Cyclopedia of illustrations for public speakers

by Unknown

P

Pace—See [Slowness].

Pagan Conception of Death—See [Death, Christian View of].

Pagan Kindness—See [Generosity].

PAGAN THOUGHTS

On Stanley’s first trip through Africa he came to the King of Uganda, who most cordially asked, first of all, for the health of Queen Victoria and of the German Emperor. Then he somewhat disconcerted the great traveler by asking him, “What news do you bring me from above?” This heathen king had a perfect right to expect that his visitor was one in heart and idea with that greater explorer, David Livingstone. But as Stanley proceeded westward he could tell the character of those with whom the natives were acquainted. The first question put by the natives nearer the West Coast was, “Have you any gin?”

(2287)

PAIN

You eat the heart of life like some great beast,

You blacken the sweet sky—that God made blue,

You are the death’s-head set amid the feast,

The desert breath that drinks up every dew.

And no man lives but quails before thee, Pain!

And no man lives that learns to love your rod;

The white lip smiles—but ever and again,

God’s image cries your horror unto God.

And yet—oh, terrible! men grant you this:

You work a mystery. When you are done,

Lo! common living turns to heavenly bliss;

Lo! the mere light is as the noonday sun!

—Margaret Steble Anderson, The Century Magazine.

(2288)

Pain, Cry of—See [Bird Notes].

PAIN IN ANIMALS

In dealing with animals it is necessary to consider carefully what signs may be depended upon as proofs of their suffering. Certainly their struggles and cries are not always true indications. All wild animals struggle under restraint. With many, cries indicate fear rather than pain. A hare when shot rarely cries; when closely pursued by dogs it often does. Animals when trapped rarely cry until some one approaches the trap. Frogs will cry out loudly on the appearance of anything at all resembling a snake; when injured with stones or cut by the scythe in mowing they rarely do so. Every gamekeeper knows that it is a common thing for a rat or rabbit, when caught by the leg in one of the ordinary steel-traps, to gnaw off its limb and so escape, while other animals when kept short of food will readily eat their own tails. Another proof that animals are less sensitive to pain than man is their comparative freedom from shock after severe injuries. When a man meets with a severe injury of any kind, a train of symptoms follow which are collectively known by the name of shock. A striking pallor takes the place of the natural color, the skin becomes covered with a clammy moisture, the eye loses its natural luster, and the extremities become deadly cold, and while the ear may detect the fluttering action of the heart, the pulse at the wrist is often quite imperceptible. All these symptoms point to a great disturbance of the nervous system, whereas the lower animals often sustain the severest injuries without exhibiting any of the symptoms of shock.—W. Collier, Nineteenth Century.

(2289)

PAIN, LEARNING BY

The gipsies of Transylvania, according to a writer in Blackwood’s Magazine, teach young bears to dance by placing the animal on a sheet of heated iron, while the trainer plays on his fiddle a strongly accentuated piece of dance-music. The bear, lifting up its legs alternately to escape the heat, involuntarily observes the time marked by the violin. Later on the heated iron is supprest, when the animal has learned its lesson, and whenever the gipsy begins to play on the fiddle the young bear lifts its legs in regular time to the music.—Public Opinion.

(2290)

Pain Relieved—See [Patience].

PAIN STRENGTHENS

When the little girl told her music-teacher that it hurt her fingers to practise on the piano, the teacher answered: “I know it hurts them, but it strengthens them, too.” Then the child packed the philosophy of the ages into her reply: “Teacher, it seems that everything which strengthens hurts.”—F. F. Shannon.

(2291)

PAIN, THE ANGEL OF

When Theodosius was put upon the rack he suffered very great torture at the first. Somebody asked him how he endured all that pain on the rack. He replied: “When I was first put upon the rack I suffered a great deal; but very soon a young man in white stood by my side, and with a soft and comfortable handkerchief he wiped the sweat from my brow, and my pains were relieved. It was a punishment for me to get from the rack, because when the pain was all gone the angel was gone.” (Text.)

(2292)

PAINSTAKING

In spite of his continual need of movement, his passionate love of sport in all its forms, and especially of motoring, his expansive, rather mad, but very attractive youthfulness, Alfonso XIII, even in his flying trips, never loses the occasion to improve his mind. He is very quick at seizing a point, possesses a remarkable power of assimilation, and, altho he does not read much, for he has no patience, he is remarkably well informed regarding the smallest details in matters that interest him. One day, for instance, he asked me, point-blank:

“Do you know how many gendarmes there are in France?”

I confess that I was greatly puzzled what to reply, for I have never cared much about statistics. I ventured to say, off-hand: “Ten thousand.”

“Ten thousand! Come, M. Paoli, what are you thinking of? That’s the number we have in Spain. It’s more like twenty thousand.”

This figure, as I afterward learned, was strictly accurate.

As for business of State, I also noticed that the king devoted more time to it than his restless life would lead one to believe. Rising, winter and summer, at six o’clock, he stays indoors and works regularly during the early part of the morning, and often again at night. In this connection, one of his ministers said to me:

“He never shows a sign of either weariness or boredom. The king’s ‘frivolity’ is a popular fallacy. On the contrary, he is terribly painstaking. Just like the queen mother, he insists upon clear and detailed explanations before he will sign the least document; and he knows quite well how to make his will felt. Besides, he is fond of work, and he can work anywhere—in a motor-car, in a boat, in a train, as well as in his study.”—Xavier Paoli, McClure’s.

(2293)

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Any one, says a writer in The Atlantic Monthly, can hold out a dumb-bell for a few seconds; but in a few more seconds the arm sags; it is only the trained athlete who can endure even to the minute’s end.

For Hawthorne to hold the people of “The Scarlet Letter” steadily in focus from November to February, to say nothing of six years’ preliminary brooding, is surely more of an artistic feat than to write a short story between Tuesday and Friday.

The three years and nine months of unremitting labor devoted to “Middlemarch” does not in itself afford any criterion of the value of the book; but given George Eliot’s brain power and artistic instinct to begin with, and then concentrate them for that period upon a single theme, and it is no wonder that the result is a masterpiece.

“Jan van Eyck was never in a hurry,” says Charles Reade of the great Flemish painter, in “The Cloister and the Hearth,” and therefore the world will not forget him in a hurry. (Text.)

(2294)

Painting the Living—See [Motive, Mercenary].

Palliatives—See [Music as an Anesthetic].

PALLIATIVES VERSUS PREVENTION

The principle indicated in the extract will some day be adopted by Christianity in its treatment of the moral life. Mere palliatives are insufficient:

The aim of reasonable people should be to keep themselves in health rather than to be always straying, as it were, upon the confines of disease and seeking assistance from drugs in order to return to conditions from which they should never have suffered themselves to depart. The various alkaline salts and solutions, for example, the advertisements of which meet us at every turn, and which are offered to the public as specifics, safely to be taken, without anything so superfluous as the advice of medical men, for all the various evils which are described by the advertisers as gout or heartburn, or as the consequences of “uric acid,” do unquestionably, in a certain proportion of cases, afford temporary relief from some discomfort or inconvenience. They do this notwithstanding persistence in the habit or in the indulgence, whatever it may be, the overeating, the want of exercise, the excessive consumption of alcohol or of tobacco, which is really underlying the whole trouble which the drugs are supposed to cure and which at the very best they only temporarily relieve, while they permit the continuance of conditions leading ultimately to degeneration of tissue and to premature death. (Text.)—The Lancet.

(2295)

PANIC THROUGH FEAR

The New York Evening Post thus describes the condition of panic on our ships at the beginning of the Spanish War:

Almost any officer who served in the fleet before Santiago could relate not one, but a great many incidents that occurred where the men of our ships would have slaughtered each other if the good little angel that sits up aloft (and our exceedingly bad marksmanship at that time) had not protected us from the mistakes (incomprehensible to landsmen) which caused our ships to fire at each other, at colliers, dispatch-boats, torpedo-boats, and at nothing at all—and all this in the clear atmosphere of the tropical seas.

Such was the effect of the long, nervous tension that thousands of shots were fired at pure fantoms of the imagination. The broadsides of powerful battleships repeatedly burst into a furious cannonade that was arrested only with the complete annihilation of the supposed enemy. For one of our ships to approach the fleet at night was to run a grave risk. The sea was alive with Spanish torpedo-boats. Signals, lights, etc., were misunderstood or disregarded. The enemy might have obtained possession of them and displayed them for our confusion. There were many narrow escapes. Several of our vessels were struck by shells, but the luck that followed us throughout the war prevented a disaster. I could mention the names of officers who have never been able to comb their hair down flat since the particular night on which they came within an ace of sinking a friend—with whom they have never since ceased to exchange congratulatory drinks. (Text.)—New York Evening Post.

(2296)

Panoply—See [Armor].

Paper, Invention of—See [Antiquity].

Papers, The Opinions of—See [Reports to Order].

Paralysis—See [Salvability].

PARADOX

Nature is full of paradoxes. The water which drowns us as a fluent stream can be walked upon as ice. The bullet which, when fired from a musket, carries death, will be harmless if ground to dust before being fired. The crystallized part of the oil of roses, so graceful in its fragrance—a solid at ordinary temperatures, tho readily volatile—is a compound substance, containing exactly the same elements and exactly the same proportions as the gas with which we light the streets. The tea which we daily drink with benefit and pleasure produces palpitation, nervous tremblings, and even paralysis if taken in excess; yet the peculiar organic agent called “thein,” to which tea owes its quality, may be taken by itself (as thein, not as tea) without any appreciable effect—Vyrnwy Morgan, “The Cambro-American Pulpit.”

(2297)

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Joseph Hart, the hymnist, wrote “The Paradox,” as follows:

How strange is the course that a Christian must steer!

How perplexed is the path he must tread!

The hope of his happiness rises from fear,

And his life he receives from the dead.

His fairest pretensions must wholly be waived,

And his best resolutions be crossed;

Nor can he expect to be perfectly saved.

Till he finds himself utterly lost.

When all this is done, and his heart is assured

Of the total remission of sins;

When his pardon is signed, and his peace is procured,

From that moment his conflict begins.

(2298)

PARASITES

Society has too many members who are willing to live on the labor of others, like the shoveler duck described in this extract:

One of the ducks has learned a convenient trick for getting his dinner. Some of the diving brotherhood who feed under water stir up a great deal that floats, and the shoveler, preferring to take his provision from the surface, follows his diving neighbor to the feeding-place, and while the feeders below stir up the inhabitants, he swims around on the surface and catches whatever floats.—Olive Thorne Miller, “The Bird Our Brother.”

(2299)

PARASITISM

Some of the intruding insects that come from oak galls are not harmless. They are the ones called parasites. They live in the houses not for the sake of the protection or the food furnished by the house, but in order to eat the actual dwellers in the house. Often and often not a single real gall-insect comes out in the spring from many of the little houses, but only a little swarm, or sometimes just two or three, or even one, of these insect-devouring parasites that has eaten up the rightful owners of the house.—Vernon L. Kellogg, “Insect Stories.”

(2300)

PARDON

In the Isle of Man is an old, gray, ruined tower in which was formerly hanged one of the best governors the island ever possest. He had been accused of treachery to the king during the time of the civil wars, and received sentence of death. Intercession was made for him, and a pardon was sent; but the pardon fell into the hands of his bitter enemy, who kept it locked up, and the governor was executed.

(2301)

Pardon, Conditional—See [Mercy, Limitation of].

PARDON FOR A CHILD’S SAKE

The following incident is related by Mrs. Pickett, widow of General George E. Pickett, of the Confederate Army, of her first meeting with President Lincoln after the war:

I was in Richmond when my Soldier fought the awful battle of Five Forks, Richmond surrendered, and the surging sea of fire swept the city. The day after the fire, there was a sharp rap at the door. The servants had all run away. The city was full of Yankees, and my environment had not taught me to love them. With my baby on my arm, I opened the door, and looked up at a tall, gaunt, sad-faced man in ill-fitting clothes. He asked: “Is this George Pickett’s home?”

With all the courage and dignity I could muster, I replied: “Yes, and I am his wife, and this is his baby.”

“I am Abraham Lincoln.”

“The President!” I gasped. I had never seen him, but I knew the intense love and reverence with which my Soldier always spoke of him. The stranger shook his head and replied:

“No; Abraham Lincoln, George’s old friend.”

The baby pushed away from me and reached out his hands to Mr. Lincoln, who took him in his arms. As he did so an expression of rapt, almost divine tenderness and love lighted up the sad face. It was a look that I have never seen on any other face. The baby opened his mouth wide and insisted upon giving his father’s friend a dewy infantile kiss. As Mr. Lincoln gave the little one back to me, he said:

“Tell your father, the rascal, that I forgive him for the sake of your bright eyes.”

(2302)

Pardon through Intercession—See [Sacrificial Mediation].

Parentage—See [Life, Source of].

PARENTAL CAUTION

On the plain of Troy are dotted many Turkish villages. Thousands of storks make their nests on the roofs of the cottages. When Dr. Schliemann was digging in the ruins of the hill of Hissarlik, and discovering the remains of cities, he had two comfortable nests made for storks on the roof of his hut. But none would take up their abode. The hill was too cold and stormy for the little storks and the parents instinctively knew it.

(2303)

Parental Mal-influence—See [Politeness].

Parental Religion—See [Religion, Family].

PARENTAL SACRIFICE

D. L. Moody told this story of missionary self-sacrifice:

A good many years ago I was stopping in a house in the West, and saw there a bright boy of thirteen who didn’t bear the name of the family he was living with, and yet was treated like one of the family. In answer to my inquiries, the lady said, “He is the son of a missionary. His parents couldn’t educate their children in India, so they came back here. But they had learned the language of India, and they did not feel that it was right for them to stay in this country. Finally, the husband said, ‘You stay here, wife, and educate the children and I will go back.’ The mother said, ‘No; God has used me there with you—we will go back together.’ ‘But,’ the father said, ‘you can’t give up those children. You never have been separated from them since they were born. How can you leave them in this country and go back?’ She replied, bravely, ‘I can do it if Christ wants me to.’ They made it a matter of prayer and put notices in the papers that they were going to leave their children, and asked Christian people to take them and educate them. I saw the notice and wrote that I would take one child and bring it up for Christ’s sake. The mother came and stayed a week in our home and observed everything. She watched the order and discipline of the family, and after she was convinced that it was a safe place to leave her boy, she set the day for departing. My room adjoined hers, and when the time came to start, I heard her pray, ‘Lord Jesus, help me now. I need Thee. Help me to give up this dear boy without a tear, that I may leave him with a smile. Oh, God, give me strength.’ She was helped to leave with a bright smile on her face. She went to five homes in the same way and went back to India, leaving her five children. Some time afterward,” Mr. Moody continued, “I was in Hartford and found a young man busy in the good work of picking up the rough boys of the streets and bringing them to my meetings and trying to lead them to Christ. It pleased me very much and I asked who he was. He was studying in the theological seminary, and I found he was one of those five sons of that brave woman, and all of the five were expecting to return to India to carry on their father’s work.”

(2304)

PARENTHOOD AMONG SAVAGES

An Australian mother will coddle her baby with ape-like fondness, and hardly ever let it stray out of sight for the first four years; but as soon as the toddling little imp seems able to take care of itself, its debt of gratitude to its progenitors has to be paid by the worst kind of slavery. At the first sign of insubordination a half-grown boy is apt to be kicked out, if not killed, by his own father. (Text.)—Felix Oswald, Good Health.

(2305)

Parentless—See [Sympathy, Practical].

Parents—See [Example of Parents].

PARENTS AS TEACHERS OF RELIGION

The teaching and preaching by fathers and mothers in the seclusion of the home circle are doing much more to determine the fate of souls than the eloquent sermons and elaborate lessons in pulpit and Sunday-school. Parents are touching life at its beginnings, making impressions that can never be obliterated. The family is the natural and divinely appointed school of religion because it has the first opportunity. The smallest thing at the beginning of life affects all the future. A child but a year old slipt and fell on a wet floor, and tho that was seventy years ago, the man is lame yet. And the moral nature is as easily crippled as the body. The moral lameness we see in the old or middle-aged is often caused by some mistaught or neglected lesson in infancy.—The Cumberland Presbyterian.

(2306)

Parents, Example of—See [Family Religion].

