiting St. Petersburg, was imprest with the inadequacy of the horse-car service and employed engineers to work out a modern system. Failing to make an impression on the local officials, he had abandoned the plan when he fell in with a clever Russian who assured him that his ignorance of the ways of the country was responsible for the failure, and offered to engineer the deal for a part interest in the company. The first step was to purchase, for several thousand rubles, the sympathy and support of a certain danseuse of the capital. Everything went smoothly and Witte, the Czar’s Prime Minister, finally wrote a report recommending the scheme, and the Czar endorsed on the document: “I approve this in every particular.” Thereupon an American rival attempted to blackmail the successful franchise-holder. When the man refused to be held up the rival set various influences at work. A few days later Plehve handed the Emperor a report condemning the traction scheme and favoring its annulment, across which Nicholas wrote: “I approve this report in every particular.” Horse-cars still operate in St. Petersburg. (Text.)
(1606)
INFLUENCE, ENDURING
Whitefield’s influence resembles the gale sweeping over the surface of the sea. The effect is instant, and visible to every sense. But of Wesley’s work the true symbol is the coral reef, built up slowly, and cell by cell, in the sea depths, over which the soil forms, and on which great cities will rise and unborn nations will live. The one stirred the surface; the other built up from the depths, built deeply, and built for all time.—W. H. Fitchett, “Wesley and His Century.”
(1607)
INFLUENCE OF SONG
It was sunset, and a number of girls, some of whom were Sunday-school teachers, were singing at their work in a certain factory Bishop Doane’s verses beginning,
“Softly now the light of day,”
to the tune of “Holley,” when a Christian woman who was visiting the factory was shown the singing girls through an opened door. On being told that the singing was now a regular custom with the girls, she asked, “Has it made a difference?” Said the superintendent who was escorting her around, “There is seldom any quarreling or coarse joking among them now.”
(1608)
INFLUENCE, PERSONAL
Embury was one of a group of Irish-German emigrants to the United States in 1764. He settled in New York, but lacked courage to begin religious work there, and by a natural and inevitable reaction his own religious life began to die. Another party of these German-Irish emigrants, from the same neighborhood, landed in New York the next year. Among them was Barbara Heck, a peasant woman of courageous character and an earnest Methodist. Her zeal kindled in womanly vehemence when she found the first party of emigrants had practically forgotten their Methodism. A familiar but doubtful story relates how she went into a room one day where Embury and his companions were playing cards. She seized the pack, threw it into the fire, and cried to Embury: “You must preach to us or we shall all go to hell together; and God will require our blood at your hands.” “I can not preach,” stammered the rebuked man, “for I have neither chapel nor congregation.” “Preach in your own house,” answered Barbara Heck, “and to our own company.” And so the first Methodist sermon in America was preached under a private roof and to a congregation of five persons.—W. H. Fitchett, “Wesley and His Century.”
(1609)
INFLUENCE, PERVERTING
The Carnegie Institute has built and fitted out the auxiliary steamer Carnegie to investigate the magnetic phenomena of the earth. The ship was specially designed so as to contain less than six hundred pounds of steel or iron, which would tend to deflect her compasses and interfere with the accuracy of her magnetic instruments. What is not built of wood is made of Victor vanadium bronze.
It would aid men in the guidance of their lives if, in a similar way, they could eliminate from the mind and character all those elements that pervert the will and affections toward evil.
(1610)
INFLUENCE, POSTHUMOUS
The good or ill of a man’s life has the habit of following after him, even tho his efforts have ceased in death. The power of influence which visibly abides is illustrated by a writer who describes the tracks of ships at sea being visible by the smooth wakes of oil they leave behind them, long after they have disappeared:
I have frequently seen such tracks as Franklin observed out at sea, and have climbed to the masthead in order to sight the ship that produced them without seeing her. Several of such smooth, shining tracks have been observed at the same time, but no ship visible, and this in places where no sail has been seen for days before or after.
(1611)
It is being said by many that the present prohibition condition in Georgia is due largely to the work of Sam Jones. He died October, 1906. Thinking that he was out of the way, the liquor men of Bartow County, in June of the following year, determined to call a new election under the local option law. It seemed to them that they could now win with Sam Jones eliminated. The anti-liquors also went to work and did all they could, but were not overconfident of victory. The result was astonishing. The vote, approximately, was eighty-five for the liquor men and 1,686 “for Sam Jones and prohibition.” His name had been mounted on the ballots, and it had worked like magic. This news gave courage to other counties and one after another banished liquor, till the whole State shook off the monster. Is there anywhere a more striking example of the influence of the good man who keeps pegging away? A good life can never die. (Text.)
(1612)
Influence, Unconscious—See [Consistency].
INFLUENCE, UNNOTICED
Wesley declares that he owed his conversion to the teaching of Peter Bohler. What, then, exactly was that teaching? Bohler did unconsciously the supreme work of his life during these few days in London and at Oxford when he was conversing with Wesley. The humble-minded Moravian, wise only in spiritual science, touches Wesley—and then vanishes! But he helped to change the religious history of England, little as he himself dreamed of it.—W. H. Fitchett, “Wesley and His Century.”
(1613)
Influences—See [Environment].
Information, Misleading—See [Holding Their Own].
Information, The Passion for—See [Book-study].
INGENUITY
To enlist rats in the construction of telephone systems may sound empirical to the electrical engineer, but the familiar pest has been found a valuable assistant in this work. To stimulate, however, it is necessary to introduce his traditional enemy, the ferret. Then the process is simple. The subterranean tubes for the reception of the cables having been laid, a rat is let loose at the starting-point. Having run a little way, a trained ferret, with a string to his leg, is turned in after him. The tubes run into manholes at intervals, and the rat, furtively glancing back, sees the glaring eyes of his arch foe rapidly approaching. By the end of the section of tube the rat is either overtaken or falls into the manhole, and then another rat is requisitioned to run the next block. At the end of each section the string is removed from the ferret’s leg, and a small rope, which is then attached to the other end of the string, is hauled through.—Sound Waves.
(1614)
During some recent investigations of spider life a Washington scientist gained some interesting knowledge concerning the ingenuity of a spider.
It had become necessary in the course of the experiment to employ a basin wherein a stick was fastened upright like a mast. Enough water was placed in the basin to convert the little stick into the only point of safety for the spider.
The spider was placed on the mast. As soon as he was fairly isolated he anxiously commenced to run to find the mainland. He would scamper down the mast to the water, stick out a foot, get it wet, shake it, run around the stick to try the other side, and then run back to the top.
As it very soon became plain to the spider that his position was an extremely delicate one, he sat down to think it over. Suddenly he seemed to have an idea. Up he went, like a rocket, to the top of the mast, where he began a series of gymnastics. He held one foot in the air, then another, and turned round many times. By this time he was thoroughly excited, much to the perplexity of the scientist, who began to wonder what the spider had discovered. Finally, it was apparent that the clever little fellow had found that the draft of air caused by an open window would carry a line ashore whereby he could escape from his perilous position.
Accordingly he pushed out a thread that went floating in the air, and lengthened and lengthened until at last it caught on a near-by table. Then the ingenious spider hauled on his rope till it was tight, struck it several times to ascertain whether it was strong enough to hold his weight, and then walked ashore. The scientist decided that he was entitled to his liberty.—Harper’s Weekly.