PARSIMONY IN GIVING

On one occasion a new silver dollar found itself in the same plate with a penny with the head of an Indian upon it. And the goddess of Liberty looked down upon the Indian, and said: “You miserable, copper-faced, feather-trimmed heathen, what are you doing in this plate, in the same company with me?” And the copper coin, with the Indian’s face, responded: “I am found in a great many more missionary gatherings than you are!”

(2307)

PARTIALITY

Chief Justice Marshall, of the United States, was all his life an ardent votary of quoits. He was an active member of the Barbecue or Quoit Club for forty years, their main amusement being quoits and backgammon. Great respect was paid to the veteran lawyer in these contests. Once an old Scotch gentleman was called in to decide between him and a keen rival as to the winner, and after a most careful measurement that oracle gave his decision thus: “Maister Mairshall has it a leetle,” tho every bystander saw it was quite the other way. (Text.)—Croake James, “Curiosities of Law and Lawyers.”

(2308)

Pass, Let it—See [Evil, Ignoring].

Passengers to Heaven—See [Obligations to the Church].

PASSING OF LIFE

And this is life—to-day we here abide,

Perchance to-morrow we must step aside,

We master not our own; no vain regret

Can change the path for us which God has set.

Then let our footsteps be toward the light,

With loving words and deeds make each day bright.

Let charity progress to wider plan,

Lend gracious ear to creed of every man.

—S. D. Gardner.

(2309)

PASSION, GROWTH OF

An old man was once walking with a little boy. They came across four shrubs. The old man said to his youthful companion:

“Pull up the least one.”

He obeyed with ease.

“Now the next.”

He obeyed, but it did not come so easily.

“And the third.”

It took all his strength to move its roots, but he succeeded.

“Now the fourth.”

In vain the lad put forth all his strength. He only made the leaves tremble. He could not move the roots. They had gone strongly into the earth, and no effort could dislodge them.

Then the wise old man said to the ardent youth:

“This, my son, is just what happens with our passions. When they are young and weak one may by a little watchfulness over self and the help of a little self-denial easily tear them up, but if we let them cast their roots deep into our souls there is no human power can uproot them. For this reason, my child, watch well over the first movements of your soul and study by acts of virtue to keep your passions well in check.” (Text.)

(2310)

Passport, Value of a—See [Token, Value of a].

Past and Present Compared—See [Religion Diffused].

PASTOR, THE IDEAL

Give me the pastor whose graces shall possess

Of an ambassador the just address;

A father’s tenderness, a shepherd’s care,

A leader’s courage, which the cross can bear;

A ruler’s awe, a watchman’s wakeful eye,

A fisher’s patience, and a laborer’s toil;

A guide’s dexterity to disembroil;

A prophet’s inspiration from above;

A teacher’s knowledge, and a Savior’s love.

—Bishop Hare.

(2311)

Path, Narrow—See [Promises].

PATHOLOGICAL CONDITIONS

A Viennese lady, who had suffered for a long time from cataleptic or lethargic attacks, was finally buried in one of her trances. The sexton, who fortunately happened to be a thief in this instance, had reopened the grave and was busy removing her clothes during the ensuing night, when a resurrection of the dead took place. Stricken with terror, he was running away, when the woman called him back, requesting to be taken to her doctor.

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A little girl, mentioned by Tissot, shocked at her sister having helped herself to a coveted morsel, remained stiff and motionless for an hour, a spoon in her hand, and her arm outstretched toward the dish.

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A soldier, quarreling with a companion, in a fit of passion seized a bottle to throw at him; cataleptic rigidity fixt him in this attitude, motionless, unconscious, his eyes full of anger and defiance.

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In another case a magistrate on the bench, insulted in the middle of his summing up, remained as if petrified in an attitude of indignation and threat at his insulter.

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Again, we read of priests being cataleptized at the altar in the attitude of elevating the sacrament.—A. de Watteville, Fortnightly Review.

(2312)

PATHS, KEEPING ONE’S OWN

Some twenty years ago a United States naval officer conceived the idea that if vessels eastbound took one ocean path and vessels westbound another, collisions would be avoided. Steamship lines eagerly fell in with the suggestion, and the result is that ingoing and outgoing liners may follow well-defined lanes of traffic. Separate paths are laid out for vessels of high power. Slow vessels, freighters and the like, have their special steaming zones. Since that time no collision on the high seas between two liners has occurred.

If every man would be equally careful to keep in his own territory moral collisions and many of life’s catastrophes would be avoided.

(2313)

PATIENCE

Edward Collins Downing bids us to wait through earth’s night for the coming day of God’s accomplishments:

To those who sit and watch at night

And look to God alone for strength,

There will arise, I know, at length,

A foregleam of eternal light.

The morning does not hesitate;

The glory of its hour is fixt,

Tho sorrow has been strangely mixt

In all our lives, there is no fate

That can retard the coming day.

Be patient. In His perfect time

God’s purpose will unfold, sublime,

And light and joy shall have their way.(Text.)

(2314)

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Lady Henry Somerset has told how her attention was first called to the work of relieving the sufferings of poor city children.

“I was moved in that direction by the rare patience and imagination of one little boy. His example convinced me that patience was one of the qualities I needed most, and in seeking it I grew into that work. I was in a hospital on visiting day while the doctors were changing a plaster-cast which held the crippled boy’s limb. The operation was exceedingly painful, I was told. To my surprize the little sufferer neither stirred nor winced, but made a curious buzzing sound with his mouth. After the doctors left him, I said:

“‘How could you possibly stand it?’

“‘That’s nothin’,’ he answered; ‘why, I just made believe that a bee was stingin’ me. Bees don’t hurt very much, you know. And I kept buzzin’ because I was afraid I’d forget about its being a bee if I didn’t.’”

(2315)

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When the quality most needed in a prime minister, who should be fully master of the situation, was the subject of conversation in the presence of Mr. Pitt, one of the speakers said it was eloquence, another said it was knowledge, a third said it was toil. “No,” said Pitt, “it is patience.” And patience is undoubtedly a prime quality of mastery in any situation.—James T. Fields.

(2316)

See [Wait and See]; [Waiting].

Patriot, Acting the Part of a—See [Pretense].

PATRIOTISM

The spirit of Lincoln, who struck hard blows at the Southern cause but always spoke charitably of the Southern people, is embodied in this poem:

The foe that strikes thee,

For thy country’s sake

Strike him with all thy might;

But while thou strikest,

Forget not still to love him. (Text.)

—His Majesty the Emperor Mutsu Hito of Japan.

Translated by Arthur Lloyd.

(2317)

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A Japanese mother had given her three sons to the war. The first was reported slain. She smiled and said, “It is well. I am happy.” The second lay dead upon the field. She smiled again and said, “I am still happy.” The third gave up his life and they said to her, “At last you weep!” “Yes,” she said, “but it is because I have no more sons to give to my beloved country!”—Marshall P. Wilder, “Smiling ’Round the World.”

(2318)

See [Fidelity]; [Home Where the Heart is]; [Symbol, Power of a].

PATRIOTISM, DISINTERESTED

A rather refreshing sight for this year of our Lord would be a repetition of the office seeking the man as in “Saul’s” case, where it was said, “They sought him (to make him king) but he could not be found.”

It is said of Abraham Lincoln that, fully expecting, owing to the meager success of the Union armies up to that time, that he would fail of reelection as President, he resolutely set about putting the governmental departments in order for his successor. He took special pains that as little inconvenience as possible (and detriment to the country’s interests) should be experienced in the transfer of power. How differently he might have acted but for his distinguishing patriotism! Washington once said: “It is of little consequence that my closing days be embittered if only the liberties of my country be conserved.” (Text.)

(2319)

Patriotism, Early—See [Loyalty].

Patriotism, Emblem of—See [Memorials of Patriotism].

PATRIOTISM, LACK OF

A significant punishment was administered recently to a man in Hoboken, N. J., for an act of disrespect to the Stars and Stripes. He was returning from an entertainment in the early morning hours, when he noticed a large flag flying from a pole in a citizen’s yard. In a spirit of mischief he opened his pocket-knife and cut the halyards and the flag came fluttering to the ground. A policeman saw it fall and promptly arrested the man. When asked by the recorder before whom he was arraigned why he had done the mischief, he had nothing to say but that he objected to see the flag flying at that time in the morning. The recorder answered that it was right to have that flag flying at any time, and he would pass a sentence that would teach the offender a lesson of respect. He ordered him to climb the forty-foot pole and replace the flag, and instructed two policemen to see that it was done. The news of the sentence attracted a crowd and the man was jeered as he clumsily climbed the pole and put the flag back. It is a curious fact that the man who cut the flag down was an American, but it was flying in the yard of a Frenchman, and the arrest was made by an Irish policeman, and the recorder who pronounced sentence is said to be of English descent.

Every one has a contempt for a man who lowers the symbol of his nation’s honor. But it is too often forgotten that dishonorable conduct and unprincipled trickery do more to dishonor the nation to which a man belongs than any insult to his flag.

(2320)

Patriotism Scorned—See [Memorials of Patriotism].

Patrons Cared for—See [Deportment].

PATTERN, PERFECT

We must not look for truth from men and women whose souls are out of sympathy with truth. The trouble with us all as human beings is that none of our natural virtues are wholly sound and perfect. There is at least a little untruth in all our truth, a little jealousy even in our best praise, a little pride even in our piety, a little superciliousness in our forbearance. Jesus alone could properly claim to be a type for all human character.

In a bullet foundry the first anxiety does not concern the bullets themselves. Of course it is absolutely necessary that each one should be perfectly spherical in shape. The essential antecedent condition is a perfect mold. If the bullet-mold is deformed, every bullet will share its deformity. Therefore the first need is to make the mold right, and then every bullet will share its rectitude.

(2321)

PATTERN, THE DIVINE

“Tapestry Weavers,” the poem by Dr. A. G. Chester, on page [535], has been translated into Japanese and published in the leading magazine of the country, which circulates over 50,000 copies, and the lines have also been printed in its English form upon large cards, which are distributed throughout the schools of Japan.

A returned missionary from China, who was recently introduced to Doctor Chester, remarked: “I am delighted to make the acquaintance of the author of ‘The Tapestry Weavers,’ a poem I have loved and admired and used by way of illustration for many years.”

In connection with a fair lately held at the Waldorf-Astoria, New York City, for the benefit of the Home for Crippled Children, a number of copies of the poem, printed upon tinted paper and bearing the author’s autograph, sold readily and realized a handsome sum.

I

Let us take to our hearts a lesson—no lesson can braver be—

From the ways of the tapestry weavers on the other side of the sea.

Above their heads the pattern hangs, they study it with care,

The while their fingers deftly move, their eyes are fastened there.

They tell this curious thing besides of the patient, plodding weaver;

He works on the wrong side evermore, but works for the right side ever.

It is only when the weaving stops, and the web is loosed and turned,

That he sees his real handiwork, that his marvelous skill is learned.

Ah, the sight of its delicate beauty, how it pays him for all his cost!

No rarer, daintier work than his was ever done by the frost.

Then the master bringeth him golden hire, and giveth him praise as well,

And how happy the heart of the weaver is, no tongue but his own can tell.

II

The years of man are the looms of God, let down from the place of the sun,

Wherein we are weaving ever, till the mystic web is done.

Weaving blindly, but weaving surely, each for himself his fate—

We may not see how the right side looks, we can only weave and wait.

But, looking above for the pattern, no weaver hath need to fear,

Only let him look clear into heaven—the Perfect Pattern is there.

If he keeps the face of the Savior forever and always in sight

His toil shall be sweeter than honey, his weaving is sure to be right.

And when the work is ended, and the web is turned and shown,

He shall hear the voice of the Master; it shall say unto him, “Well done!”

And the white-winged angel of heaven, to bear him thence shall come down;

And God shall give him gold for his hire—not coin but a glowing crown. (Text.)

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PAYMENT OF DEBTS

In a suit lately tried in a Maryland court, the plaintiff testified that his financial position had always been a good one. The opposing counsel took him in hand for cross-examination and undertook to break down his testimony upon this point.

“Have you ever been bankrupt?” asked the counsel. “I have not.” “Now, be careful,” admonished the lawyer, with raised finger. “Did you ever stop payment?” “Yes.” “Ah, I thought we should get at the truth,” observed counsel, with an unpleasant smile. “When did this suspension of payment occur?” “When I had paid all I owed,” was the naive reply of the plaintiff.—Success Magazine.

(2323)

PEACE

The following outlook toward universal peace was written by George Frederick Knowles:

When navies are forgotten

And fleets are useless things,

When the dove shall warm her bosom

Beneath the eagle’s wings;

When memory of battles

At last is strange and old,

When nations have one banner

And creeds have found one fold;

When the Hand that sprinkles midnight

With its powdered drifts of suns

Has hushed this tiny tumult

Of sects and swords and guns;

Then hate’s last note of discord

In all God’s worlds shall cease,

In the conquest which is service,

In the victory which is peace.

(2324)

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“The inauguration of a monument of Christ, the Redeemer, on the Cordillera of the Andes,” says Carolina Huidobro, in The Christian Herald (New York), “has a grand significance, at once political and social. The colossal statue upon a pinnacle 14,000 feet above the sea, surrounded by peaks of perpetual snow, dominating as it does the two countries which stretch out on either side of the mountain range, is a tangible witness of international brotherhood.... Chile and Argentina have not only created a symbol; they have inculcated into the minds of men for all ages an idea of greater significance than any other in our contemporary age, by erecting that colossal monument to the Christ, with the inscription on its granite pedestal: ‘Sooner shall these mountains crumble to dust than Argentines and Chileans break the peace which, at the feet of Christ, the Redeemer, they have sworn to maintain.’ On the opposite side of the base are the words of the angels’ song over Bethlehem: ‘Peace on earth, good-will to all men.’ The statue cost about $100,000, and was paid for by popular subscription, the working classes contributing liberally.” (Text.)

(2325)

See [Christmas]; [Militarism].

PEACE PACT

When William Penn made his treaty with the Indians under the spreading branches of an elm-tree on the banks of the Delaware, it was not for lands, but for peace and friendship. “We meet,” said Penn, “in the broad pathway of good faith and good will; no advantage shall be taken on either side, but all shall be openness and love. I will not call you children, for parents sometimes chide their children too severely; nor brothers only, for brothers differ. The friendship between me and you I will not compare to a chain, for that the rains might rust, or the falling tree might break. We are the same as if one man’s body were to be divided into two parts; we are all one flesh and blood.” The Indians replied: “We will live in love with William Penn and his children as long as the sun and moon shall endure.”

Such a peace pact does God make with men; and such a pact ought man and man, and nation and nation to make with each other.

(2326)

Peace Predicted—See [Age, The New].

PEACEFUL INSTINCT OF SIMIANS

The acquisitive energy of a monkey-swarm must be witnessed to be credited. In the banana-gardens of the tierra caliente a Mexican capuchin monkey will exhaust his business opportunities with the dispatch of a Cincinnati bank cashier; but, in his attempt to reach the Canadian side of the hedge with a good armful of plunder, so often falls a victim to the pursuing dogs that monkey-trappers frequently rent an orchard for the special purpose of capturing the retreating marauders. In spite of their mischievous petulance, nearly all the Old World species of our four-handed kinsmen are emotionally sympathetic and ever ready to rescue their wounded friends at the risk of their own lives. At the cry of a captured baby baboon the whole tribe of passionate four-fisters will rush in regardless of consequences, and a similar tendency of cooperation may have given our hairy forefathers a superior chance of survival and secured their victory in their struggle for existence against their feline rivals. Their list of original sins may have included gluttony, covetousness and violence of temper, but hardly a penchant for wanton bloodshed. With the exception of the fox-headed lemurs and the ultra-stupid marmosets, nearly all our simian relatives evince symptoms of a character-trait which might be defined as an instinctive aversion to cruelty. Menagerie monkeys indulge their love of gymnastics by frequent scuffles; but the sight of a bona fide fight awakens a chorus of shrieks expressing a general protest rather than an emotion of fear or even partizan interest, for in an open arena the stouter members of the obstreperous community are sure to rush in and part the combatants.—Felix Oswald, Popular Science Monthly.

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PEACEMAKER, THE

Just in the shade of the arena’s gate,

They trooped and paused; and to the ranks of eyes

That questioned ere they drove them on to fate,

Steel-swift, steel-steady, did their answers rise—

“I fight to break the tyranny I hate!”

“I come to tear the veil from ancient lies!”

“I seize the odds! Let others share the prize!”

“I fail, that some may conquer, soon or late!”

But one who bore, within that radiant line,

A look as cool as joy, as firm as pain,

And touched his sword, as some rapt village swain

Touches the cup that holds his wedding wine,

Spoke not, until they urged: “What aim is thine?”

“I fight, that none may ever fight again!”

—G. M. Hort, London Nation.

(2328)

Pearl, The Unexpected—See [Discovery, Fortunate].

Pearls—See [Appreciation].

Peccability of Men—See [Vincibleness].

Pedagog Rebuked—See [Unnatural Education].

PEDIGREE

Shells keeping their form and delicate color and delicate wings of insects are preserved in stone, embedded there ages ago, “Trees waved, butterflies flitted on brilliant wings and hosts of creatures basked in the sunlight long before human foot trod the earth,” says Edith Carrington in “Ages Ago.” Some pique themselves in being able to trace descent through a few centuries. But there is a humble creature haunting our back-yards counting his pedigree by millions of years. The common wood-louse, tho shy and modest, might boast if he liked—the scion of an ancient and noble family, the trilobites, once the monarchs of the world and the most numerous and highly organized creatures in it. (Text.)

(2329)

Penalty from Mistaken Ideas—See [Individualism, Excessive].

PENTECOST, MODERN

The Hawaiian Islands are among the greatest of the marvels of missionary success.

During the five years ending June, 1841, 7,557 persons were received into the Church at Hilo, constituting three-fourths of the whole adult population of the parish. When Titus Coan left Hilo, in 1870, he had himself received and baptized 11,960 persons.—Pierson, “The Miracles of Missions.”

(2330)

Penuriousness—See [Sight, Imperfect].

People, Contact With—See [Speech, Common].

Perfection—See [Compliment].

Peril and Reward, Ignoring—See [Pride in One’s Task].

PERISHABLENESS

At the World’s Fair at St. Louis, Mo., the heroic statue of Joliet was so fine a work of art that a movement was set on foot to preserve it after the close of the fair. Many admirers of it subscribed for the expense, and it was removed to the entrance of O’Fallon Park. The figure was twenty-five feet high and fifteen feet long. The work of removal was difficult and cost nearly $2,000, but it was safely accomplished and it made an imposing addition to the beauties of the park. But it was made only of staff, and tho it was believed it would last for ten years, it was not supposed that it was permanent. Not long after, however, while hundreds of people stood admiring it in its new position, there was a sudden break in the image. A cloud of white dust arose, and when it cleared away the big statue had disappeared. A heap of white dust was all there was to show where it had been. It had absolutely crumbled to powder. All the work that had been expended on its formation and removal was lost in a moment. So it is with all human work, however beautiful and imposing. In God and His work alone is permanence. (Text.)

(2331)

Permanence of the Spirit—See [Record, Living].

PERMANENCY

“The first lizard possest the snout of a dolphin, the head of a lizard, the teeth and jaws of a crocodile, the backbone of a fish, paddles like those of a whale and the trunk and tail of a quadruped—a very monarch of the early seas. Kill or be killed must have been the rule of his life,” says the great French novelist Currie. But it would seem the coat of mail worn by the tortoises and turtles was a better protection than the powerful claws and jaws of the fish-lizard, which was short-lived. The former are alive and flourishing to this day—the latter have altogether vanished. On the grave of John Keats are the words, “Here lies one whose name was writ in water.” (Text.)

(2332)

Permanent Impressions—See [Teacher’s Function, The].

PERMANENT, THE

Rev. Robert P. Wilder, missionary to India, gives the following account of a vivid dream he had while working in the mission field:

“I thought the Master came to me and said, ‘Take heed how ye build.’ I asked Him to show me the pattern. The veil was removed and I saw the pattern; but I saw that very much of my work was not in line with the pattern. Presently He took me into a little room and showed me a very small column of silver, and He said, ‘That will abide the test. When the fire comes, that will not be destroyed.’ I asked Him what it represented, and He said, ‘That represents the little gifts to the needy ones.’ ‘Inasmuch as you have done it to one of these little ones you have done it to me, and inasmuch as the left hand did not know what the right hand gave, it is precious.’ Then He showed me another little column of gold, and He said, ‘That also will abide the test. That represents the hours of prayer alone with your Master.’ At last we passed into a great room, and I pointed out to Him the elaborate carving in the woodwork. I had spent many months on it, but the Master said, ‘Yes, it is well done, but it is wood, and when the fire strikes, the wood, hay and stubble will go.’” (Text.)

(2333)

PERSECUTION AND PRAYER

When holding services in a little chapel on the edge of Manila, we had a young convert named Candido, about nineteen or twenty years old, in charge. We had to meet out under the trees, and there was an old man who lived close by where we were holding the services—an old gambler, sixty years old, named Marcelina. Of all the vile brutes I ever saw, that old Marcelina was the worst. He would go at night, and while we were holding services he would throw stones and brickbats. If there ever was a devil incarnate, he was one. We had patience with him for a long time. One day Candido came into my office and sat down in a chair and was looking greatly discouraged. Finally he said: “What shall we do with that old Marcelina? He came in last night and hit one of the little girls on the head with a stone, and she is seriously injured.” I replied, “I don’t know what you ought to do. I believe if Jesus were on earth, He would pray for that old man.” “That is a doctrine which you don’t find until you take the gospel,” he answered. “With us, it is an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, and stab the other fellow in the back.” It cheered my heart to hear that little fellow say that. He went out and gathered twelve or thirteen young men in a room as a praying-band, and for two long months they met every single night to pray for the conversion of that old man. Marcelina, hearing of it, came up and asked, “What are you doing?” “We are praying for you, that God will give you love in your heart.” He rushed out, raving and swearing, and the next time they held a service, he threw clubs and stones. Still the boys did not give up. After that Marcelina could not sleep; and one night he got up when everybody else was asleep and stole like a sentry to where Candido lived and called him out. He said, “Candido, I wish you would tell me what it is that you have which I haven’t got; how can you treat me so kindly, when I am a brute to you?” They walked up under the palm-trees and bananas at the other side of the house, and that nineteen-year-old boy and the proud old gambler knelt down side by side to pray. I do not explain these things, but I know what happened that night. Marcelina knelt down and God took away that stony heart which he had had for fifty years and gave him as new and tender a heart as a young child ever had. Later there stood up thirty-seven people for baptism, and when I looked at Marcelina my heart seemed to come into my throat. I knew the struggles that he had gone through, and after I had baptized him, he said: “I beg your pardon; I thought that I was doing good when I threw stones; I did not know any better.” Before he sat down I put my hand on his shoulder and said: “Wait, one word more; what must we do to win a fellow man for Jesus?” He looked around and sat down, crying like a little child, and we all wept with him; we could not help it. In a moment he arose and gave this testimony, with the tears streaming down his cheeks and his voice shaking: “Pastor, we can not win men by throwing stones at them; we can not win them by treating them as I have been treating you; we must love them to Jesus.” That is what we must do in Latin-America for those people who do not love Jesus; we must step over the barrier and help them and “love them to Jesus.” Do they need us?—J. McLaughlin, “Student Volunteer Movement,” 1906.

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PERSECUTION, RELIGIOUS

It was during the latter half of the eighteenth century in Europe that some statesmen commenced the much-needed work of reform. Conspicuous among them was Joseph II of had the right to regulate the religion of his subjects. In Bohemia a certain sect was formed, made up of thrifty, honest and hard-working peasants, who believed in God and named themselves deists. This offended the Emperor and he gave instructions to have them brought to justice; those who determined to stand by their belief were to receive twenty-five lashes “not because they are deists,” said Joseph, “but because they declare themselves to be something which they do not comprehend.” The lash did not prove effective, so he deported them.

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PERSEVERANCE

The gentlest and least noticed efforts if repeated persistently enough will have their effect in due time. This is a lesson to be learned by those who are trying forward movements of reform:

In a gun-factory a great bar of steel, weighing five hundred pounds, and eight feet in length, was suspended vertically by a very delicate chain. Near by a common bottle-cork was suspended by a silk thread. The purpose was to show that the cork could set the steel bar in motion. It seemed impossible. The cork was swung gently against the steel bar, and the steel bar remained motionless. But it was done again and again and again for ten minutes, and lo! at the end of that time the bar gave evidence of feeling uncomfortable; a sort of nervous chill ran over it. Ten minutes later, and the chill was followed by vibrations. At the end of half an hour the great bar was swinging like the pendulum of a clock. (Text.)

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It is not clear that Paganini owed much to any one but himself—his indomitable perseverance and his incessant study. His method is to be noted. For ten or twelve hours he would try passages over and over again in different ways with such absorption and intensity that at nightfall he would sink into utter prostration through excessive exhaustion and fatigue. Tho delicate, like Mendelssohn, he ate at times ravenously and slept soundly. When about ten he wrote twenty-four fugues, and soon afterward composed some violin music, of such difficulty that he was unable at first to play it, until incessant practise gave him the mastery.—H. R. Haweis, “My Musical Memories.”

(2337)

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I once thought I would like to test the perseverance of a large moth in performing its first upward journey; and as it was one from a chrysalis to be found in nature at the foot of a tree that attains some considerable height, I was, of course, prepared to exercise a little patience myself.

As soon as the moth had emerged, I placed it at the bottom of a window curtain that hung about eight feet high to the floor. In less than half a minute it had reached the top and was struggling hard to get still higher. I took it down and again placed it at the bottom. Up it went as fast as before, and this was repeated nine times with exactly the same result.—W. Furneaux, “Butterflies and Moths.”

(2338)

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“Years of fruitless and apparently hopeless toil had almost determined the directors of the London Missionary Society to abandon altogether the work at Tahiti. Dr. Haweis, chaplain to the Countess of Huntingdon, one of the founders of the society, and the father and liberal supporter of the South Sea Mission, earnestly opposed such abandonment of the field, and backed his arguments by a further donation of a thousand dollars. The Rev. Matthew Wilks, the pastor of John Williams, declared that he would sell the clothes from his back rather than give up the mission, and proposed, instead, a season of special prayer for the divine blessing. Such a season was observed; letters of encouragement were written to the missionaries, and—mark it!—while the vessel was on her way to carry these letters to Tahiti, another ship passed her in mid-ocean, which conveyed to Great Britain, October, 1813, the news that idolatry was entirely overthrown on the island, and bore to London the rejected idols of the people.” (Text.)—Pierson, “The Miracles of Missions.”

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A young girl sat singing at the piano. “Sing it again,” said the singing teacher, and the tired girl sang it again and again and again. “But you do not sing it properly, and I question if you will ever make a great singer.” But the little girl tried hard and practised the next day and the next; the next week and the next; the next year and the next. One day she stood before 5,000 men and women, and she sang till she seemed to take them out of themselves and to carry them up in the clouds of enchantment, over seas of melody, into an ecstasy of delight, until the people wept from the excess of their emotions. That girl was Lillian Nordica.—James T. White, “Character Lessons.”

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A pious woman, when it was decided to close the prayer-meeting in a certain village, declared it should not be, for she would be there if no one else was. True to her word, when, the next morning, some one asked her jestingly, “Did you have a prayer-meeting last night?” “Ah, that we did!” she replied. “How many were present?” “Four,” she said. “Why, I heard you were there all alone.” “No, I was the only one visible; but the Father was there, and the Son was there, and the Holy Spirit was there, and we were all agreed in prayer.” Before long others took shame to themselves at the earnest perseverance of the poor woman, the prayer-meeting was revived and the church prospered. (Text.)

(2341)

See [Criminals, Tracing]; [Persistence].

Perseverance in Saving—See [Persistence in Doing Good].

Perseverance, Unexampled—See [Aerial Achievement].

PERSIA, THE MOSLEM SITUATION IN

Perhaps I can not illustrate the degraded condition of the people in Persia better than by referring to the condition of women, because the key to the condition of the entire people is the condition occupied by their women. I will illustrate it by describing the manner of cultivating rice in northern Persia, in that portion bordering on the Caspian Sea. Among the people there, the planter as a rule marries as many women as he needs for the cultivation of his rice. They prepare the fields and sow broadcast in a seed-plot. These fields are not very large usually. The women further prepare it for cultivation by flooding the fields with water and then by plowing and cross-plowing under the water, standing in the great pools knee-deep or more. When the rice has grown to the height of six inches or more, the women go out in the early dawn and often they work with their babes strapt on their backs. It is necessary for them to transplant the little blades that have come up in the seed-plot; so they pull the rice plants up by the handful and transplant them, a few plants at a time, working steadily all day long until the evening twilight deepens and it is too dark to work any more, when they take refuge on a little elevation that may or may not be protected by a booth. There they remain during the night and are ready to start work again at the dawn. This they do, day after day. And when the harvest has come, and the crops have been gathered and safely placed in the storehouses, these women are probably divorced and turned out to live lives of misery and shame and degradation, until they may be so fortunate, as they would consider it, as to become the wives of other planters.

I will give you another illustration of their condition. Not long ago I was sitting in my study when a department representative came to me and said that, lying out in the open, behind the Legation, was a poor old sick woman; and he thought perhaps I might be able to do something for her, as she needed attention very badly. I went and investigated the case and found a poor, decrepit old woman. I say old woman, for tho she was only about thirty-five years of age, at thirty-five in Persia they become broken down and decrepit. I investigated her case, and my investigation revealed this story. She had been the wife of a certain man and had gradually been getting blind. She had also fallen and broken her hip-joint, and, being no longer able to do his work, he had carried her out in the open desert and left her to die there. We took her in our hospital, where our doctor cared for her; and when they washed her in order to dress her wounds, they found that she had maggoted bed-sores on her body. We did everything we could for her, and God in His mercy relieved her of her physical sufferings. It was His mercy that placed her in our hands for the last few days of her life, in order that she might hear the story of the love of Christ.—Lewis F. Esselst, “Student Volunteer Movement,” 1906.

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PERSISTENCE

If the wind is in the east with a blue hazy atmosphere it seems to affect the fish in some unaccountable way, and while it lasts a rise can rarely be got out of them. I have noticed this hundreds of times, often when the water was in splendid fishing order, and the river full of new run fish, but whatever quarter the wind blows from there is always a chance while the fly is in the water, and to insure success the angler must make up his mind to have many blank days. He must never tire of throwing his fly, and never be put out by failure.—H. Cholmondeley-Pennell, “Fishing.”

(2343)

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Mutsuhito, Emperor of Japan, is the author of the following quatrain:

Amatari ni

Kubomishi noki no

Ishi mite mo

Kataki waza tote

Omoi sute me ya?

See, how the tiny rain-drops from the eaves

Hollow the stones beneath, with constant drip,

Then why should we abandon well-formed plans

Simply, forsooth, because we find them hard?

(2344)

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It is the men who stick to it that secure the sweets of fortune.

“I never was in New Hampshire but once,” said Mr. Lincoln, “and that was in the fall of the year—a cold, rough day, and a high wind was blowing. Just outside the city I noticed a big bull-thistle, and on this thistle was a bumblebee trying to extract honey from the blossom. The wind blew the thistle every which way, but the bumblebee stuck. I have come to the conclusion that persistency is characteristic of everything in New Hampshire, whether men or bumblebees.” (Text.)—The Youth’s Companion.

(2345)

See [Resoluteness].

PERSISTENCE IN DOING GOOD

Some of the Christians in Uganda are very faithful in pleading with others to give up their sins. One man, named Matayo, was giving way to drink. His Christian friends reminded him of his wound in the war. “You have a big wound in your soul, caused by drunkenness. Give up drink, or assuredly the wound will get worse and kill you eternally.” Matayo replied: “Why can’t you leave me alone?” Mika Sematimba answered, “When you were shot, did we not pick you up and carry you home? Did you then think we hated you? You are shot now, and we want to carry you home. Do you remember, when we were carrying you, how you said, ‘Let me walk; your carrying makes the wound hurt me?’ We didn’t let you walk. We knew you could not walk, but that you would faint on the road; and now we know you can not keep sober, and we want to help you. You say, ‘Leave me alone,’ but we won’t leave you alone. We know you will get worse if we do.”