(1615)
Haydn and Mozart were great friends. When either had composed a masterpiece, the other was invited to the house of the composer to enjoy the first sweetness. The following story is from The Boy’s World:
It chanced to be Haydn’s turn, and Mozart came full of expectation. Contrary to custom, Haydn invited his guest to give his interpretation of the theme instead of playing it over himself. Much pleased at the compliment, Mozart played brilliantly, for the work was beautiful and his musician’s soul was stirred. Suddenly he halted and looked across the piano at his friend.
“There’s a mistake here,” he said, “a passage written for three hands would be impossible for a soloist. Of course, those notes must come out.
“Oh!” said Haydn, quietly, “I can play it.”
Mozart laughed. “My friend, you have not three hands.”
“Perhaps not,” answered Haydn, with a quiet smile. “Nevertheless, I contend that I can play the passage, otherwise I would not have written it.”
“A challenge!” cried Mozart. “Prove your word.”
He yielded his place at the piano.
His excitement rose as Haydn reached the disputed passage, when, to his amazement, the composer brought his nose to the keyboard, and the notes rang out clear and true.
(1616)
INGRATITUDE
On the plains and along the broad bottoms of the Missouri River are the colonies—often a community of many members, with villages of wide extent—of the American marmots, or prairie-dogs. Merry, cheery, chipper little fellows these gregarious villagers sit on the mound above or beside the open door that leads to their comfortable subterranean dwellings, and hold converse in short not unmusical barks, each greeting his neighbor and rejoicing in the sunshine. But into the sanctity of the home which he and his have constructed with much labor, the burrowing owl comes, uninvited, and becomes a tenant with a life lease, without so much as “by your leave”; and one of the most atrocious results of this swindling arrangement is that the dog (a strict vegetarian) finds that the owl, whose young shares the nest with the infant marmots, feeds upon them and rears its young upon the bodies of the children of its victimized landlord.—Mrs. M. J. Gorton, Popular Science News.
(1617)
INHERITED PECULIARITIES
No study is more fascinating than the study of the laws of heredity. When a baby is born almost the first question is, “Whom does he resemble?” For months and years friends peer into the child’s face to discover, if possible, the family likeness. It has its mother’s eyes or its father’s mouth. If no marked resemblance can be found, the comment is, “How singular that this child is unlike every one in the family.” Resemblance is strange, but the absence of it, is more strange. A physical feature appears and reappears for generations. A delicate ear, looking like a translucent shell, is exactly reproduced. In some instances a generation is skipt, and then the likeness comes out again. A faded portrait or a medallion two hundred years old is brought to light, and in it you see the young man who stands by your side looking at it. Appetite for strong drink is found to exist in a whole family. Many a son inherits from his father tastes which almost inevitably produce the habit of intemperance. One of the most fearful woes of drunkenness is that it is entailed, and may become more terrible in the son than it was in the father. Strong animal passions predominate in some families, so that the sins of the fathers are repeated in the sons and grandsons. The expressions “good blood,” and “bad blood,” bear testimony to these well-known laws. In view of these facts, the questions we ask are in substance the questions of the disciples, “Where does the responsibility rest? Is there any blame? Is there any release? What does the religion of Jesus Christ say to these undeniable facts? Can it do anything to change them?” Upon us, as we are, with our natural and inherited characteristics, Christ performs His saving work. And it is matter of common observation, as undeniable as the facts of which we have been thinking, that those who truly become the servants of Christ are changed in this very respect, that they obtain genuine control over their inherited faults.—George Harris, Andover Review.
(1618)
Inharmony—See [Duality].
Inhumanity—See [Animals, Absurd Fondness for]; [Slave Trade, Atrocities of].
INITIATIVE
Charlotte Perkins Stetson writes of an experience in the following lines:
It takes great strength to train
To modern service your ancestral brain;
To lift the weight of the unnumbered years
Of dead men’s habits, methods, and ideas;
To hold that back with one hand, and support
With the other the weak steps of the new thought.
It takes great strength to bring your life up square
With your accepted thought and hold it there;
Resisting the inertia that drags back
From new attempts to the old habit’s track.
It is so easy to drift back, to sink;
So hard to live abreast of what you think.
But the best courage man has ever shown
Is daring to cut loose and think alone.
Dark are the unlit chambers of clear space
Where light shines back from no reflecting face.
Our sun’s wide glare, our heaven’s shining blue,
We owe to fog and dust they fumble through;
And our rich wisdom that we treasure so
Shines from the thousand things that we don’t know.
But to think new—it takes a courage grim
As led Columbus over the world’s rim.
To think it cost some courage. And to go—
Try it. It takes every power you know.
(1619)
INITIATIVE, LACK OF
That which is recorded of the telephone girl below is true of great numbers of both sexes in every walk of life. Patients in hospitals soon learn that “trained” nurses will never willingly do anything outside the routine of their directions, which they take mostly from the bulletin-boards. It is said of some physicians that they would prefer that their patients should die regularly rather than get well under an unaccredited practitioner.
A Philadelphia telephone girl refused to make connection with the Fire Department because the man at the other end of the line had not the necessary nickel to put in the slot. At the Earlswood Idiot Asylum, England, we saw several idiots who had been trained to “self-support under direction,” but they had no power of self-reliance; indeed, the superintendent informed us that up to that time there had been quite a number who could automatically do things after much training, but only three in the history of the institution (which was then comparatively young) had been trained to be self-reliant. A reasonable amount of common sense ought to be required of telephone girls or men. This girl’s stupid blunder nearly cost a life.
(1620)
INJUDICIOUS KINDNESS
Men ought not only to be kind and friendly, but to be judicious in the way they manifest their regard.
At the camp-fire and dinner of the Eleventh Army Corps in New York recently, Gen. James Grant Wilson, as reported in Tobacco, told how General Grant became the inveterate smoker that he was. He said that after the Fort Donelson fight the newspapers all over the North were filled with the story of how the silent captain had fought that fight with an unlighted cigar in his mouth. “Up to that time,” said General Wilson, “General Grant never smoked more than two cigars a day in his life. When the people of the North found that their commander evidently liked cigars, loyal souls from every great Northern city sent in cigars to Grant’s headquarters until he had piled up in his tent 20,000 cigars. He felt that it would not be polite to return them or to give them away, so the only thing to do was to smoke them. That was the beginning of it, and it ended with the smoking of something like a bunch of cigars every day.”
(1621)
Injurious, The, Made Valuable—See [Profit from Pests].
INJURY TO SELF
John Chrysostom, from a little town in the Taurus Mountains named Cucusus, to which he had been banished by Arcadius, addrest a treatise to Olympias entitled, “None Can Hurt a Man Who Will Not Hurt Himself.” Later, dying from cruel exposure, the last moments of this holy man were spent in praising God and admonishing his companions, and his last words were, “I have never been hurt, because I have not hurt myself.” (Text.)