(2346)

PERSISTENCE IN MISSIONARIES

Several attempts were made to open missionary work in Lua Niua, which was inhabited by a Polynesian race, speaking a language similar to that spoken by the Tongans and Samoans; but the heathen priests prevented it. Finally the Rev. J. F. Goldy, chairman of the Solomon Islands District, took with him a Christian Tongan teacher named Semisi Nau and a Christian Samoan named Pologa.

The people, incited by the heathen priests, refused them permission to land and Mr. Goldy was about to return, when these two brave men positively refused to leave, saying, “If the people will not allow us to come ashore we will live in the boat and preach from the water; but these people must hear of God’s love for them.”

For three months they lived there, anchoring close to the beach. They were abused and harried by the people on the land and were unable to go ashore. There is no fresh water on this island, and their only drink is coconut milk. Day after day these two faithful men suffered from thirst, but God touched the heart of a native who swam out to their boat under cover of night, and brought them coconuts.

Finally, a friendly chief at the other end of the lagoon invited them to come ashore and he and his people listened willingly and eagerly to the story of the gospel. A church has been built and the gospel has captured that end of the land. (Text.)

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PERSISTENCE PAYS

“I [John Wesley] remember to have heard my father ask my mother, ‘How could you have the patience to tell that blockhead the same thing twenty times over?’ She answered, ‘Why, if I had told him but nineteen times, I should have lost all my labor.’”—W. H. Fitchett, “Wesley and His Century.”

(2348)

PERSISTENCY REWARDED

Eighty-eight letters to Andrew Carnegie, asking him to buy an organ for the Cote Brilliante Presbyterian Church of St. Louis, written in the last eight months, brought a check at last for $1,125 from the philanthropist.

The check was accompanied only by a printed receipt form, and the church-members, while jubilant over getting the price of the organ, are wondering whether Mr. Carnegie really wanted to give the money, or did so to put an end to the series of letters. The letters were first sent at intervals of two weeks by different officials and members of the church, the intervals decreasing to one day, as the appeals for aid brought no reply.

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A San Francisco lad, Cleve T. Shaffer, of the Potrero district, has perfected a soaring machine that he is now manufacturing for the market. He has the first airship factory in the West and is advertising for business. The Shaffer glider is marketed as a pleasure device. The pastime of scudding over fields at lightning speed is recommended as entirely safe and most exhilarating. Shaffer is twenty years old.

While building his gliders for the trade Shaffer, in a shop established in the rear of his home, is fitting an enlarged glider with a power motor which he declares will make of it a biplane-aeroplane superior to those of the Wrights, Bleriot, Curtiss, Latham, Paulhan and the other aviators already famous.

Shaffer is secretary of the Pacific Aero Club, the lively little organization of air-travel zealots which has sprung from the widespread interest in the new field of experimentation in San Francisco. The story of Shaffer’s efforts to solve the aviation problem is inspiring. Tho a mere boy, he is a “pioneer” in aerial experimentation. Without funds and without any suggestion, support or encouragement from older persons, Shaffer as a boy of fifteen years, at a time when aviation was a subject engaging the attention of only a handful of men in the entire world, began persistent and systematic experiments. The lad became the laughing-stock of his home district in the Potrero hills. He was looked upon as a freak, a child with something wrong in his make-up—because of his unquenchable mania for air-travel experiments.—Sunset Magazine.

(2350)

Persistent Effort—See [Difficulties, Overcoming].

Personal Application—See [Odd One, The].

PERSONAL ELEMENT IN LITERATURE

As no glass is colorless, but tinges more or less deeply the reflections from its surface, so no author can interpret human life without unconsciously giving to it the native hue of his own soul. It is this intensely personal element that constitutes style.—William J. Long, “English Literature.”

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PERSONAL ELEMENT, THE

A great violinist being announced to play on his $5,000 instrument, the building was taxed to its utmost capacity to hold the eager throng. As he began to play they cheered his efforts and listened as if spellbound while he drew forth the rich strains of melody. Suddenly the character of the music changed and it was apparent to the people that something was wrong with the violin. The artist frowned, raised it high in air and in a tragic manner brought it down against a stand with such force that the instrument was shivered and flew in a thousand pieces.

The people were horrified that the man should, in a moment of ill temper, thus destroy a $5,000 instrument. As the manager gathered up the fragments, the musician exclaimed, “Friends, this instrument was a $2 violin I purchased on my way here and played on that you might know that it is not the price of the instrument which determines the value of the music. That depends on the player’s touch. I will now play on my $5,000 violin.”

So everywhere it is “the man behind the gun” that counts in the final results. (Text.)

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PERSONAL EVANGELISM

President Woodrow Wilson, of Princeton, gives this incident of Dwight L. Moody:

Whenever I came into contact with Mr. Moody I got the impression that he was coming separately into contact with one person at a time. I remember that I was once in a very plebeian place; I was in a barbershop, lying in a chair, and I was aware that a personality had entered the room. A man came quietly in upon the same errand that I had come in on and sat in the chair next to me. Every word that he uttered, tho it was not in the least didactic, showed a personal and vital interest in the man who was serving him, and before I got through with what was being done to me I was aware that I had attended an evangelistic service, because Mr. Moody was in the next chair. I purposely lingered in the room after he left and noted the singular effect his visit had upon the barbers in that shop. They talked in undertones. They did not know his name. They did not know who had been there, but they knew that something had elevated their thought. And I felt that I left that place as I should have left a place of worship. Mr. Moody always sought and found the individual. (Text.)

(2353)

PERSONAL INFLUENCE

“The Catch-my-pal Movement” is attracting great public attention in the northern or Protestant section of Ireland. The nature of the movement will scarcely be suspected from the designation which has attached to it in popular speech; it is really an organization for the reclamation of drunkards. The originator, who is a Presbyterian layman living at Armagh—Patterson by name—had no intention of launching a general reform work; he stumbled into his present great service in a spontaneous attempt to help a poor fellow whom he found dead drunk at the foot of an Armagh lamp-post one day last July. By dint of genuine Christian sympathy and much hard work, Mr. Patterson succeeded in sobering the man up and persuading him to quit the drink. Then he sent the fellow to get a drunken “pal” and together they saved him. The three then went to work for a fourth. By the time Mr. Patterson had reformed six of the tipplers, he found to his surprize that he had actually started a “movement.” It was organized later under the dignified name of “The Protestant Total Abstinence Union,” but the public has not been able to remember that title. The main idea of using drunkards to save drunkards has been so perfectly exprest in the phrase “Catch my pal” that only that name is known to the “man in the street.”

(2354)

Personal Influence Pervading the World—[See Faith, A Child’s].

PERSONAL PREACHING

Rev. Dr. Samuel M. Zwemer, of Arabia, says that forty years ago Dr. Talbot Chambers preached a missionary sermon in one of the New York churches, on a rainy Sabbath, when there was only one man in the audience. He made an appeal for the payment of the deficit of the Dutch Reformed Board. That deficit amounted to $55,000, and $11,000 were needed immediately to meet the crisis. Before Dr. Chambers went to bed that night there was a ring at the door, and Mr. Warren Ackerman announced himself as the man who had heard the sermon that morning. He drew out his check-book and wrote his check for $11,000. Early in the morning there was a ring at the door, and there stood Mr. Ackerman asking for a return of the check which he had given the previous night. “Now,” Dr. Chambers thought, “he is coming back because he feels he has given too much, and is giving one-half of the total amount needed.” But when the check was filled in the amount was $55,000, the largest single gift ever received by the Reformed Board. In such fashion does a sense of personal responsibility enable men to do exceeding abundantly above all that they are able to ask or think for the kingdom of God.

(2355)

Personal Touch in Music—See [Music of Despair and of Hope].

PERSONAL WORK

Our Roman Catholic brethren have a strong hold upon the cities—and why? Instead of putting a single priest in a great parish, as we put a single minister, they put a whole corps of clergy and a company of sisters to come into personal vital touch with the people, and especially with the sick and the poor.

Campbell Morgan became pastor of Westminster Presbyterian Church in London with a beggarly attendance at the services. Soon the building was crowded to the doors. He said: “Do not give me credit for this great work. Give it to the twenty deaconesses who have gone from house to house, heart to heart, pleading the cause of Christ.”

A priest of the Church of Rome says: “We have had very little anxiety in competition with Protestant church in our great cities, so long as a single man was both preacher and pastor in a great parish. But the deaconesses with black bonnets and white ties, who find their way to the hearthstones of the people, will win.”—J. P. Brushingham, Pittsburgh Christian Advocate.

(2356)

PERSONALITY AS A REDEMPTIVE FORCE

The salvation of the world is not to be by schemes of salvation, but by saviors, and the saviors of society are persons fit to be strong, good seed. Why is not social redemption accomplished by the vast movement of social mechanism, in which we are all so much involved that every man’s trade—as Robert Louis Stevenson once said—is that of a joiner? It is because human society is not a factory, but a field; not a mechanical unity, but a vital unity; not made of wheels, but made of people. What is needed in our day, as never before, is not new social machinery, but new personality, more wisdom, sanity, patience, light, capacity to control the already elaborate mechanism of the time; and without these traits the wheels will soon run down and the work be undone, and the workers be smitten with despair; and the children of the kingdom will find themselves good people indeed, but not good seed, fit for the field of the modern world.—Francis Greenwood Peabody, “The Religious Education Association,” 1904.

(2357)

PERSONALITY, INFLUENCE OF

Marian Bonsall, who was sent to Japan by The Housekeeper to prepare a series of articles on the home life of that country, writes as follows of the Empress:

American women read with interest and admiration of the active part taken by the Empress in Red Cross work during the war, and of how she spent many hours out of her days in making bandages. The effect of these bandages upon the wounded soldiers has been of deep interest to medical and scientific men, for the soldiers honored by them seemed to rally under a peculiar mental influence. All other bandages were destroyed after their first use; those made by the Empress were sterilized and used again for the simple reason of their effect on the recovery of the soldiers.

The Empress used to go personally to the hospitals many times, and visit among the wounded. One of the servants of a friend of mine in Tokyo, told her of his inability to speak when as a wounded soldier he had lain in an army hospital and had been addrest by the Empress. Tho she was so wondrously kind and gracious he could not thank her, and even had he been able, he said, he knew no words sufficiently polite. Then he added proudly, “The Empress could not speak to every one, but the soldiers are her children.”

(2358)

PERSONALITY IS A MYSTERY

Science hath measured man in part; in the laboratory, science points to an analysis of a man weighing a hundred and fifty pounds. In one jar are ten or twelve quarts of water, in another jar the lime, the ash, the carbon, the phosphates, and then a tiny vial holding a little iodin, and a little phosphorus. But that row of jars containing all the elements of the body must not be labeled man. Beyond those jars is a certain immeasurable element, an impalpable something, an invisible essence, a secret spirit, a hidden power, that is fenced about with bones and sinews, but that will suddenly compel you to laugh, to love, to burn with moral indignation, and will spread out before you a canvas and dim your eyes with tears; that will wave a wonder-working wand woven of words, and show you an imperial palace built yonder upon foundations of clouds, and then with a stroke dissolve all, and leave not a wrack behind. These twelve jars, analyzed by science, can not write poems or paint pictures, or carve altars, or enact laws, or sing lullabies, or create a Christmas tree.—N. D. Hillis.

(2359)

PERSONALITY, LOCATION OF

A writer in The Atlantic Monthly says:

The spinal cord runs along the back, with all its ganglia; the weight of the brain is well behind; yet we are not there. In other words, the curious thing is that we feel ourselves to be, not in the region where impressions are received and answered in the brain, and spinal cord, but where they first meet the nerve-extremities. We seem to inhabit not the citadel, but the outer walls. At the point of peripheral expansion of the nerves of sense, where the outer forces begin to be apprehended by us as inner—“in front,” where the fingers feel, and the nose smells and the eyes see—there, if anywhere, we find ourselves to be.

I have often been interested to notice whereabouts on our bodily surface another animal looks to find us. The man or even the little child, looks at the face. Is it because the voice issues thence? Yet it is the eyes, rather than the mouth that is watched. Is it because the expression, the signal-station for the changing moods, is there more than elsewhere? A dog, also, invariably looks up into the face. So does a bird, notwithstanding the fact that the food comes from the hand. Why does he not consider the “I,” so far as his needs are concerned, to lie in the part that feeds him? But no; he cocks his head to one side, and directs his lustrous little eye straight to our own, in order to establish what communion he can with the very “him” of his master and friend.

It is hardly less pathetic than our own human efforts to pierce, by the searching penetration of eyes, to the real personality of each other. We never succeed.

(2360)

Personality, Multiplex—See [Multiple Consciousness].

Personality Superior to Misfortune—See [Misfortune, Superiority to].

Perspective—See [Point of View].

Perturbation—See [Baptism].

Perversion—See [Guidance Evilward].

PERVERSION OF GIFTS

Dr. N. D. Hillis, speaking of the perversion of men’s talents to low or bad uses, says:

And oh, the pity of the waste and abuse of these gifts! Oh, the sorrow of Jesus at these opportunities despised and flung away! Are roses reddened for the swine to lift its tusk upon? Are pearls made to be flung in the mire, in which they are trampled and lost? Is a hospital fitted up as a room in which physicians and nurses riot, drinking up the precious wines, consuming the jellies, wasting the soft linens, while wounded soldiers lie in the darkness without, moaning and dying as their own life-blood ebbs away in the black night? When Philadelphia, in the morning after Gettysburg, rushed a relief train to the battle-field, how would the whole land have quivered with indignation at the news that the officers in charge had forgotten sobriety and honor, and looted the train of its gifts, counting the treasure to be personal to themselves, in utter contempt of heroes wounded and dying?

(2361)

See [Woman’s Sphere].

Perversity—See [Girls, Little, and Slamming Doors].

PESSIMISM

Carlyle was never a hopeful prophet. He called himself a radical of the quiet order, but he had none of the hopefulness of radicalism, nor was it in him to be quiet on any subject that interested him. There is a good deal of truth in the ironical remark of Maurice, that Carlyle believed in a God who left off governing the world at the death of Oliver Cromwell. He saw nothing in modern progress that justified its boasts, and it must be owned that his social forecasts have been all too amply fulfilled. The hopefulness of Emerson positively angered him. He took him round London, showing him the worst of its many abominations, asking after each had been duly objurgated, “Do you believe in the devil now?”—W. J. Dawson, “Makers of English Prose.”

(2362)

PESSIMISM IN LITERATURE

A few days ago Mr. Berth, a young New Yorker, committed suicide in a hotel at St. Paul, Minn. The explanation given for his rash act is that constant study of pessimistic literature had affected his mind. Among his books was found a melancholy tale by Edgar Saltus, in which Berth had marked many depressing passages. About eighty years ago fashionable society in London affected great admiration for Addison’s tragedy of “Cato.” After one of the stage renditions of the play a man named Budgell, imprest by the closing scene of the play, in which the hero commits suicide, left the theater and plunging into the Thames was drowned. On his body was found this couplet:

What Cato did and Addison approves

Must needs be right.

While such susceptibility to pessimistic writing as was shown by Berth and Budgell is, of course, extremely rare, it is nevertheless, a fact that an author who depicts life in dreary colors is sure to exert a most undesirable influence over many of his readers. The force of this applies to all kinds of writing. Whether a man pens an epic poem or a newspaper editorial, the tone of his philosophy is sure to leave its ultimate effect on those who peruse his words.—New York World.

(2363)

Pessimists, The, and the Optimists—See [Loads, Balking Under].

PEST, CONTAGIOUS

The Survey, in commenting on Dr. H. G. Beyer’s statement at a recent conference of the New York Academy of Medicine that the fly is “not merely a pest but an epidemic,” says:

One fly lays 120 eggs in the season, and as each of these eggs takes but ten days to reach maturity, it has been computed that twelve flies surviving the winter will produce 40,000 the following summer. When to this estimate of numbers is added the experimentally proved fact that one fly carries upon his legs alone anywhere between one and six million bacteria, there seems little exaggeration in Dr. Beyer’s characterization.