(1622)
INJUSTICE
Judge Ben B. Lindsey, in The Survey, tells of a visit he made to a refined and lovely home in a large city in the East:
The people in that home were wealthy, and undoubtedly sincere in their self-righteousness; and in the happiness they found in the little charities they provided for the children of the workers in the mills and mines near by. The fathers earned $1.50 a day, worked long hours, shared all the hazards of their employment. My ten years’ experience in juvenile court work compelled me to admit that the powers that made valuable the stocks and bonds whence the wealth of this home came would be arrayed against any measure in the Legislature that would do economic justice to the parents of these children. It seemed strange to me that our kind-hearted, wealthy family, with morning prayers and regular church attendance, could not see something in the teaching of the Master beyond the kind of charity I have mentioned. I could not help but find a real meaning in some of the platitudes; “Equal rights to all, special privileges to none”; “Bear ye one another’s burdens”; “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil”; “Thy kingdom come—on earth.” How much was there of the real doing of the word? How well was it understood?
(1623)
A California paper recently said:
Eight years in prison for stealing eight copper cents from an Oakland store was the punishment dealt out to George Gron, who with a companion entered the store. Gron pleaded guilty. This sentence is in startling contrast to a year and a half given to J. Dalzell Brown, who wrecked the California Safe Deposit and Trust Company and robbed 1,200 depositors of nearly $9,000,000. Brown was tried only on one count, and he is now in charge of a deputy, enjoying the holidays because of his promise to give testimony against others in the bank wreck. All the other indictments against Brown have been dismist.
(1624)
Innate Receptivity to Evil—See [Disease, Causes of].
INNATE, THE
As in the case of the little girl mentioned below, we have to guard, not alone against the acts of evil men, but against what is in the men themselves:
“Come on! come on!” said a gentleman to a little girl at whom a dog had been barking furiously. “Come on! he’s quiet now.”
“Ah, but,” said the little girl, “the barks are in him still.”
(1625)
INNER LIFE
I was lately in a grove where a number of large sycamores were shedding their bark; at least three layers of the bark showed plainly, the coarse outer bark brown, but this shed in large spots or blotches, exposing the white inner bark, so well known in this great tree; but this also was peeling up, and falling here and there, and showing the clear, green inmost bark of the tree; the outer layers ripening, drying, dying, and falling off, but the inmost bark strengthening and renewing itself day by day.
But I was imprest with the fresh, wholesome look of these sycamores. Many trees of that name seem dying; not so those where the decaying outer bark was loosening and dropping, while the fresh young inner bark was coming out to take its place. I never saw healthier trees. They certainly were not hide-bound. I believe the quick dropping of the old bark gave the vigorous inner bark a chance to come out and strengthen, just as we know trials and afflictions often bring out the inner life in beauty and strength.—Franklin Noble, “Sermons in Illustration.”
(1626)
Inner Strength—See [Reputation and Character].
INNER VALUES
Not in the clamor of the crowded street,
Not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng,
But in ourselves, are triumph and defeat.
—Longfellow.
(1627)
Innocence—See [Circumstances].
INOCULATION
Jesus taught that human lives can be redeemed from sterility to fruitfulness, by an infusion of diverse life. Why should not this principle be even more valuable in morals than in nature?
“To inoculate sterile ground and make it bring forth fruit in abundance is one of the latest achievements of American science,” says G. H. Grosvenor in The National Geographic Magazine. “Some of man’s most dread diseases—smallpox, diphtheria, plague, rabies—have been vanquished by inoculation, and now inoculation is to cure soil that has been worn out and make it fertile and productive again. The germs that bring fertility are mailed by the Department of Agriculture in a small package like a yeast-cake. The cake contains millions of dried germs. The farmer who receives the cake drops it into a barrel of clean water; the germs are revived and soon turns the water to a milky white. Seeds of clover, peas, alfalfa, or other leguminous plants that are then soaked in this milky preparation are endowed with marvelous strength. Land on which, for instance, the farmer with constant toil had obtained alfalfa only a few inches high, when planted with these inoculated seeds will produce alfalfa several feet high and so rich that the farmer does not recognize his crop.” (Text.)
(1628)
INSANITY
Felix was so crazed by sin as to be incapable of judging of Paul’s sanity. Here is an analogy from nature:
The abominable Mexican plant known as the loco-weed has the peculiar property of making irrational both men and beasts who partake of it. Horses and cattle out on the prairies after grazing upon it go crazy, and a “locoed” pony will perform all kinds of queer antics. It is said that if a man comes under its spell he never regains his senses, the insanity produced by it being incurable. It is said that the loss of mind of the illfated Carlotta was no doubt due to the fact that some enemy drugged her with a preparation of loco, altho history has it that she went insane by reason of her husband’s execution.
(1629)
See [Concert, Lack of].
INSANITY CURED
An instance of a family of insane dependents illustrates the operation of stress and strain to render a psychopathic family helpless and make it dependent upon the State. This family consists of an inebriate father who married a normal woman with two insane brothers. The father has an insane brother. From this union sprang three children, all of whom have been insane from time to time, and who alternated in residence at a State hospital as committed insane patients, joined at intervals by their uncles, and once by their father. The superintendent of the hospital retained the father in custody until he could put him in good condition, mentally, morally and physically, and discharged him in such form that for the first time in the recollection of the family he has been sober, industrious and kind. He has paid off a mortgage on the farm and is putting money in the bank. The conditions of this family are shown in above chart.
The two sons are working and there is an atmosphere of peace and happiness in the home. Two uncles remained under care, but all the members of one household are out of the hospital. If a wise hospital superintendent can solve such a difficult problem, the result can be duplicated in many instances by field physicians working in consonance with after-care people. Actual prophylactic work will be impossible under close medical and lay organization, and definite results be reached. The discharged patient will return to fewer difficulties. The improved environment will produce fewer patients.—Albert W. Ferris.
(1630)
INSANITY, STATISTICS OF
The United States Census gives the following facts about insanity in the United States:
Total Insane:
| 1890 | In hospitals | 74,028. | Total 106,485. |
| 1906 | In hospitals | 150,151. | (Total not given). |
| 1903 | Males in Hospital | 78,523 | |
| Females | 71,628 |
Hospitals:
Public, 226; private, 102.
Twenty-two and one-half per cent. of the insane were persons in some out of door occupation and 16 per cent. in manufacturing or some indoor occupation, but the proportion in each case to the whole number respectively so employed is not given.
The percentage proportioned to population of whites is greater than of blacks. None of the insane reported were under twelve years of age.
(1631)
Inscrutability of God—See [God’s Inscrutability].
INSECT, A MODEL
Mark Isambard Brunel, the great engineer, was standing one day, about three-quarters of a century ago, in a ship-yard watching the movements of an animal known as the Teredo navales—in English, the naval wood-worm—when a brilliant thought suddenly occurred to him. He saw that this creature bored its way into the piece of wood upon which it was operating by means of a very extraordinary mechanical apparatus. Looking at the animal attentively through a microscope, he found that it was covered in front with a pair of valvular shells; that with its foot as a purchase, it communicated a rotary motion and a forward impulse to the valves, which, acting upon the wood like a gimlet, penetrated its substance; and that as the particles of wood were loosened, they passed through a fissure in the foot and thence through the body of the borer to its mouth, where they were expelled. “Here,” said Brunel to himself, “is the sort of thing I want. Can I reproduce it in artificial form?” He forthwith set to work, and the final result of his labors, after many failures, was the famous boring-shield with which the Thames tunnel was excavated. This story was told by Brunel himself, and there is no reason to doubt its truth. The keen observer can draw useful lessons from the humblest of the works of God.—New York Ledger.