Observation has shown that the fly is omnivorous and ubiquitous, and that, certain unsanitary conditions being fulfilled, where-ever the fly is, there also are certain diseases. In regard to these diseases the most startling evidence is given for typhoid, but careful experiments have shown that no less than ten others, among them tuberculosis, carbuncle, cholera, tapeworm and summer diarrhea, have been spread by flies, and there is good reason to believe that smallpox, leprosy and diphtheria might be added to the list.

It is the omnivorousness of the fly, together with his choice of breeding-places, that makes him a menace to health. A fruitful source of disease bacteria is damp, decaying organic matter, and it is just such matter, usually stable refuse, that is used for a breeding-place by flies. Experiments with young flies fresh from the breeding-ground showed them to have live bacteria either on the outside of their bodies or in the digestive tracts. This same decayed organic matter is also the food of the fly, but with true democracy of taste he is glad to share man’s food also, and it is this willingness to take his dessert out of the sugar-bowl after a dinner of decayed fish that constitutes his chief danger to man.

(2364)

Pests—See [Barriers]; [Piracy, Bird]; [Remedy for Pests].

Pests, Utilizing—See [Ingenuity].

PEW, IF I WERE IN THE

There are a great many things which can be done by those in the pew to assist the ministry, and to better the Church and her services. Here are a few of them. If I were in the pew:

I would acquire the habit of getting to church on time, for then I would get the full benefit of the service and would not disturb others by my late arrival.

I would have my regular seat, and see that it is occupied every Sunday.

I would have my entire family with me on the same bench.

Upon reaching my seat, I would kneel, or bow the head in a few words of silent prayer, asking the Lord to prepare my heart for a season of spiritual worship and the acceptance of the truths and instructions presented by His messengers.

I would join in the singing with my whole soul, not making it a mere word or note service, as it often is.

While public prayer is being offered, I would have a personal, silent prayer of my own to offer. This prayer would be short, so that, when through with it, I could follow the trend of the one who is praying aloud.

I would greet every stranger and make him feel that I appreciated his coming to worship with us.

I would see that every visiting member or stranger is invited into some home for lodging and entertainment. I would not forget to be hospitable.

I would frequently invite the minister into my home, feeling that his presence would increase the spirituality of my family.

I would not criticize the minister, the sermon, or the church, before my children, or non-church-members. I would exercise the greatest charity toward them all.

I would frequently remember the minister with little gifts and tangible assistance, and thus help to share the sacrifices he makes for the Church—which means me and my family.

I would occasionally call on the minister in his home.

I would not be slow to praise him for his successes, and encourage him in his efforts. If I had any suggestions for his improvement, I would make them in a tactful, kindly way.

I would actively cooperate with the minister in every church work.

I would attend all council-meetings, and endeavor to increase the spirituality, peace, and prosperity of the Church.—O. H. Yereman, Gospel Messenger.

(2365)

PHILANTHROPY

Dr. John Barnardo, who devoted his life to the rescue and cure of poor children, tells the experiences here quoted:

A lady on one occasion came to Stepney in her carriage. A child was in it. I granted her an interview, and she laid down five 100-pound notes, saying they were mine if I would take the child and ask no questions. I did not take the child. Again, a well-known peer of the realm once sent his footman here with £100, asking me to take the footman’s son. No. The footman could support his child. Gold and silver will never open my doors unless there is real destitution.

“It is to the homeless,” said the doctor, “the actually destitute, that we open our doors day and night, without money and without price.” (Text.)—Westminster Gazette, London.

(2366)

PHILANTHROPY, PRACTICAL

Samuel Saucerman is the originator of the “Trimmer Band,” which is an unique and effective method of promoting temperance and thrift in the young, from nine to sixteen years of age. To every boy in the State of Iowa who will take the pledge to abstain from tobacco in every form, intoxicating liquor, gambling and profane language, Mr. Saucerman will give $1.00 upon his joining one of these “Trimmer Bands,” and will pay him one cent a day for three years, and another $1.00 at the end of that period. Members of these “Bands” are urged to save their nickels and dimes, which would otherwise be spent for tobacco and liquor, and also hold monthly meetings to discuss economy, finance, clean living, and everything in line with industry and morals. To show good faith, each boy must deposit 50 cents with his first dollar, and at the end of the three years, even if he has not himself saved a cent, he will have $12.00. The object is to establish habits of saving, which will enable every boy at twenty-one to have saved sufficient to start him in life, or to go to college.—James T. White, “Character Lessons.”

(2367)

Photography of Germs—See [Invisible, The, Made Visible].

Physical Ailments—See [Remedies, Strange].

Physical Training—See [Play and Morals].

PHYSICAL WEAKNESS OVERCOME

Rev. W. F. Crafts, Ph.D., writes of the success of scores of men who were born physically defective:

The list includes club-footed Byron, halting Akenside, frail Spinoza, deformed Malebranche, disfigured Sam Johnson, Walter Scott, “a pining child”; Sir Isaac Newton, “who might have been put in a quart pot when born”; Voltaire, who was for some time too small and weak to christen; Charles Sumner, who weighed three and a half pounds at birth; Lyman Beecher, who weighed but three pounds at first, and was laid aside by his nurse to die; Goethe, Victor Hugo, and D’Alembert, who were so weak at birth that they also were not expected to live, and also Pope, Descartes, Gibbon, Kepler, Lord Nelson, Sir Christopher Wren, James Watt, John Howard, Washington Irving, William Wilberforce, and many others whom the world has delighted to honor as mental giants—a list that well-born children could hardly match—whose bodily weakness in infancy in any but a Christian land would have marked them as unworthy to be raised to manhood. The study of such a group ought to be an inspiration to boys handicapped by any physical weakness, and it also suggests that mind and will may conquer the most adverse circumstances.

(2368)

Pibroch, The—See [Music of Despair and of Hope].

PICTURE, RECORD PRICE FOR

Frans Hals was the hero of the evening at the Yerkes sale at Mendelssohn Hall, April 7, 1910. His “Portrait of a Woman” brought the highest price of the evening, $137,000, the highest price ever given for a picture at a sale in America and $8,000 more than the record-breaking price of the evening before, $129,000, which was paid for a wonderful Turner.

The dear old Dutch woman whose portrait Frans Hals painted more than 400 years ago could never have dreamed, if her practical soul was given to anything in the nature of visions, of ever being worth, in any form, so very many thousand dollars. She was the calmest-looking person in the hall when the curtains were drawn aside and she was revealed sitting quietly in her big chair, a wide ruff around her plump throat, a close cap encircling her placid face, one hand at her waist as she sat primly for her portrait, the other at her side clasping her Bible.—New York Times.

(2369)

Pictures—See [Piety].

PICTURES, INFLUENCE OF

It pays to spend thought on the pictures we put on our walls. A charming woman once said:

“My earliest impression is a picture that hung on the wall over my bed and which I had to look at the last thing every night before I went to sleep. It was that of a white horse upon the back of which was crouched the body of a fierce tiger, with his teeth and claws embedded in the flesh of the horse. The blood ran down from the wounds and the whole thing was frightful to me. I went to sleep every night afraid and very uncomfortable. This picture is as vivid to me to-day as tho I was looking at the real thing, and will never be erased.”

If that had been the picture of “The Guardian Angel,” or “The Evening Prayer,” or some one of the many that are pleasing and that teach some beautiful lesson, that woman would have had a happier remembrance, and would be better both physically and morally.—Religious Telescope.

(2370)

---

While we empower the police to put down with a strong hand the exhibition in shop windows, and the censor of stage plays and spectacles to interdict the parade in theaters of pictures and scenes of an “immoral” character, because it is recognized that these have a tendency to corrupt the mind of youth—and age, too—nothing whatever is done to restrain the daily increasing evil of pictorial placards displayed on every boarding, and of highly-wrought scenes produced at nearly all the theaters, which not only direct the thoughts, but actively stir the passions of the people in such way as to familiarize the average mind with murder in all its forms, and to break down that protective sense of “horror” which nature has given us, with the express purpose, doubtless, of opposing an obstacle to the evil influence of the exemplification of homicide. It does seem strange—passing strange—that this murder culture by the educationary use of the pictorial art has not been checked by public authority. We have no wish to make wild affirmations, but knowing what we do, as observers of development, we can have no hesitation in saying that the increasing frequency of horribly brutal outrages is by no means unaccountable. The viciously inclined are, in a sense, always weak-minded—that is to say, they are especially susceptible to influences moving them in the direction their passions incline them to take; and when the mind (or brain) is imprest through the senses, and particularly the sense of sight, in such manner as to produce mental pictures, either in waking thoughts or dreams of homicide, the impulsive organism is, as it were, prepared for the performance of the deeds which form the subjects of the consciousness. We are, of course, writing technically; but the facts are indisputable, and we trust they will be sufficiently plain. It is high time that this ingenious and persistent murder-culture should cease.—London Lancet.

(2371)

PICTURESQUE

Thomas Rowlandson, the artist, at one time in his career devoted himself to book illustration, in a series of plates on Goldsmith, Fielding, Smollett, Sterne and other humorists of his day. It was this that led William Combe, then in a debtors’ prison, and who had never met the artist, to write his humorous poem, “Dr. Syntax in Search of the Picturesque.”

Ought not every Dr. Syntax of the pulpit or platform go in search of the picturesque? (Text.)

(2372)

PIETY

In considering the pictures of sacred subjects produced in the early ages of faith and simplicity, we must not forget that the chief intention of the artist was to stimulate the piety of the spectator, and not to make a “pretty” picture. Thus it is recorded of the saintly Florentine monk, Fra Angelico (1387–1455), that before he began the painting of a religious subject he fasted and prayed, and that while he was at work on his picture he always remained kneeling.—Frederick Keppel, “Christmas in Art.”

(2373)

PILGRIM, THE

Charlotte Wilson, in Scribner’s, writes a song of the pilgrim who minds not the hardships or fortunes of the road so he but reaches the goal of the journey:

Ah, little Inn of Sorrow,

What of thy bitter bread?

What of thy ghostly chambers,

So I be shelterèd?

’Tis but for a night, the firelight

That gasps on thy cold hearthstone;

To-morrow my load and the open road

And the far light leading on!

Ah, little Inn of Fortune,

What of thy blazing cheer,

Where glad through the pensive evening

Thy bright doors beckon clear?

Sweet sleep on thy balsam-pillows,

Sweet wine that will thirst assuage—

But send me forth o’er the morning earth

Strong for my pilgrimage!

Ah, distant End of the Journey,

What if thou fly my feet?

What if thou fade before me

In splendor wan and sweet?

Still the mystical city lureth—

The quest is the good knight’s part;

And the pilgrim wends through the end of the ends

Toward a shrine and a Grail in his heart.(Text.)

(2374)

Pilgrimage—See [Journey to Heaven].

Pilgrimage, The Mecca—See [Mecca, Influence of].

PILOT, NEED OF

A man who spurns the guidance of others or of God is like this self-confident sea captain:

A bright boy went to sea; he loved it and rose to quick promotion. While quite a young man he became master of a ship. One day a passenger spoke to him upon the voyage, and asked if he should anchor off a certain headland, supposing he would anchor there, and telegraph for a pilot to take the vessel into port.

“Anchor! no, not I. I mean to be in dock with the morning tide.”

“I thought perhaps you would signal for a pilot.”

“I am my own pilot,” was the curt reply.

Intent upon reaching port by morning he took a narrow channel to save distance. Experienced sailors on board shook their heads dubiously, while cautious passengers besought the young captain to take a wider course. He only laughed at their fears and declared he would be in dock by daybreak. A sudden squall swooped down upon them; wild alarm spread throughout the vessel. Enough to say that the captain was ashore earlier than he promised—tossed sportively upon the weedy beach, a dead thing that the waves were weary of, and his ship and freight were scattered over the angry sea. The glory of that young man was strength; but he was his own pilot.

(2375)

See [Christ Our Pilot].

PIRACY, BIRD

The Buffalo Evening News gives us the following from the city forester of that city:

A war of extermination has been declared against the English sparrow by the Department of Agriculture, which has just issued a bulletin on the subject in which this busy, fighting bird is outlawed as a pirate of the air. It is declared that he studiously hunts and eats insects which are beneficial to plant life, while he more or less passes over those which are harmful. The only good thing he does is to eat the seed of weeds and prevent their spread. Aside from that there is nothing to be said in his favor.

More than that, he is murderous. He hunts the nesting-places and destroys eggs and young bluebirds, house-wrens, tree-swallows and barn-swallows. The robin, the catbird, and the mocking-bird he attacks and drives out of parks and shade-trees. He has no song, but he drives out the song-birds and brings only noise in return.

After having learned all this about the sparrow after an extensive investigation, the Department of Agriculture describes various ways to destroy him.

City Forester Filer said yesterday he has not seen a copy of the bulletin, but that he agrees with its conclusions. “There is a good deal of justice in declaring the English sparrow a pirate,” said Mr. Filer. “These birds were originally imported to New York to get rid of an insect pest, the linden moth, which that city was then fighting. The sparrow didn’t like these moths, and he doesn’t like any caterpillar with fuzz on it, and he took to the streets for his living. They spread and multiplied very fast.

“The robin is the only other bird we have in Buffalo in numbers and the sparrows eat their eggs. In the parks we have a few other varieties, but they are not numerous, and the sparrows are not as plentiful in the parks as they are in the streets, where they prefer to get their living.

“Most of the destructive moths, particularly the gipsy, tussock and browntail, have hairy caterpillars, and the sparrows will not eat them, so they are no good for that purpose.”

(2376)

Placards—See [Pictures, Influence of].

PLACE, FILLING ONE’S

Sir Michael Costa was once rehearsing with a vast array of performers and hundreds of voices, when, in the mighty chorus, amid the thunder of the organ, and the roll of drums, and the blare of brass instruments, and the clashing of cymbals, he suddenly stopt and exclaimed, “Where is the piccolo?” That little instrument had ceased to play, and the great master of music missed it.

So in life’s chorus, the least man can make or mar it by faithfulness or neglect. (Text.)

(2377)

PLACE, IN THE RIGHT

The rainbow is one of the most beautiful things in nature. It is made by a series and succession of falling drops, the series stretching across the sky, and the successive drops catching the reflection and refraction left by the drop below. Each drop has but a minute ray among the millions, and has this but for an instant as it comes into the right angle with the sun; but all together and in succession spread wide the beautiful arch of hope and promise. Each of us is among God’s creatures only as a single drop in the broad shower, and only for a little is our opportunity; but if we are in our place and in the right angle toward God, we may help spread His glory far and wide.—Franklin Noble, “Sermons in Illustration.”

(2378)

PLAGIARISM, DETECTION OF

A man might as well hoist a ladder in a village at noonday and try to steal the town clock without being observed as to expect to carry off literary ware in our time and not be found out. The newspaper editor, scissors in hand and mucilage on the table, sits up to his chin in exchanges from the four winds of heaven. Beside that, all the world is traveling now. Fares are so cheap and transportation so rapid that before every preacher, and before every lecturer, and before every religious exhorter, there may sit persons from the most unexpected quarter, and if they heard three years ago something delivered in New Orleans which you delivered in Brooklyn, the discovery will be reported. Quote from all books you can lay your hands on. Quote from all directions. It is a compliment to have breadth of reading to be able to quote. But be sure to announce it as a quotation. Ah! how many are making a mistake in this thing; it is a mistake that a man can not afford to make. Four commas upside down—two at the beginning of the paragraph, two at the close of the paragraph—will save many a man’s integrity and usefulness.—T. De Witt Talmage.

(2379)

PLAN IN NATURE

There are several hundred thousand different kinds of animals living on this globe of the different types. Every one of them has its line of development. Every sparrow begins with the egg, and goes through all the changes which are characteristic of sparrow life, until it is capable of producing new eggs, which will go through the same change. Every butterfly comes from the egg, which produces the caterpillar, which becomes a chrysalis, and then a butterfly, laying eggs to go through the same changes. So with all animals, whether of higher or lower type. In fact, the animal kingdom as it is now, is undergoing greater changes every year than the whole animal kingdom has ever passed through from the beginning until now; and yet we never see one of these animals swerve from the plan pointed out, or produce anything else than that which is like itself.—Prof. Louis Agassiz.

(2380)

PLAN, LACK OF

Emerson tells that when on a trip to New Hampshire he found a large building going up in a country town. Struck by its ungainly and rambling appearance, he asked a man who was working at it, who the architect was. And the reply was, “Oh, there isn’t any architect settled on as yet. I’m just building it, you see, and there’s a man coming from Boston next month to put the architecture into it.”

(2381)

PLANS, HUMAN, TRANSCENDED

The Rev. W. H. Fitchett says of John Wesley:

Had Wesley done nothing more than preach or write his memory might have failed. But at this stage Wesley links himself by one great achievement, not merely to English history, but to the history of religion. He creates a church! He did not do this consciously, or of deliberate purpose. He strove, indeed, not to do it; he protested he would never do it. But as history shows, he actually did it! And since history is not so much philosophy teaching by examples as God interpreting Himself by events, we are entitled to say that Wesley, in laying the foundations of a new church, did something that, no doubt, outran his own human vision, but which fulfilled a divine purpose.—“Wesley and His Century.”

(2382)

PLANT WORSHIP

The plant worship which holds so prominent a place in the history of the primitive races of mankind, would appear to have sprung from a perception of the beauty and utility of trees. Survivals of this still linger on in many parts of Europe. The peasants in Bohemia will sally forth into their gardens before sunrise on Good Friday, and falling upon their knees before a tree will exclaim: “I pray, O green tree, that God may make thee good.” At night-time they will run to and fro about their gardens crying: “Bud, O trees, bud, or I will flog you.” In England the Devonshire farmers and their men will to this day go out into their orchards after supper on the evening of Twelfth Day, carrying with them a large milk-pail of cider, with roasted apples prest into it. All present hold in their hands an earthenware cup filled with liquor, and taking up their stand beneath those apple-trees which have borne the most fruit, address them in these words:

Health to thee, good apple-tree,

Well to bear pocketfuls, hatfuls,

Peckfuls, bushel bagfuls!

simultaneously dashing the contents of their cups over the trees.—The Gentleman’s Magazine.

(2383)

Planting That Multiplied—See [Missionary, A Little].

PLAY AND MORALS

Play is related to morals. As we learn from Judge Lindsey: “The whole question of juvenile law-breaking—or at least nine-tenths of it—is a question of children’s play. A boy who breaks the law is in nine cases out of ten not a criminal. He is obeying an instinct that is not only legitimate, but vital, and which, if it finds every lawful channel choked up, will seek an outlet at the next available point. The boy has no especial desire to come in conflict with the laws and usages of civilized society.” Give a boy an opportunity to play at his favorite game, and the policeman will need, as Mr. Lee puts it, “a gymnasium himself to keep his weight down.” Give children playgrounds, and the same spirit and imagination which form rowdy gangs will form baseball clubs and companies for games and drills. Precinct captains attribute the existence of rowdyism and turbulence to lack of better playgrounds than the streets. They break lamps and windows because they have no other provision made for them. London, after forty years’ experience, says tersely, “Crime in our large cities is to a great extent simply a question of athletics.” “This is not theory, but is the testimony you will get from any policeman or schoolmaster who has been in a neighborhood before and after a playground was started there. The public playground is a moral agent, and should be in every community.” The play of youth needs careful and scientific direction, so as to develop active and manly qualities of mind and character.—George J. Fisher, “Proceedings of the Religious Education Association,” 1907.

(2384)

PLAY, COMMENDABLE

Lovely human play is like the play of the sun. There’s a worker for you. He, steady to his time, is set as a strong man to run his course, but also, he rejoiceth as a strong man to run his course. See how he plays in the morning, with the mists below, and the clouds above, with a ray here and a flash there, and a shower of jewels everywhere—that’s the sun’s play; and great human play is like his—all various—all full of light and life, and tender, as the dew of the morning.—John Ruskin.

(2385)

PLAY NECESSARY

The child has an artificial occupation named play through games. Having the food as raw material for the body, that food can be built into the physique only through the free play of the legs and arms, through exercise and fresh air. In Prospect Park we behold the maple bough pushing out a soft growth of one or two feet, and then the sap coursing through the young growth furnishes food; then comes the spring and summer winds to give the sap and the bough its exercise; playing with the leaves in the air, bending it, twisting it, hardening the young growth, until it can stand up against the storms of winter. And not otherwise does the growing child need its exercise. The little boy flings out his arm with the ball, and so stretches the arm. Then, when the arm is stretched, along comes the angel of the blood and drops in a little wedge, so that the stretched arm can not draw back. Thus the growth is permanent. This is the function of all the games for little children, to stretch the blood into the body and then by forcing the arterial blood into the extremities to make the stretching permanent. One thing, therefore, is vital, the playground. (Text.)—N. D. Hillis.

(2386)

PLAY, SIGNIFICANCE OF

When things become signs, when they gain a representative capacity as standing for other things, play is transformed from mere physical exuberance into an activity involving a mental factor. A little girl who had broken her doll was seen to perform with the leg of the doll all the operations of washing, putting to bed, and fondling, that she had been accustomed to perform with the entire doll. The part stood for the whole; she reacted not to the stimulus sensibly present, but to the meaning suggested by the sense object. So children use a stone for a table, leaves for plates, acorns for cups. So they use their dolls, their trains, their blocks, their other toys. In manipulating them, they are living not with the physical things, but in the large world of meanings, natural and social, evoked by these things. So when children play horse, play store, play house or making calls, they are subordinating the physically present to the ideally signified. In this way, a world of meanings, a store of concepts (so fundamental to all intellectual achievement), is defined and built up.—John Dewey, “How We Think.”

(2387)

PLAYFUL ATTITUDE, THE

Playfulness is a more important consideration than play. The former is an attitude of mind; the latter is a passing outward manifestation of this attitude. When things are treated simply as vehicles of suggestion, what is suggested overrides the thing. Hence the playful attitude is one of freedom. The person is not bound to the physical traits of things, nor does he care whether a thing really means (as we say) what he takes it to represent. When the child plays horse with a broom and cars with chairs, the fact that the broom does not really represent a horse, or a chair a locomotive, is of no account. In order, then, that playfulness may not terminate in arbitrary fancifulness and in building up an imaginary world alongside the world of actual things, it is necessary that the play attitude should gradually pass into a work attitude.—John Dewey, “How we Think.”

(2388)

PLAYTHINGS, EARTH’S

He begged me for the little toys at night,

That I had taken, lest he play too long,

The little broken toys—his sole delight.

I held him close in wiser arms and strong,

And sang with trembling voice the even-song.

Reluctantly the drowsy lids drooped low,

The while he pleaded for the boon denied.

Then, when he slept, sweet dream, content to know,

I mended them and laid them by his side

That he might find them in the early light,

And wake the gladder for this joyous sight.

So, Lord, like children, at the even fall

We weep for broken playthings, loath to part,

While Thou, unmoved, because Thou knowest all,

Dost fold us from the treasures of our heart;

And we shall find them at the morning-tide

Awaiting us, unbroke and beautified.

—Ainslee’s Magazine.

(2389)

PLEASANT LOOKS

If one does not believe that his countenance adds to or detracts anything from the lives or expressions of others, let him pause for a moment before that now celebrated “Billiken.” It is almost impossible to look at the little imp and not smile. The Japanese teach their maids in the hotels, and those also in higher walks of life, the art of smiling. They are compelled to practise before a mirror. One can not stay long in Japan without being inoculated with the disposition to “look pleasant.” The “look pleasant, please,” of the photographer goes deeper than the photograph plate.

No one wants to associate long with an animated vinegar cruet. A disposition is easily guessed from the angle of the corners of the mouth; a disposition is molded by compelling those angles to turn up or down. If a merry heart maketh a glad countenance, it is also true that a glad countenance maketh a merry heart—in the one who has it and in the one who beholds it. “Iron sharpeneth iron. So a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend.”—Baptist Commonwealth.

(2390)

Pleasure a Deceiver—See [Slaves of Pleasure].

PLEASURE, ETHICS OF

Mrs. Wesley discusses with exquisite good sense the whole ethics of pleasure:

“Would you judge of the lawfulness or unlawfulness of pleasure take this rule: Whatever weakens your reason, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God, or takes off the relish of spiritual things—in short, whatever increases the strength and authority of your body over your mind, that thing is sin to you, however innocent it may be in itself.”

The wisest of casuists might find it difficult to better that interpretation of human duty!—W. H. Fitchett, “Wesley and His Century.”

(2391)

PLEASURE, MOCKERY OF

In the days of the Inquisition cruel men deceived the prisoner, as pleasure and sensualism deceive the young now. With soft words the jailer promised the prisoner release on the morrow. When the appointed hour came he opened the door and pointed down the corridor, and oh, joy of joys! yonder was the green sward, cool with grass, and gay with tulips and crimson flowers. With a shout of joy the prisoner ran forward to cast himself upon the cool ground, but lo! it was a mockery, a delusion, a lying deceit. What afar off seemed grass was really sheet-iron painted in the similitude of verdure. What looked like red tulips and crimson flowers was iron beaten into the similitude of blossoms and heated red hot by flames underneath. Where coolness was promised scorching was given. The vista promised pleasure; it gave pain. And when a man or a woman looks upon the worldly life, with all its pleasures of appetite and physical sense, from afar off, it wears a brilliant aspect and a crimson hue. But near at hand the scene changes, and lo, the honey is bitter, all the fountains of peace are poisoned.—N. D. Hillis.

(2392)

PLEASURES, POISONOUS

A gentleman in Paris desired to buy a ring, and, as he tried on several rings in the jeweler’s store, he noticed one that was set with tiny eagle’s claws. The next day his hand began to swell. The doctor told him that he was poisoned, and on inquiry he found that the old ring came from Italy, and was once used for poisoning an enemy. For four centuries that particle of poison had remained between the eagle’s claws.

Watch the rings of pleasure which the world offers, there are within them the eagle’s claws with the poison. Those pleasures may sparkle with fascination and seem greatly desirable, but they mean death in the end. The poison is subtle; the claws are concealed; but at last poison and claws do their fatal work.

(2393)

Pledge—See [Loyalty].

PLEDGE-KEEPING

The Archbishop of York, at a recent meeting, told how, when he was at Portsmouth, he had induced a working man to sign the pledge. The man said: “Ah, sir, I won’t be able to keep this pledge. Every night I have to pass ten public-houses, and my mates are with me, and we treat each other.”

The archbishop said, “Do you think it would help you if I were to see you home?”

At this the meeting broke out into a cheer.

“Don’t cheer that,” said the archbishop; “that is the kind of work which the clergy are doing every day.” The man replied, “If you could only see me past these houses, I should get home all right.”

(2394)

PLUCK

What a characteristic story of poverty and pluck is that of Andrew Carnegie! His father, a Scotch weaver who worked with hand-looms, thrown out of employment by improved machinery, came to Pittsburg when “Andy” was but ten years of age. The boy went to work as a bobbin-boy at $1.20 a week. At thirteen he was promoted to the post of engineer of the factory engine. At fourteen he became telegraph boy, and was promoted at sixteen, for quick intelligence, to the post of telegraph operator at a salary of $300 a year. About this time his father died, and the support of the family devolved on him. He soon got a dollar a week extra for copying telegrams for the papers, which he called his “first bit of capital.” His salary went for household expenses, but the dollar surplus he invested wisely, first in the express business, then in sleeping-cars, and, finally, as an outcome of his management of transportation in the Civil War, in a plant to manufacture iron railway bridges. And so by alertness and economy and untiring energy he came to be the world’s most distinguished manufacturer and philanthropist, putting as much talent into giving as he had before put into getting.

(2395)

See [Courage in Life]; [Stedfastness].

POET APPRECIATED

“If ‘W,’ at Haverhill, will continue to favor us with pieces as beautiful as the one inserted in our poetical department to-day, we shall esteem it a favor.” This note appeared in the Free Press, of Newburyport, Mass., June 8, 1826. The “W” referred to was John G. Whittier, then in his nineteenth year, and the editor of the Free Press was William Lloyd Garrison, then in his twenty-first. “W” did continue to “favor us” with pieces quite as beautiful as the one inserted in the Free Press in 1826; indeed, with pieces more and more beautiful, of a wider and deeper application to American life, until he was recognized—tho not till after many years—as the chief of the purely American poets, indebted to America and its life in the highest degree for his equipment in song.

The first piece of “original poetry”—we are told by the sons of Mr. Garrison, in their admirable life of their father—was found lying near the door in the office of the Free Press. The editor, having a strong tendency to tear “original” sin—verse or otherwise—to pieces, says he had a momentary impulse to dispose of this in that way, without reading it; but summoning the resolution so needful in an editor, he read the poem and published it. He had the courage, moreover, to inquire about the writer, and found him to be a “Quaker lad who was daily at work on the shoemaker’s bench, with hammer and lapstone, at East Haverhill. Jumping into a vehicle, I lost no time,” says the editor, “in driving to see the youthful rustic bard, who came into the room with shrinking diffidence, almost unable to speak, and blushing like a maiden.” The parents of the lad were poor, “unable to give him a suitable education,” and unwilling, as being unable to, let him indulge in the unprofitable but delightful pursuit of verse-making. “Poetry will not give him bread,” they said, as many a father has had to say. But the poet, proverbially “born, not made,” is not easily unmade, since nature presides at the birth and fosters her own.—Journal of Education.

(2396)

Poetry and Religion—See [Religion and Poetry].

POETRY, POPULAR POWER OF

Poetry is not always the possession of the mart and street, but in the case of a favored few who write, there is this high compliment of approval, as the following suggests:

Walter Camp was talking about football at a dinner at the New York Athletic Club.

“Had we not reformed our football,” he said, “it would have fallen into grave disrepute—into such grave disrepute as surrounded cricket and football both during the Boer War, when Kipling wrote his poem about

“‘The flannel fools at the wicket,

The muddied oafs at the goal.’

“That poem hit the English ‘footers’ hard. One of the English ‘footers’ during their visit to us told me how he was walking one day to his club in football clothes, when a newsboy hailed him.

“‘Paper, sir?’

“The footballer walked on; whereupon the boy yelled after him:

“‘Yah, ye muddied oaf! Like as not ye can’t even read!’”

(2397)

Poet’s Insight—See [Viewpoint, The].

POINT OF VIEW

The ancient Athenians demanded a last statue by their great sculptors, Alcamenes and Phidias. When the two Minervas were unveiled in the public square, the people declared the statue of Alcamenes to be perfect, believing it to be living. The judges were about to award the prize. Phidias calmly approached the tribunal and said: “Is it not for the top of a column the chosen statue is designed?” “Certainly,” replied the magistrates. “Then,” said Phidias, “is it not from the effects produced by its height that judgment should be pronounced?” The statues were raised to their positions by machinery. The Minerva of Alcamenes lost her charms in the ascent. The statue of Phidias, which had shocked the spectators by its massive, unpolished appearance in the Forum, from the column’s height took on such grandeur and majesty that the multitudes shouted with one accord, “Phidias is the sculptor of the gods!” (Text.)

(2398)

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In “Stories of English Artists” we are told that Gainsborough’s pictures can only be properly appreciated when viewed at the right distance. As Sir Joshua Reynolds remarked in one of his famous “Discourses,” all those odd scratches and marks which on close examination are so observable in Gainsborough’s pictures, and which even to experienced painters appear rather the effect of accident than design, this chaos, this uncouth and shapeless appearance by a kind of magic at a certain distance assume form, and all the parts seem to drop into their proper places.

No doubt the apparent chaos and disorder of human events and careers, and of the natural world, would fall into order and express to us God’s wise designs if we could place ourselves at the right point of view!

(2399)

---

Two old darkies, lounging on a street corner in Richmond, Va., one day, were suddenly aroused by a runaway team that came dashing toward them at breakneck speed. The driver, scared nearly to death, had abandoned his reins, and was awkwardly climbing out of the wagon at the rear end. One of the old negroes said: “Brer’ Johnson, sure as you born, man, de runaway horse am powerful gran’ and a monstrous fine sight to see.” Johnson shook his head doubtfully, and then replied, philosophically, “Dat ’pends berry much, nigger, on whedder you be standin’ on de corner obsarvin’ of him, or be gittin’ ober de tail-board ob de waggin.”—Marion J. Verdery.

(2400)

See [Distance].