(1632)
INSECTS OF REMOTE TIMES
Discoveries in the coal-mines of central France have furnished by far the greatest advance that has ever been made in our knowledge of the insects which inhabited the world millions of years, as geologists believe, before the time when man made his appearance upon the earth. In that wonderful age when the carboniferous plants, whose remains constitute the coal-beds of to-day, were alive and flourishing, the air and the soil were animated by the presence of flies, grasshoppers, cockroaches, dragon-flies, spiders, locusts, and scores of other species which exist but slightly changed at the present time. But the insects of those remote times attained a gigantic size, some of the dragon-flies measuring two feet from tip to tip of their expanded wings. The remains of these insects have been marvelously preserved in the strata of coal and rock.—Harper’s Weekly.
(1633)
Insecurity—See [Human Nature, Insecurity of].
INSENSITIVENESS TO BEAUTY
I remember walking at night with a good fellow by the side of a transparent sea; nothing was heard but the eternal murmur of the restless waters on the pebbles; a full moon was making a path of heavenly splendor across the waves. It was a night of supernatural beauty—a night in whose silence all the voices of the universe were speaking to the soul. His complaint was that there was no band. (Text.)
(1634)
Insignificance—See [Resources, God’s].
INSINCERITY
There is no place where human nature can be studied to better advantage, or public opinion be more quickly ascertained, than in the office of a railroad president. It helps the railway president if he is also a politician and a man of the world. The experience tends to cynicism and cultivates the theory which gives too great prominence to the influence of association and point of view in fixing creeds, faiths, churchmanship and partizanship. The visitor always tried to make the president believe that he came for some other purpose than the real object of his mission. Why men believe they can succeed better in what they seek by this sort of fraud, is a mystery. The most curious exhibit is the man of many millions, who pretends that he wishes to consult you in regard to investments in the securities of your company, and ends by asking for a pass.—Chauncey M. Depew.
(1635)
Inspection, Careful Food—See [Buying, Good].
INSPIRATION
The following lines on “Inspiration” were penned by Bishop Doane, of Albany, N. Y.:
Chisel in hand stood a sculptor boy,
With his marble block before him;
And his face lit up with a smile of joy
As an angel dream passed o’er him.
He carved that dream on the yielding stone
With many a sharp incision;
In heaven’s own light the sculptor shone,
He had caught that angel vision.
Sculptors of life are we, as we stand,
With our lives uncarved before us;
Waiting the hour when, at God’s command,
Our life dream passes o’er us.
Let us carve it then on the yielding stone,
With many a sharp incision;
Its heavenly beauty shall be our own—
Our lives, that angel vision.
(1636)
Inspiration from Things Done—See [Ability, Gage of].
INSPIRATION OF EVENTS
On the 19th of April, 1861, some of the enthusiastic Southern sympathizers of Baltimore, driven frantic by the passage of Northern troops through the city for the invasion of the South, attacked the Sixth Regiment of Massachusetts volunteers with bricks and stones as they marched along Pratt Street to take the train at Camden Station for Washington. The soldiers, who were fully armed with Springfield rifles, fired upon the citizens, killing several and wounding many others, some of whom had taken no part in the affray, but were merely distant spectators.
When this news was flashed around the land, it reached a young Baltimorean, a professor in Poydras College at Pointe Coupée, one hundred and twenty miles above New Orleans. His heart fired with patriotic enthusiasm and the great thoughts that surged through his mind kept him awake all night. At dawn he sat down at his desk and wrote “Maryland, My Maryland.” It was first published in the New Orleans Delta. In a few weeks it was copied by all the leading newspapers of the South, and James R. Randall, like Byron, awoke one morning and found himself famous.
(1637)
INSPIRATION, SOURCE OF
A soul that is sensitive to truth is easily excited to emotion and incited to effort. Haydn, it is said, had his musical genius aroused by the brilliancy of a diamond ring he wore, the gift of Frederick the Great.
We confer a greater blessing on our fellow men when by any act, or even by any look, we draw out what is in them, than when we bestow any gift or favor upon them.
(1638)
The famous operatic composers had different methods of getting inspiration for their immortal compositions. One could not write the score unless he had a cat upon his shoulders. There are in his symphonies suggestions of an orchestra which every one of us born in the country recognizes as the familiar strain of a summer’s night; another could stir his genius best at the billiard-table, and in his refrains is heard the rattling fire of the ivory balls; while a third, by walks in the woods and communing with nature, transferred to the orchestra and chorus the sublime secrets of creation.—Chauncey M. Depew.
(1639)
INSTABILITY
Society is curst with young men and women who are driven and tossed by every wind. I would as soon think of anchoring an ocean-liner to a fog-bank instead of a rock as to anchor a reform, a useful club, a great movement or church to their lives and leadership.—N. D. Hillis.
(1640)
INSTINCT
Man is gifted with the supreme endowment of reason. This marks humanity off from all the rest of the animal creation. But the Creator institutes a law of compensation. There are certain powers and faculties in inferior creatures which have never been evolved in man, and which are plainly evidences of supernatural power applied for the benefit of beings denied the prerogative of reason.
How does it come about that if a salmon is taken when only a few months old from its native fjord on the coast of Norway, and marked and then sent into the sea again, it may, after traversing the ocean for thousands of miles, be found again the next year in that same fjord? It has returned without fail to its birthplace. The reason is that God gave it a miraculous guide-book called instinct. How comes it that when, in a beehive, the temperature rises so that the wax might melt, every tenth bee glues its feet down to the board, and fans with its wings at a tremendous velocity as long as may be necessary? It is because God gave this little creature the same infallible guide-book. How is it that the same pairs of swallows return all the way from Africa to rear a fresh family in the same old nests under the eaves? It is because that same miraculous instinct led them unerringly. (Text.)
(1641)
INSTINCT ADAPTED TO EMERGENCY
In guarding against evils should we not be as fertile in expedients to adapt our defense to the kind of weapons we possess as some cattle are:
The plainsmen on Western cattle-ranches have called attention to an illustration of the adaptability of animal instinct to emergencies.
The cattle of former days were of the long-horned kind. When the herd was threatened with an attack by wolves, the calves were placed in the middle of the bunch and the older animals formed themselves into a solid phalanx about them, all facing outward.
The cattle of to-day are largely hornless. If, as occasionally happens still, the herd is attacked by wolves, the calves are guarded as before, but the herd faces in instead of out. Their hoofs, not their horns, are now their weapons.
(1642)
Instinct of Animals—See [Faith Better Than Sight].
Instinct of Insects—See [Shelter].
INSTINCT, THE HOMING
A well-known minister of Austin, Texas, retells a story which was related to him by a friend living in Lawrence, Massachusetts:
“He raised a dog, crossed with hound and pointer, and littered in Lawrence. When a year old he took the young dog to Boston, got on board of a sailing-vessel, went by sea and river to Bangor, Maine, drove forty miles into the woods at Cleveland’s Camp and hunted there two weeks, the dog proving to be a great success for quick, fast runs and returns to camp.
“After the hunting was over and while on his back trip to Bangor, the dog jumped from the wagon into the bushes, having heard or smelled a deer, and went off on a hot chase. The boats ran only once in two weeks, so that, much as he valued the dog, it was necessary to go on. He took the boat at Bangor, returned by river and sea to Boston and back to Lawrence. About two weeks afterward the dog crawled into his yard, footsore and half-starved, but safe at home and glad to get back.” (Text.)—Harper’s Weekly.
(1643)
Instruction—See [Food and Exercise].
INSTRUMENTS
When Saladin looked at the sword of Richard the Lion-Hearted, he wondered that a blade so ordinary should have wrought such mighty deeds. The English King bared his arm and said: “It was not the sword that did these things; it was the arm of Richard.”
(1644)
INSTRUMENTS, IMPORTANCE OF GOOD
Dr. Z. F. Vaughn, well known in medical and scientific circles, has perfected a process for tempering to the hardness of steel the ductile metals, gold, silver and copper. Already Dr. Vaughn is manufacturing a large number of gold-bladed scalpels, probes, hypodermic and suture needles and other surgical instruments. These are replacing similar articles of steel.
The sharp edge of a gold blade is almost perfectly smooth; that of steel, no matter how fine the edge, is rough and saw-like. Because it is porous, the steel blade has never made a perfect surgical instrument. In the meshes of that metal may be hidden the infinitesimal germs of a virulent disease, or there may be a rust spot so tiny that it could not be discerned by the surgeon, but which might be sufficient seriously to poison the tissues in which the knife makes a wound, resulting in blood-poisoning that would cause death. In gold, being dense, this danger does not exist, and gold does not rust.
Besides, the gold blade divides evenly the flesh or tissue which it cuts; the steel blade really saws or tears its way through. Therefore, even when there is no infection, the wound made with a steel instrument does not heal nearly so readily as that made with gold. Another feature of a gold blade is that the wound which it makes leaves no scar.
(1645)
INSULATION
In 1846 Werner Siemens, of Berlin, discovered the non-conducting properties of gutta-percha. He coated several miles of copper wire with gutta-percha, and submerged it in the Rhine from Deutz to Cologne. Electric communication was thus established beneath the water from shore to shore. In 1850 a submarine cable was laid across the English Channel from Dover to Cape Grisnez. It consisted of a half-inch copper wire covered with nothing but gutta-percha, and loaded with lead to keep it down. The communication was perfect for a day, and then the wire refused to act. The electrical engineers were unable to explain the facts. At last the mystery was dissipated by a fisherman. A French fisherman set his trawl off Cape Grisnez. When he hauled it in, he picked up the submerged cable, from which he cut off a piece. This piece he carried in triumph to Bologne, where he exhibited it as a specimen of rare seaweed with its center filled with gold. The ignorant man had mistaken the copper wire for gold, but unwittingly he had served the electricians. They saw from the accident that it was not sufficient perfectly to insulate the cable, but that it must also be protected. In 1851 there was laid across the Channel a cable twenty-four miles long, consisting of four copper wires, insulated by gutta-percha, covered with tarred yarn, and protected by an outer covering of galvanized iron wires. That submarine cable proved a success, and ocean telegraphy became possible through an accident which compelled invention.—Youth’s Companion.
(1646)
INTEGRITY
Stephen V. White, a New York financier, became involved and only able to pay thirty-five cents on the dollar. His character for honesty and integrity was so established that his creditors gave him an absolute, legal release from an indebtedness of almost a million. Within about a year he repaid principal and interest.—James T. White, “Character Lessons.”
(1647)
INTEGRITY, EVIDENCE OF
Samuel Appleton, when twenty-eight years old, began the business of cotton manufacturing. He was incapable of anything indirect or underhand. He knew but one way of speaking, and that was to speak the truth. As an evidence of the way in which he was regarded: when a note purporting to be signed by him was pronounced by him a forgery, altho no one was able to distinguish one handwriting from the other, the jury found a verdict in his favor, because they were quite sure that Mr. Appleton would not dispute the payment except upon the certainty of his not making it.—James T. White, “Character Lessons.”
(1648)
Intelligence—See [Knowledge Values].
INTELLIGENCE, ANIMAL
One of the many delusions engendered by our human self-conceit and habit of considering the world as only such as we know it from our human point of view, is that of supposing human intelligence to be the only kind of intelligence in existence. The fact is, that what we call the lower animals have special intelligence of their own as far transcending our intelligence as our peculiar reasoning intelligence exceeds theirs. We are as incapable of following the track of a friend by the smell of his footsteps as a dog is of writing a metaphysical treatise. (Text.)—W. Mattieu Williams, “Science in Short Chapters.”
(1649)
Intelligence in Creation—See [Design in Nature].
Intelligence in Rooks—See [Enemies, Avoiding].
INTELLIGENCE IN SOLDIERS
The American Army is regarded as formidable because “its bayonets think.” That they thought and acted to some purpose was shown in many exigencies of the Civil war, as the following, told by Gen. Carl Schurz:
One of General Butler’s staff-officers told me a little story which illustrates the character of our volunteer regiments. When our troops took possession of Annapolis, there was but one locomotive in the railroad shop, and that locomotive had been partly taken to pieces by the “rebel sympathizers” of the place, in order to make it unfit for use. A volunteer regiment was drawn up in line, and men who thought themselves able to repair a locomotive were called for. A dozen or more privates stept forward, and one of them exclaimed: “Why, that locomotive was built in my shop!” In a short time the locomotive was again in working order.
(1650)
Intelligence in Storks—See [Family Offense in Storks].
INTELLIGENCE OUTDOING IGNORANCE
In Togoland there is a large tree which is worshiped by all the inhabitants as a god named Azago. He is the giver of children, and crops, and all blessings. No one is permitted to eat fresh yams until the priest of Azago announces that the god has partaken of them. A dreadful fatality will follow such a disobedience. One year a pupil in a mission school ate a yam before the appointed time, and his distracted parents looked for his death and for all calamities to come—but the boy prospered and grew fat, and none of his kindred died. The next year all the children of that mission school ate yams before permission was given by the priest of Azago, and none perished. The people wanted also to eat, but the priest warned them that the God of the mission schools was greater than Azago, so the mission children could eat yams with impunity, but not so the general populace. But from that time the power of the superstition declined, and recently when one of the priests died the elders decided to forsake Azago and serve the living, true God. (Text.)
(1651)
INTEMPERANCE
Lilla N. Cushman furnished to the Chicago Sun a bit of verse for possible blackboard use on the wine glass:
There’s danger in the glass! Beware
lest it enslaves. They who have drained
it find, alas! too often, early graves.
It sparkles to allure, with its rich, ruby
light; there is no antidote or cure,
only its course to fight. It changes
men to brutes; makes women bow
their head; fills homes with anguish,
want, disputes, and takes
from children bread. Then
dash the glass away, and
from the serpent flee;
drink pure, cold water
day
by
day,
and
walk
God’s footstool free.(Text.)
(1652)
“Will alcohol dissolve sugar?”
“It will,” replied Old Soak; “it will dissolve gold and brick houses, and horses, and happiness, and love and everything else worth having.” (Text.)—Houston Post.
(1653)
See [Beer, Effect of]; [Drink, Drunkenness]; [Evidence, Living]; [Inebriety, Incurable]; [Side, Choosing the Right].