---

A skilful artist was traveling in Egypt, painting pictures as he went. One day he showed to a gentleman who had lived in that country for many years one of his pictures of the Nile. The friend criticized the picture somewhat severely, maintaining that it was not true to nature. Here on the canvas the Nile appeared blue and clear; whereas, through all the years of his residence by the very banks of the river, he had never seen its waters otherwise than brown and muddy. The artist replied that he had painted it as it had appeared to him. He invited his friend to a place situated at some distance from the stream and then turned round to look back. To the astonishment of the critic, there lay the river, clear, blue, and sparkling; however muddy it might be at close quarters, when surveyed from afar its surface reflected the brilliance of the sky overhead. The gentleman admitted that he had always been content to gaze down into the muddy waters by the bank and so had missed the charm of the best view of the Nile.

Would it not be better for many of us, supposing some things seem to be unpleasant, or ugly, or unnecessary, to view them from a more favorable position?

(2401)

Poison, Disguised—See [Death Masked in Beauty].

POISON DRINK

An officer from Japan, visiting America, one day, while looking about a big city, saw a man stop a milk-wagon.

“Is he going to arrest the man?” he asked.

“No,” was the answer; “he must see that the milk sold by this man is pure, with no water or chalk mixed with it.”

“Would chalk or water poison the milk?”

“No; but people want pure milk if they pay for it.”

Passing a whisky saloon, a man staggered out, struck his head against a lamp-post, and fell to the sidewalk.

“What is the matter with that man?”

“He is full of bad whisky.”

“Is it poison?”

“Yes; a deadly poison,” was the answer.

“Do you watch the selling of whisky as you do the milk?” asked the Japanese.

“No.”

At the markets they found a man looking at the meat to see if it was healthy.

“I can’t understand your country,” said the Japanese. “You watch the meat and the milk, and let men sell whisky as much as they please.”

(2402)

Poison Pleasures—See [Pleasures, Poisonous].

POISONS AND MEDICINES

Almost all medicines are poisons. That which saves life in one dose causes death in another. There is no more useful medicine in the modern pharmacopoeia than arsenic; yet three out of five women who poison themselves do so with arsenic. Strychnine is a terrible poison, but nux vomica is a most valuable drug. In Greece criminals were sometimes forced to take their own lives by drinking a cup of hellebore; we in our day cure many diseases of the stomach with veratrum. If a drug which destroys life under given conditions saves it in others, why may not a disease germ which is noxious in one set of circumstances prove beneficial when the circumstances are changed and the exhibition of the germ regulated by scientific principles.—San Francisco Call.

(2403)

POLICY, SELFISH

There is much that passes muster as acts of generosity which, if spiritually analyzed, would be found to be merely selfish policy, like that exercised by the spider:

The moment an ill-starred fly or other insect comes in contact with the net of the spider, it is sprung upon with the rapidity of lightning, and if the captured insect be of small size the spider conveys it at once to the place of slaughter, and having at its leisure sucked all its juice, throws out the carcass. If the insect be large and struggles to escape, the spider envelops its prey in a mesh of thread, and its legs and wings secured, it is conveyed to its den and devoured. But when a bee or large fly, too powerful to be mastered by the spider, gets entangled in its toils, then the wary animal, conscious of its incapacity to contend with such fearful odds, makes no attempt to seize or embarrass the victim. On the contrary, it assists the entangled captive in its efforts to free itself, and often goes so far as to break that part of the web from which it is suspended. This act has upon it the color of generosity, but it is really nothing more than the performance of selfish cunning. The tyrant, feeling himself incapable of doing an injury, determines to have no molestation. To this end he performs an act of manumission.

(2404)

Polish—See [Education].

POLITENESS

“Women should not complain that they have to stand in street-cars and other public conveyances,” said an old gentleman. “Children learn common politeness at home, if they learn it at all.

“On the car that I just left was a handsomely drest woman and her son, a fine-looking boy of ten. The car was crowded when I got on and the little man and his mother sat near the door. As soon as I entered the boy made a motion to get up, but his mother held him down.

“‘Mama, the man is lame,’ I heard him whisper. ‘I don’t care if he is; you have paid for your seat and have a right to it,’ she answered him pettishly. The little fellow blushed at his mother’s remark.

“Now, that woman will probably read the riot act to the next man who refrains from giving her a seat in a crowded car, but what can she expect when she teaches her own son to be discourteous to the lame and the halt?” (Text.)

(2405)

Politics—See [Interests, Significant].

Politics a Duty—See [Ballot a Duty].

POLITICS IN DISFAVOR

While the science of politics ought to be held in the highest esteem for what its true nature and possibilities are, yet in actual life and practise the reverse is often true. As an instance of popular disfavor, the following incident in Success is in point:

Representative Lorimer, of Chicago, who is a great walker, was out for a tramp along the conduit road leading from Washington, when, after going a few miles, he sat down to rest.

“Want a lift, mister?” asked a good-natured Maryland farmer driving that way.

“Thank you,” responded Mr. Lorimer, “I will avail myself of your kind offer.”

The two rode in silence for a while. Presently the teamster asked: “Professional man?”

“Yes,” answered Lorimer, who was thinking of a bill he had pending before the House.

After another long pause, the farmer observed: “Say, you ain’t a lawyer or you’d be talkin’; you ain’t a doctor ’cause you ain’t got no satchel, and you shore ain’t a preacher, from the looks of you. What is your profession, anyhow?”

“I am a politician,” replied Lorimer.

The Marylander gave a snort of disgust “Politics ain’t no profession; politics is a disorder.”

(2406)

POPULARITY

John Wesley keenly appreciated the dangers that attend public favor.

Among the quaint but intensely practical counsels he gives are some as to the art of escaping popularity:

How shall we avoid popularity? We mean such esteem and love from the people as is not for the glory of God. 1. Earnestly pray for a piercing sense of the danger and the sinfulness of it. 2. Take care how you ingratiate yourself with any people by slackness of discipline. 3. Or by any method which another preacher can not follow. 4. Warn the people among whom you are most of esteeming or loving you too much. 5. Converse sparingly with those who are particularly fond of you.

Times and men are strangely changed since those words were written. What preacher to-day has to study anxiously “how to avoid popularity,” or finds any necessity for warning the people among whom he labors against “esteeming him or loving him too much!”—W. H. Fitchett, “Wesley and His Century.”

(2407)

Population—See Cities of the World; [City, Growth of a Great].

Population, Non-Church and Church-Membership—See [Church Statistics].

Population, Over-—See [Survival].

Populations, Religious, of World—See [Religious Conditions of the World].

Position, Advantage of—See [Favoritism].

Position and Worth—See [Worth, Estimating].

POSSESSION

When the Australian miner was drowned because he had heavy bags of gold round his waist, while trying to swim ashore from the wreck, it was an open question which possest which. Just so I am quite convinced that men stuffed with information or “the science of the day” are not always possest of true wisdom. Wisdom itself, anyhow, is not an end but a tool to work with.

(2408)

Possessions—See [Ambition].

POSSESSIONS, UNDESIRABLE

“The regular practise of the Christian is exceptional with the world,” says a writer in the Pacific Monthly.

“Out in Kansas when the bottom dropt out of the great boom in real estate some years ago, men found it harder to get rid of property than to acquire it. A lawyer going through the country one day met an old friend leading a reluctant cow toward town. Inquiry brought out the information that the cow had been secured in exchange for a city lot. ‘And do you know,’ said the new owner of the bovine, ‘that I turned a neat trick on the old granger! He can’t read a word, and in the deed I worked off two lots on him instead of one.’”

(2409)

POSSIBILITIES, LATENT

The diamond unworn is still a diamond. And the power unused is not therefore less real, or less majestic. What men do, is by no means the measure of what they might do, if they used with a rational energy their powers.—Richard S. Storrs.

(2410)

Posthumous Blessing—See [Revenge, A Christian’s].

POST-MORTEM CONSEQUENCES

The start of tuberculosis in France in a serious sense may be traced to the great importance of mummies and mummy-cases at the time of the Napoleonic invasion of Egypt, and this start gave the disease its first great foothold in Europe, whence it has spread all over the Eastern world and throughout the Western hemisphere as well. Dead bodies preserved in the manner peculiar to the Egyptians of the time of the Pharaohs are undoubtedly favorite lodging-places for the tubercular bacilli. (Text.)

(2411)

POVERTY

This letter was left by Miss Alice Law, aged 26, an editor employed by a local publishing firm in Chicago, who committed suicide by asphyxiation:

I am ending my life because I am seized with an acute disinclination to live, and I believe I have an absolute right to end my life if I wish. The struggle is too hard. There is too much work, too much monotony, too much weariness and not enough art, music, recreation and rest.

I am to change it. I am in my right mind. My reasoning powers are as good as ever. I go because I want to. The chief reason is because I am too near starved. Let the State pay my expenses. If I were blind, crippled or had an incurable disease the State would be obliged to take care of me. So I think I will take advantage of my rights and be buried at the public expense, as I have no money to defray the putting of me under ground.

The prices charged for a casket and burial are too exorbitant for persons in moderate circumstances. It just keeps the family in bankruptcy for a year. This condition is outrageous, and I do not want this injustice in my case.

Doubtless Christianity has achieved much, but in the light of such a revelation of suffering and despair, under conditions of modern life, there would seem yet much to do.

(2412)

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At a dinner given in honor of Mr. Carnegie by the surviving members of the United States Military Telegraph Corps of the Civil War, he said:

Comrades, I was born in poverty, and would not exchange its sacred memories with the richest millionaire’s son who ever breathed. What does he know about mother or father? These are mere names to him. Give me the life of the boy whose mother is nurse, seamstress, washerwoman, cook, teacher, angel, and saint, all in one, and whose father is guide, exemplar, and friend. No servants to come between. These are the boys who are born to the best fortune. Some men think that poverty is a dreadful burden, and that wealth leads to happiness. What do they know about it? They know only one side; they imagine the other. I have lived both, and I know there is very little in wealth that can add to human happiness beyond the small comforts of life. Millionaires who laugh are very rare. My experience is that wealth is apt to take the smiles away. (Text.)

(2413)

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The reason the Yankees are smart is because they have to wrest a precarious subsistence from a reluctant soil. “What shall I do to make my son get forward in the world?” asked an English lord of a bishop. “Give him poverty and parts.” Well, that’s the reason the sons of the Pilgrims have all got on in the world.—John R. Paxton.

(2414)

Poverty as a Stimulus—See [Compensation in Trials].

POVERTY, CHRISTIAN

When before in history was there such an inexpensive order of preachers as these early helpers of Wesley? They laid up much treasure in heaven, but had very empty pockets on earth. One of them, John Lane, died at Epworth. His entire wardrobe was insufficient to pay his funeral expenses, which amounted to £1 17s. 3d. All the money he possest was 1s. 4d., “enough,” records Wesley briefly, “for any unmarried preacher of the gospel to leave to his executors.” (Text.)—W. H. Fitchett, “Wesley and His Century.”

(2415)

POVERTY, EARLY, OF UNITED STATES

The present great wealth of this country forms a striking contrast to the facts given below:

So low were the funds in the public treasury of the United States at the close of 1789 that the Attorney-General and several Congressmen were indebted to the private credit of Alexander Hamilton, their Secretary of State, to discharge their personal expenses. President Washington was obliged to pass a note to Tobias Leer, his private secretary, to meet his household expenses, the note being discounted at the rate of two per cent per month, and members of Congress were paid in due-bills.

(2416)

Poverty to Wealth—See [American Opportunity].

Power by Faith—See [Faith and Power].

POWER CONTROLLED

These verses on the locomotive are from the New York Christian Advocate:

Steed, with the heart of fire! Steed, with the sinews of steel!

Full-blooded courser, careering onward, with rail and with wheel;

Black with fuliginous breathing—panting of wo and of weal.

Firm be his muscle who mounts thee, clear and true be his eye;

Generous his heart with compassion, willing if need be to die,

Who sets thy hot blood a-dancing, and forces thy clarion cry!

For he reins a mightier stallion—a swifter creature of awe,

Stronger and darker and wilder than the old Arabian saw—

His neck clothed with the thunder, and ravin and rage his law!

Like a planet out of its orbit he moves when he leaps his rail:

Hold him and guide him, O rider! thy purpose he will not fail;

But loose him, and man lies groaning, and women and children wail.

O mighty creature of commerce! That bringest the world its bread,

And bearest the journeying peoples with limbs of thunder and dread,

To thee my life is committed, and safely let me be sped!

Thou steed of fire and of iron, that bearest me on my way,

Is life or death in thy destined course, is rapture or sorrow—say?

O Christ of God, hold the driving-rod, and mount this steed to-day!

(2417)

Power from God—See [Springs from God].

POWER IN SELF-REPRESSION

Says a recent journal:

Many years ago, in the lecture-room of President Woolsey, of Yale University, a young man who did not know his lesson ventured to make a mock recitation and to give an impertinent answer. The president was a man of fiery temper, tho it had been curbed and subdued by the discipline of years. On this occasion his face turned white; he bowed his head upon the desk before him. There was a half-minute’s silence of death; he raised his head, called upon another man, and the recitation went on. He knew that if he spoke to the offender he would speak too much, so he said nothing.

The students of that class knew well what a lava-flood was penned up there. Self-repression did not seem to them a sign of weakness—it was the greatest evidence of power.

Shall we call it a sign of weakness in God that he bears with the sins of men? When God humbles himself to behold and to forbear, shall we not see in this voluntary self-limitation one of the proofs of his greatness? (Text.)

(2418)

POWER, SUSPENDED

In the early spring of 1848 occurred a natural phenomenon so strange, so sudden, and so stupendous that the older inhabitants of western New York still speak of it with awe and wonder. This phenomenon was nothing less than the running dry of Niagara Falls.

The winter of 1847 and 1848 had been one of extreme severity. Ice of such thickness had never been known as formed on Lake Erie that season. When the break-up came, toward the end of March, a strong northeast wind was blowing, which piled the great fields of ice in floes, and then in banks as high as miniature icebergs. Toward night on March 30 the wind suddenly changed to the opposite direction and increased to a terrific gale, which hurled back the piled-up ice and drove it into the entrance of Niagara River with such force that a huge and almost impenetrable dam was formed. For a whole day the source of the river was stopt up, and the stream was drained of its supply. By the morning of the 31st the river was practically dry, and thus for twenty-four hours the roar of Niagara Falls was stilled. Then in the early morning of April 1, the ice-pack gave way under the tremendous pressure from above, and the long-restrained volume of water rushed down and reclaimed its own.

(2419)

POWER THROUGH UNION WITH GOD

It is only when we link ourselves with the power that lifts that we can accomplish results which are beyond our strength.

A great weight was to be lifted a little way out from the shore. Vain efforts had been made to bring it to the surface. Great chains had been wrapt about the mass and stout steam-tugs had puffed and strained without avail, and engines from the shore had exerted all their power with no result. A young man offered to raise the weight and he was told to try. A great flat barge was towed out over the sunken hulk, about which chains had been passed, and these were fastened to the barge. When the tide was out, the chains were wrapt still closer; then the young man sat down and waited. In the night the tide came in and the barge rose steadily with the incoming tide, bringing with it the burden to which it was chained. Higher and higher it rose, till at last it was out of the mud and mire. The seemingly impossible had been accomplished by linking the obstacle to the power of the tide. (Text.)

(2420)

POWER WITHIN

Men and churches often wait for outside help to draw them along. They need the lesson taught in this anecdote:

When an engineer in Bolivia brought over the Cordilleras the first locomotive ever seen in these latitudes, the native Indians came up from the Amazon basin to see this sight, and sat on their haunches discussing what this strange monster could be. They said: “It is made to go; let’s make it go”; and so they lassoed the buffers, and about thirty of them began to pull, and drew the locomotive a few yards. They exclaimed, “Ay-ay-ay-ay Tatai Tatito.” “The great and little father hath enabled us to do something wonderful!”

The next day the engineer got up steam and hitched a couple of cattle trucks to the locomotive and, when the Indians came again, put them into the trucks and locked them in. Then he stood on the fire-plate of the locomotive and opened the regulator, and let the steam into the cylinder, and it began to move the piston, and the piston the crank, and the crank the wheel, and the wheel the locomotive; and the locomotive carried the Indians along ten miles an hour! What did they not say to their “great and little father!” But they learned this great lesson—that locomotives are not made to be moved along by outside human power, but by means of a power within, and so to carry human beings along.