INTEMPERANCE IN OLD DAYS
When wooden ship-building was the staple trade of the river Wear, in England, says an English exchange, when an extra-sized ship was launched all the day-schools in the town got a holiday. It was on these occasions that the ship-builders provided an unlimited supply of beer to all comers, and it was a recognized rule of Wearside that members of the churches or chapel were privileged to get drunk without losing their membership.
(1654)
In medieval times the farmers brewed good brown ale and took it to the churchyard in barrels, which were tapped on the spot. The neighbors then said to one another: “Come hither; there be a church-ale toward yonder.” They paid for the beer, and the rector’s churchwarden kept the tale of incoming moneys. Easter-ales, Whitsun-ales, church-ales, even bride-ales to help a penniless marriage—all were merry meetings in churchyard or church which all the inhabitants were bidden to attend at a charge of one penny. Tho they had grown to unruly revels, they were not finally supprest till the time of the Commonwealth.—Edward Gilliat, “Heroes of Modern Crusades.”
(1655)
INTEMPERANCE IN SONS
Rev. W. F. Crafts says:
Recently, in a New England manufacturing city, we noted a change that bodes no good for business or politics or religion. We found that the old men who founded and developed the mills were all total abstainers and had been from youth, but their sons, who were succeeding to these great responsibilities, had nearly all of them come back from college with drinking habits.
Intemperate Living—See [Longevity Accounted for].
INTENSITY
In the concluding chapters of Ellen Terry’s memoirs (McClure’s Magazine), she writes of the last days of Henry Irving. The doctor had warned Irving not to play “The Bells” again after an illness that attacked him in the spring of 1905. He saw the “terrible emotional strain ‘The Bells’ put upon Henry”—how he never could play the part of Matthias “on his head,” as he could Louis XI, for example. Miss Terry goes on in words almost implying that Matthias killed him. We read:
“Every time he heard the sound of bells, the throbbing of his heart must have nearly killed him. He used always to turn quite white—there was no trick about it. It was imagination acting physically on the body.
“His death as Matthias—the death of a strong, robust man—was different from all his other stage deaths. He did really almost die—he imagined his death with such horrible intensity. His eyes would disappear upward, his face grow gray, his limbs cold.
“No wonder, then, that the first time that the Wolverhampton doctor’s warning was disregarded, and Henry played ‘The Bells,’ at Bradford, his heart could not stand the strain. Within twenty-four hours of his death as Matthias, he was dead.”
(1657)
INTENTION
While “we have this treasure in earthen vessels” we can never fully manifest the best that is in us. Benjamin R. Bulkeley tells us in the following verse that God knows how much better we intend than we can do:
There was never a song that was sung by thee,
But a sweeter one was meant to be.
There was never a deed that was grandly done,
But a greater was meant by some earnest one,
For the sweetest voice can never impart
The song that trembles within the heart.
And the brain and the hand can never quite do
The thing that the soul has fondly in view.
And hence are the tears and the burdens of pain,
For the shining goals are never to gain,
But enough that a God can hear and see
The song and the deed that were meant to be.
(1658)
Interception—See [Interruption].
Intercession—See [Sacrificial Mediation].
INTERDEPENDENCE
Every great newspaper periodically announces its dependence upon immature, half-grown boys, whose nimble steps and strident voices secure its circulation. The brain which forges the editorial, the skill which administers the counting-room, however great, imposing, or commanding, must doff its hat of necessity to the barefooted newsboy and confess its obligation to him in his obscurity for its chance to reach its constituency.—Nehemiah Boynton.
(1659)
See [Solidarity]; [Survival of the Fittest].
Interest in Religious Education—See [Adapting the Bible].
Interest, Intense—See [Book, Influence of a].
INTEREST, SIGNIFICANT
I have often been appealed to by friends, who said: “Can’t you take this young man and give him employment?” Then I will watch that young man for a month or so and see what it is that he takes up in the morning. If he takes up the newspaper and turns to the political part of the paper, and is interested in that, why that is a good symptom of his intellectual tendencies; but if, instead of that, he takes up a magazine and sits down to read a love story, why you can not make a newspaper man out of him.—Charles A. Dana.
(1660)
Interests, The Functioning of—See [Atrophy].
Internationalism—See [Statesmanship].
Interpretation and Individuality—See [Individuality in Interpretation].
INTERPRETATION BY EXPERIENCE
A little boy who was born blind had an operation performed which enabled him to see. His mother led him out into the fields, and uncovered his eyes for the first time, and let him look upon the sky and trees and grass and flowers. “Oh, mother!” he cried, “why didn’t you tell me it was so beautiful?” “I tried to tell you, dear,” was her answer, “but you could not understand me.”
So it is sometimes with great verses in the Bible. When we read them first or commit them to memory, we do not understand, but after, when they fit the heart life and our eyes are opened, we wonder at the beauty of them.—Phebe Palmer.
(1661)
Interpretation by Love—See [Love, Interpretation by].
INTERRUPTION
It is to be feared that much of the force of God’s spirit is cut off by the world’s atmosphere before it reaches a soul that is immersed in worldliness:
The greatest difficulty in arriving at a correct conception of the amount of heat received from the sun lies in the fact that all such measures must be made at the earth’s surface. Before reaching the apparatus the sun’s rays pass through many miles of atmosphere; the heat and light are absorbed and only a small portion of the original energy of the rays actually reaches the surface and becomes effective in heating the water of our apparatus.—Charles Lane Poor, “The Solar System.”
(1662)
In “One Word More” Browning tells us that Dante “once prepared to paint an angel”; but “certain people of importance” broke in upon him, and so, much to the poet’s and the world’s regret, we can never see that angel he might have wrought.
Perhaps the very serious power of interruptions, and what we may call their irreligiousness, has been too little appreciated. Florence Nightingale recognized the possible harm done to an invalid by making any abrupt change in his condition. “You may suffocate him by giving him his food suddenly; but, if you rub his lips gently with a spoon, and thus attract his attention, he will swallow the food with perfect safety. Thus it is with the brain.” Miss Nightingale adds acutely, “I have never known persons who exposed themselves for years to constant interruption who did not muddle away their intellects by it at last.”
(1663)
See [Happiness].
INTERVENTION, DIVINE
A large number of Russian criminals were standing in the courtyard of their prison, chained together, and about starting for their long journey to Siberia. Among them was one Christian Stundist, sharing their banishment because he had spoken to his fellow workmen about the faith in Christ he profest. His fellow prisoners were jeering him about it, saying: “You are no better off than we. You are wearing the bracelets (handcuffs) as we do; if your God is of any use to you, why doesn’t he knock off your chains and set you free?” The man reverently replied, “If the Lord will He can set me free even now; and tho my hands are chained my heart is free.” At that moment his name was called; a paper had just been received granting him a full pardon. He was then told to stand aside; his chains were struck off. At the same time the prison gates were thrown open and all the rest of the convicts filed out, the Stundist remaining behind with permission to return to his family and friends. It is said the prisoners were perfectly awestricken with what they had witnessed. Unknown to the Stundist, a Christian lady had obtained his pardon, and God had ordered its arrival at the critical moment.
(1664)
But for the divine vigilance, an unseen Helper, what youth but would go down! In every hour when Achilles is about to be overborne by the number and strength of his enemies, Homer makes some goddess appear to lift a shield above the hero for protection. Again and again Thetis stands between her son and the enemy. Of your youth, how true it is that God hath interfered in your behalf!—N. D. Hillis.
(1665)
INTIMACY WITH CHRIST
When the great artist, Sir Alma-Tadema, was painting his “Heliogabalus,” which made a sensation during its exhibition at the British Royal Academy, and in which roses are a prominent feature, he was in the habit of receiving from Italy a fresh box of roses twice a week, so that he literally and actually had a new model for every individual blossom.
If the painter must live in close and delicate touch with nature, much more must the messenger of Christ abide in direct communion with the Savior if he would catch the virtue, the color and the aroma of celestial things. (Text.)
(1666)
INTOLERANCE
We should be thankful that such conditions as those described below no longer exist:
No religious meetings outside the ordinary services of the Church could be held without a license under the Toleration Act; and those taking part in such meetings, in order to secure the right to hold them, had to register themselves as Dissenters. This law extended to America, and so the first Methodist Church in the United States was adorned with that very unecclesiastical bit of architecture—a chimney. When a Methodist church was built it had to disguise itself as a house in order to secure the right to exist.—W. H. Fitchett, “Wesley and His Century.”
(1667)
In a dark wood where wild beasts lived there once lay a man’s boot. How it came there, I can not say, for no man had been there—at least the wild beasts had not seen one in all their lives. But there the boot was, and when the beasts saw it they all came round to find out what it was. Such a thing was quite new to them; but they were not much at a loss for all that.
“Well, there is no doubt as to what it is, I say,” said the bear.
“Oh, of course not,” said the wolf and the goat and all the beasts and birds in one breath.
“Of course,” said the bear, “it is the rind of some kind of fruit off a tree—the fruit of the cork, I should say. This is cork, it is plain to see,” and he showed the sole of the boot.
“Oh, just hear him! just hear him!” cried all the beasts and birds.
“It is not that at all,” said the wolf, with a glance of scorn at the bear. “Of course it is some kind of nest. Look; here is the hole for the bird to go in at, and here is the deep part for the eggs and young ones to be safe. No doubt at all, of course not!”
“Oh, oh!” cried the bear and the goat and all the birds and beasts, “just hear what he says! It is not that at all.”
“I should think not,” said the goat. “It is quite a plain case. Look at this long root,” and he showed the string at the side of the boot. “It is the root of a plant, of course.”
“Not a bit of it,” cried the wolf and the bear; “not a bit of it. A root? How can you say so? It is not that, we can all see.”
“If I might speak,” said an old owl, who sat in a tree near, “I think I can tell you what it is. I have been in a land where there are more of such things than you could count. It is a man’s boot.”
“A what?” cried all the beasts and birds. “What is a man? and what is a boot?”
“A man,” said the owl, “is a thing with two legs that can walk and eat and talk, like us; but he can do much more than we can.”
“Pooh, pooh!” cried they all.
“That can’t be true,” said the beasts. “How can a thing with two legs do more than we can, who have four? It is false, of course.”
“Of course it is if they have no wings,” said the birds.
“Well,” went on the owl, “they have no wings, and yet it is true. And they can make things like this, and they call them boots and put them on their feet.”
“Oh, oh!” cried all the beasts and birds at once. “How can you? For shame. Fie on you! That is not true, of course. It can not be.”
“A likely story!” said the bear.
“Can do more than we can?” said the wolf.
“Wear things on their feet?” cried they all. “On the face of it your story is not true. We know that such things are not worn on the feet. How could they be?”
“Of course they could not,” said the bear; “it is false.”
“It must be false,” cried all the birds and beasts. “You must leave the wood,” they said to the owl. “What you say can not be true. You are not fit to live with us. You have said what you know is false. It must be, of course.”
And they chased the poor old owl out of the wood, and would not let him come back.
“It is true for all that,” said the owl.
And so it was.—The Nursery.
(1668)
INTRODUCTIONS
Some introductions to sermons, speeches, articles, etc., would gain if they were made as brief as the speech of this mayor:
“Long introductions when a man has a speech to make are a bore,” said former Senator John C. Spooner, according to The Saturday Evening Post. “I have had all kinds, but the most satisfactory one in my career was that of a German mayor of a small town in my State, Wisconsin.
“I was to make a political address, and the opera-house was crowded. When it came time to begin, the mayor got up.
“‘Mine friends,’ he said, ‘I have been asked to introduce Senator Spooner, who is to make a speech, yes. Vell, I haf dit so, und he vill now do so.’”
(1669)
Intruders—See [Ingratitude].
Intrusion—See [Trivial Causes].
INTUITION
What is true in music, according to R. H. Haweis, is equally true of all intuitive processes:
To accompany well you must not only be a good musician, but you must be mesmeric, sympathetic, intuitive. You must know what I want before I tell you; you must feel which way my spirit sets, for the motions of the soul are swift as an angel’s flight. I can not pause in those quick and subtle transitions of emotion, fancy, passion, to tell you a secret; if it is not yours already, you are unworthy of it. Your finishing lessons in music can do nothing for you. Your case is hopeless. You have not enough music in you to know that you are a failure.
(1670)
INTUITIVE JUDGMENT
Mill cites the following case, which is worth noting as an instance of the extreme delicacy and accuracy to which may be developed this power of sizing up the significant factors of a situation. A Scotch manufacturer procured from England, at a high rate of wages, a working dyer famous for producing very fine colors, with the view of teaching to his other workmen the same skill. The workman came; but his method of proportioning the ingredients, in which lay the secret of the effects he produced, was by taking them up in handfuls, while the common method was to weigh them. The manufacturer sought to make him turn his handling system into an equivalent weighing system, that the general principles of his peculiar mode of proceeding might be ascertained. This, however, the man found himself quite unable to do, and could therefore impart his own skill to nobody. He had, from individual cases of his own experience, established a connection in his mind between fine effects of color and tactual perceptions in handling his dyeing materials; and from these perceptions he could, in any particular case, infer the means to be employed and the effects which would be produced.—John Dewey, “How We Think.”
(1671)
Invention—See [Ambition].
Invention and Employment—See [Value of One Man].
Inventions—See [Labor-saving Devices].
Inventions, Worthless—See [Disappointment].
Inventive Possibilities—See [Future Possibilities].
INVESTMENT RETURN
The Rev. John F. Goucher established many vernacular Christian schools in the villages of India.
An American traveler in northern India, strolling on the platform when the train had come to a standstill, saw a native who drew near, eyed him closely, then fell before him, clasped him about the ankles, and beating his feet with his head, cried, “I am your servant, and you are my savior!”
The traveler bade the man get up and say what he had to say. The native at length exprest himself: “You are Dr. Goucher, of America, are you not? All that I am and have I owe to you. Hearing that you were traveling through on this train, I walked more than twenty miles just to see your train pass. Now God has let me look into your face.”
Thousands of young Indians in the north-west provinces of India call themselves “Goucher Boys,” and look upon a man in distant America, whom they have never seen, as their friend and emancipator.—William T. Ellis, “Men and Missions.”
(1672)
INVESTMENT, SAFE
One of the Copes had but just written his check for $50 for some local charity, when a messenger announced the wreck of an East Indiaman belonging to the firm, and that the ship and cargo were a total loss. Another check for $500 was substituted at once, and given to the agent of the hospital with the remark: “What I have God gave me, and before it all goes, I had better put some of it where it can never be lost.” (Text.)—Noah Hunt Schenck.
(1673)
Invisible, Answers from the—See [Unseen, Response from the].
INVISIBLE, POTENCY OF THE
Material forces called battleships bulk larger, but the invisible spiritual forces go farther, last longer and make cannon seem contemptible and paltry. In cold countries men sometimes build palaces of ice for some public function. In the hour when beautiful women and brilliant military bands assemble for a winter festival, the water, manifest in blocks of ice, seems very imposing. But would you know the real power of water, wait until it becomes invisible. Then lift your eyes to the western sunset, where colors of gold and rose are revealed by this invisible vapor; watch the rain-drop redden in the purple flow of grape and the crimson drops of pomegranate, or see it tossed by a harvester in sheaves of grain. Then, in what water does through its invisible workings, do we know its place in nature and its contributions to man’s happiness. (Text.)—N. D. Hillis.
(1674)
INVISIBLE MADE VISIBLE
On the brightest and sunniest day, millions of tons of black charcoal in an invisible condition are floating in the air. Millions of plants are at the same time restoring it to visible form by the chemical processes going on in the tiny laboratory of every leaf that expands in the sunshine. In the course of time the leaf or the wood it elaborates by its delicate alchemy, may be burned; and this cycle of change may go on indefinitely, the matter becoming visible and invisible again and again. (Text.)—Popular Science News.
(1675)
In chemical operations, whether natural or artificial, matter is often “lost to sight”; but the veriest tyro has learned, as one of the fundamental axioms of science, that it can never be actually lost or destroyed. In its manifold mutations it often disappears from our vision; but it reappears, or can be made to reappear, as palpable to our senses as before. If a piece of silver be put into nitric acid, a clear and colorless liquid, it is rapidly dissolved, and we “see it no more.” The solution may be mixed with water, and apparently no effect is produced. Thus, in a pail of water we may dissolve fifty dollars’ worth of silver, not a particle of which can be seen. Not even the chemist, unless he should apply certain tests to detect its presence, would, by merely looking at the liquid, guess what hidden wealth it contained. Other metals, as we know, can be treated in similar ways with the same result. When charcoal and many other substances are burned, they disappear as completely, no visible ashes even being left from the combustion. In fact, every material, which is visible can, by certain treatment, be rendered invisible. Matter which in one state or condition is perfectly opaque, and will not permit a ray of light to pass through it, will in another form become perfectly transparent. The cause of this wonderful change in matter is utterly inexplicable.—Popular Science News.
(1676)
The progress of science is fast bringing the hitherto invisible universe into man’s view.
Unofficial announcement has been made at Boston that Prof. H. C. Ernst, of the Harvard medical school, has discovered a new method of photographing bacteria, which makes it possible to watch the life of disease germs, to watch the effect of medicine upon them and to see new facts as to the form which has heretofore been clouded in mystery. The Ernst method consists in the use of ultra-violet rays of the spectrum which are invisible to the eye. Under the present method no picture of germs is made until they are colored by chemicals.
(1677)
Invitation—See [Help for the Helpless].
Inward Rectification—See [Transformation by Renewing].
IRONY OFTEN MISUNDERSTOOD
The fact is that the Carlyles habitually addrest one another with irony. It is no uncommon thing between intimates: it is rather a sign of the security of the affection which unites them. But if, by some unhappy accident, a third person who has no sense of humor hears this gay clash of keen words, and puts them down in dull print, and goes on to point out in his dull fashion that they do not sound affectionate, and are phrases by no means in common use among excellent married persons of average intellects, it is easy to see that the worst sort of mischief may readily be wrought.—W. J. Dawson, “The Makers of English Prose.”
(1678)
IRRATIONAL LAWS
The law of imprisonment for debt, which existed so long in England, the land of freedom, whereby a creditor enforced payment of debt by imprisoning his debtor for unlimited periods, is perhaps the most irrational that ever existed. The purposeless cruelty of imprisonment for debt was demonstrated in 1792, when a woman died in Devon jail, after forty-five years’ imprisonment, for a debt of £19. And when the Thatched House Society set to work to ransom honest debtors by paying their debts, they, in twenty years, released 12,590 at a cost of 45 shillings per head. (Text.)—Croake James, “Curiosities of Law and Lawyers.”
(1679)
Irresolution—See [Human Nature, Insecurity of].
IRRESPONSIBILITY
The spectacle of a $100,000,000 “trust” unable to get hay for its horses on credit was seen recently in Sault Ste. Marie, where the Consolidated Lake Superior Company went into liquidation. The liquidation resulted from the failure of the directors of this big concern to raise $5,000,000 to pay a loan from the Speyer syndicate.
Here is a corporation which was paying seven per cent dividends, and which began two or three years ago with a capital of $102,000,000, so destitute of liquid assets or working capital that it can not pay a loan of $5,000,000, for which its very existence was pawned. Nothing appears to be left.
Lake Superior Consolidated, like all the other trusts, was organized under the Connecticut corporation act, which, like that of West Virginia, New Jersey, Delaware, and other States, was expressly drawn to relieve all concerned of responsibility. No one was responsible for anything in the prospectus. No one could be held, in the promotion or direction, for any statements, promises, or representations. The sidewalk vender is more responsible for the razors and remedies that he sells in the flare of his gasoline lamp than the promoters or directors of an American trust to which millions of dollars flow.—New York American.
(1680)
IRRETRIEVABLE, THE
The people of Florence sent their great poet, Dante, into exile. He went into Ravenna, there died, and there was buried. After his death, Florence recognized how great this exiled son of hers had been, and begged his body from Ravenna, and could not get it. Ravenna would not part with it. Florence might have had it had she asked Dante to come back.
(1681)
Irreverent Laughter—See [Laughter, Perils of].
IRRIGATION
Long have I waited their coming, the men of the far-lying mist-hills
Gathered about their fires and under the kindly rains.
Not to the blazing sweep of Thy desert, O Lord, have they turned them;
Evermore back to the mist-hills, back to the rain-kissed plains.
Long through the ages I waited the children of men, but they came not;
Only God’s silent centuries holding their watch sublime.
Gaunt and wrinkled and gray was the withering face of Thy desert:
All in Thine own good time; O Lord, in Thine own good time.
Lo! Thou hast spoken the word, and Thy children come bringing the waters
Loosed from their mountain keep in the thrall of each sentinel hill.
Lord, Thou hast made me young and fair at Thine own waters’ healing,
Pleasing and fair to mankind in the flood of Thy bountiful will.
Wherefore in joy now Thy children come, flying exultant and eager;
Now is thine ancient earth remade by Thy powerful word.
Lord, unto Thee be the glory! Thine is the bloom of the desert.
Hasten, O men of the mist-hills! Welcome, ye sons of the Lord! (Text.)
—McCready Sykes, The Atlantic Monthly.
(1682)
Isolation, Fatal—See [Resources, Exhausted].
Issue, A Consequential—See [Consequences].