(2421)

Practicable and Impracticable—See [Prediction, False].

PRACTICAL RESPONSES CLARIFY CONFUSION

The acquisition of definiteness and of coherency (or constancy) of meanings is derived primarily from practical activities. By rolling an object, the child makes its roundness appreciable; by bouncing it, he singles out its elasticity; by throwing it, he makes weight its conspicuous distinctive factor. Not through the senses, but by means of the reaction, the responsive adjustment, is the impression made distinctive, and given a character marked off from other qualities that call out unlike reactions. Children, for example, are usually quite slow in apprehending differences of color. Differences from the standpoint of the adult so glaring that it is impossible not to note them are recognized and recalled with great difficulty. Doubtless they do not all feel alike, but there is no intellectual recognition of what makes the difference. The redness or greenness or blueness of the object does not tend to call out a reaction that is sufficiently peculiar to give prominence or distinction to the color trait. Gradually, however, certain characteristic habitual responses associate themselves with certain things; the white becomes the sign, say, of milk and sugar to which the child reacts favorably; blue becomes the sign of a dress that the child likes to wear, and so on, and the distinctive reactions tend to single out color qualities from other things in which they had been submerged.—John Dewey, “How We Think.”

(2422)

PRACTICAL, THE

According to Mr. Bliss Perry, the greatest idealists are the most practical workers:

Take those men of the transcendental epoch, whose individuality has been fortunately transmitted to us through our literature. They were in love with life, enraptured of its opportunities and possibilities. No matter to what task a man set his hand, he could gain a livelihood without loss of self-respect or the respect of the community. Let him try teaching school, Emerson would advise; let him farm it a while, drive a tin-pedler’s cart for a season or two, keep store, go to Congress, live the “experimental life.” Emerson himself could muse upon the oversoul, but he also raised the best Baldwin apples and Bartlett pears in Concord, and got the highest current prices for them in the Boston market. His friend Thoreau supported himself by making sandpaper or lead-pencils, by surveying farms or by hoeing that immortal patch of beans; his true vocation being steadily that of the philosopher, the seeker. (Text.)—Atlantic Monthly.

(2423)

PRACTISE

No man ever yet learned by having somebody else learn for him. A man learns arithmetic by blunder in and blunder out, but at last he gets it. A man learns to write through scrawling; a man learns to swim by going into the water, and a man learns to vote by voting.—Henry Ward Beecher.

(2424)

“Did you know this telephone business has resulted in a telephone ear?” said a clerk whose work called him constantly to the telephone, according to The Tribune, New York. “I don’t mean that our hearing is injured, but that the left ear becomes more keen than the right. If you’ll notice, all the telephones are left-handed. That is, the instruments are so placed that we hold the receiver with the left hand, so that we may have the right hand free to use in taking notes of messages, I presume. Of course, one naturally claps the receiver to his left ear, as it would be almost impossible to twist it around to his right ear. Consequently, the left ear gradually becomes much sharper in catching sounds than the right ear. If you don’t believe it, just try holding the receiver in your right hand some time and use your right ear. You’ll find that conversation which was perfectly distinct to the left ear sounds confused and muffled to the right, and there is a distinct effort to understand. It is simply that the left ear is a trained telephone ear, while the right ear is not.” (Text.)

(2425)

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Rubenstein—that thunderer of the keyboard—is credited with the following dictum: “If I do not practise for a day I know it; if I miss two days my friends know it; and if I miss three days the public knows it.” (Text.)

(2426)

PRACTISE AND INDUSTRIAL TRAINING

Many children outside of the Sunday-school will learn the Bible from Christian parents or will study it for themselves; but there is no way, so far as I can conceive, of learning the industrial work of the church except in some such training-school as the young people’s society furnishes. For this work can be learned only by doing it. It can not be taught by text-books, or imparted by instruction. Like every other kind of industrial training, it must be gained by practise. The carpenter learns to build a house with saw and hammer and nails in hand, not by reading an elaborate treatise on housebuilding. The painter takes his easel and brush, and practises long and patiently, if he would be an artist; there is no other way. It is exactly the same with the necessary activities of church life. If the church is worth sustaining, if its work is to be done in the future, if we are to have prayer-meetings and missionary activities and an earnest religious life, if the Church is to be a power for good citizenship and righteous living, it must have some such industrial training-school.—Francis E. Clark, “Proceedings of the Religious Education Association,” 1903.

(2427)

PRACTISE, GRADUATED

In drilling recruits for the Chinese army, each man is required to carry sand in his knapsack. For the first day he carries two ounces; on each succeeding day he increases this amount two ounces, until at last he is carrying sixteen pounds. These men can run at a dog-trot for ten consecutive hours and arrive at the end of that time in a fit condition for fighting.—Marshall P. Wilder, “Smiling ’Round the World.”

(2428)

Practising What They Preach—See [Evil, Self-destructive].

PRAISE

Ruby T. Weyburn, in The Youth’s Companion, gives this fanciful origin of the music of praise:

The Jews have an old tradition that when the world was done,

And God from His work was resting, He called to Him, one by one,

The shining troops of the angels, and showing the wonder wrought,

The Master asked of His servants what they of the vision thought.

Then one white angel, dreaming o’er the marvel before him spread,

Bent low in humble obeisance, lifted his voice, and said:

“One thing only is lacking—praise from the new-born tongue,

The sound of a hallelujah by the great creation sung.”

So God created music—the voices of land and sea,

And the song of the stars revolving in one vast harmony.

Out of the deep uprising, out from the ether sent,

The song of the destined ages thrilled through the firmament.

So the rivers among the valleys, the murmur of wind-swept hill,

The seas and the bird-thrilled woodlands utter their voices still;

Songs of stars and of waters, echoes of vale and shore—

The voice of primeval nature praising Him evermore.

And the instruments men have fashioned since time and the world were young,

With gifted fingers giving the metal and wood a tongue,

With the human voice translating the soul’s wild joy and pain,

Have swelled the undying paean, have raised the immortal strain!

(2429)

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Perhaps in nothing connected with religious practise are opportunities more neglected than with regard to the praise of God. Multitudes who receive the bounties of Providence know nothing of the emotion of gratitude, and many awaken too late to a sense of their own ingratitude.

Billy Bray, the Cornish preacher, was a constant visitor among the sick and dying. On one occasion he was sitting by the bedside of a Christian brother who had always been very reticent and afraid to confess joyously his faith in Christ. Now, however, he was filled with gladness. Turning to Billy, whose beaming face and sunny words had done much to produce this joy, he said, “Oh, Mr. Bray, I am so happy that if I had the power I’d shout ‘Glory.’” “Ah, mon,” said Billy, “what a pity it was thee didn’t shout ‘Glory’ when thee hadst the power.” (Text.)

(2430)

See [Thanksgiving].

PRAISE DEPENDENT ON SUCCESS

Toward the close of his second administration, Grant thus reviewed, in a private conversation with Henry Clay Trumbull, the criticisms of his public career:

I don’t wonder that people differ with me, and that they think I am not doing the best that could be done. I can understand how they may blame me for a lack of knowledge or judgment. But what hurts me is to have them talk as if I didn’t love my country and wasn’t doing the best I knew how. It was just that way in war-time. I didn’t do as well as might have been done. A great many times I didn’t do as well as I was trying to do. Often I didn’t do as well as I expected to do. But I had my plans and was trying to carry them out. They called me “fool” and “butcher.” They said I didn’t know anything and hadn’t any plans. But I kept on and kept on, and by and by Richmond was taken, and I was at Appomattox Court House, and then they couldn’t find words enough to praise me. I suppose it will be so now. In spite of mistakes and failures I shall keep at it. By and by we’ll have specie payments resumed, reconstruction will be complete, good feeling will be restored between North and South; we shall be at Appomattox again, and then I suppose they’ll praise me.

(2431)

Praise Helpful—See [Encouragement].

Praise, Judicious—See [Heart-hunger, Satisfying].

PRAISE, SEEKING

A delicate woman, without children, and married to a superior but occupied and preoccupied man, suffered intensely when her husband neither perceived nor commented upon a new costume, or upon some ornament she had added to the drawing-room. Never a word of praise escaped his lips. One day she told him the sorrow this caused her. “But what do you want?” he replied, distrest. “I don’t know how to observe such things. What must I do?”

The wife reflected a moment, and then the two arranged that when there was anything unusual the wife was to make him a certain sign. His attention called, he would then understand, look, and admire. “And now I am satisfied,” she said, a little ashamed of her childishness. “What he says will not be spontaneous, I know, and yet I shall be pleased to hear it; it will brighten my life.”

This absurd, and yet touching incident reveals a state of mind that certain natures can not understand, but which is, nevertheless, more common than we think.—Dora Melegari, “Makers of Sorrow and Makers of Joy.”

(2432)

PRAISE-SPIRIT, THE

When Epictetus was a boy and a slave his angry master twisted his leg in an instrument of torture until it broke.

“Do you think,” he says after he has worked out his philosophy of contentment, “that because my soul happens to have one little lame leg I am to find fault with God’s universe? Ought we not when we dig, and when we plow, and when we eat, to sing this hymn to God, because He hath given us these implements whereby we may till the soil? Great is God because He hath given us hands, and the means of nourishment and food; and insensible growth, and breathing sleep; these things we ought to hymn, because He hath given us the power to appreciate these blessings and continuously to use them. And, since the most of you are blinded, ought there not to be one to fulfil this song for you, and on behalf of all to sing a hymn of happiness to God? And what else can I do, who am a lame old man, except sing praises to God?”

This was the epitaph given him: “Epictetus, a slave maimed in body, a beggar through poverty, and dear unto the immortals.” (Text.)

(2433)

PRAISE, TIMELY

Mrs. Marion Hutson indicates in this verse the desirability of praising the worthy while they are alive to appreciate it:

Sometime in the future—God knows where—

This troubled heart will find surcease of care,

And then—when consciousness has left my breast,

And angel lips have kissed my own to rest,

It will not matter what the world has said.

Nor praise, nor censure can affect the dead.

But now? As balm of Gilead to me

A little word of praise or cheer would be.

(2434)

PRAISE, UNITED

The British Government at great cost is causing the national anthem to be translated into the languages of India, including Arabic, Persian, Hindustani, Bengali, Sanskrit, Hebrew, Kavarese, Marathi, Gugerati, Tunjabi, Malay, Taniel, Tilugu, Singhalese and Burmese, so that the natives in their jungles may unite in “God Save the King” on all important occasions.

We have a greater spectacle described in Rev. 5:9–13, where the unity of praise includes all the tongues and nations of the earth.

(2435)

PRAISE, UNNECESSARY

An interesting story in regard to General Miles comes from a recent encampment of the Grand Army at San Francisco, and is published in The Saturday Evening Post. The General, while being entertained at a club, was rallied good-humoredly by an old-time comrade for his failure to win a laudatory “send-off” in his retirement papers.

“In reply to that,” remarked General Miles, “let me tell a story. The application may seem a trifle egotistical, but as the story is a good one, I’ll venture it.

“In the early days of the West an itinerant preacher, stopping for refreshment one day at the pioneer home of one of his parishioners, was served, among other things, with apple-pie. It was not a good pie. The crust was heavy and sour, but the encomiums which that preacher heaped upon it were great. The good wife knew that she had had bad luck with the baking, and as she was in reality an excellent cook, she determined that the next time that preacher came her way he should have a pie that was faultless.

“He told her when he was to return, and on that day she set before him an apple-pie that was the real thing. He ate it, but to her astonishment vouchsafed not a word of commendation. This was more than the housewife would stand.

“‘Brother,’ she exclaimed, ‘when you were here last you ate an apple-pie that wasn’t more than half-baked, and you praised it to the skies. Now you have eaten a pie that nobody needs to be ashamed of, but you haven’t a word to say in its favor. I can’t understand it.’

“‘My good sister,’ replied the preacher, ‘that pie you served me a few days ago was sadly in need of praise, and I did my full duty in that direction; but this fine pie, bless your heart, does not require any eulogy.’”

(2436)

Praising Rival—See [Self-estimate].

PRAYER

Many prayers that fail would be answered if means were used by the petitioner like those employed by Paul Kruger, the former president of the South African Republic.

At one time, when game was very scarce, he went with a party to hunt the hartbeest. They scoured the veld for days without a sign for their prey. Paul Kruger announced then his purpose of going into the hills to pray for food, like a patriarch of old.

He was gone for a number of hours. When he returned he announced that in three days a large herd would pass that way. The party camped. In less than the appointed time the prophecy was fulfilled, and much game was secured. The Boer hunters were much struck with wonder, and dubbed Kruger “the man of prayer.”

Some time after, the Kafir who accompanied Kruger on his expedition of petition told the truth of the affair. Kruger, when he left the hunting party, had struck out for a neighboring Kafir kraal, and informed the natives that his men were starving. If they, the natives, did not discover game in three days, he said, he would bring his whole party over the hill and kill every Kafir. The natives, being sore afraid of the Boer methods, all turned out, scoured the region, and drove the game to the Boer camp. Thus Kruger’s “prayer” was answered.

(2437)

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Stonewall Jackson never failed to invoke the Prince of Peace to preside over his battles. Old Jim, his faithful servant, said:

“De gen’al is de greates’ man fo’ prayin’ night an’ mornin’ an’ all times. But when I sees him git up sev’al times in de night, besides, an’ start in prayin’, I knows dar’s gwine ter be semp’n up, an’ I go straight an’ pack his haversack, ca’se I know he’ll be callin’ for it ’fo’ daylight.”—The Sunday Magazine.

(2438)

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The tenor of Scripture is that if we are in tune with the divine mind, and so are receptive of the secret whispers and suggestions of the Spirit of God, then that Spirit will first inspire in us the prayers which our Heavenly Father can consistently answer.

Every prayer is a transaction with order. You go home with a packet of seeds for your little girl, and you take her out, and say: “This little plot shall be yours. Whatever comes of this packet of seeds shall be yours.” Now, what can come of a penny packet of seeds in all this infinite universe, with stars and systems whirling round? Beauty can come of it! Life can come of it! Why? Because your little gardener is transacting with order. She is dealing with law, and law will deal with her, and out of the seed she sows there shall come beauty to gladden her. When she kneels an hour or two later, and breathes forth from a pure heart a prayer to the eternal God for blessing upon herself and you, will you say, “What good can come of it?” Good can come of it! Good must come of it! She comes to where law rules, where right is triumphant. Prayer is not a dip into a lucky bag. It is dealing with eternal law. (Text.)

(2439)

See [Earth, Cry of]; [Faith and Prayer]; [Prejudice Disarmed].

Prayer, A Child’s—See [Children’s Religious Ideas.]

PRAYER AND DEED

A farmer whose barns were full of corn, was accustomed to pray that the wants of the needy might be supplied; but when any one in needy circumstances asked for a little of his corn, he said he had none to spare. One day, after hearing his father pray for the poor and needy, his little son said to him, “Father, I wish I had your corn.” “Why, my son, what would you do with it?” asked the father. The child replied, “I would answer your prayers.”

(2440)

PRAYER AND EFFORT

A pastor tells of a man who had been caught on the river in a sudden break-up of the ice, and who himself expected to be drowned, and whose neighbors had given him up as lost. The man had thrown himself on his knees on one of the pieces of ice, and was engaged in what he supposed was his last prayer on earth, when his friends on shore noticed that the pieces of ice had readjusted themselves so as to make a safe way from where he was kneeling to the land. They lifted their voices and shouted to the poor man to stop praying and run to the shore. He opened his eyes, saw his opportunity and was saved. Prayer and deeds must go hand in hand.

(2441)

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Governor William E. Russell, of Massachusetts, who died at the age of thirty-nine, but had in that short life been mayor of his city and governor of his State, and had gained national fame, early began to think and act right. As a schoolboy, when boating with five companions, his craft was overturned and he swam a mile to shore. Asked by his mother about his struggle to reach land, he said, “I thought of you, prayed to God, and kept my arms and legs in stroke.” (Text.)

(2442)

Prayer and Guides—See [Blessing the Ropes].

PRAYER AND THE BODY

In the shadow, unseen, keeping watch above his own, is the genius of the inventor. The earth gives iron, the sheep give their wool, the soil gives the dyes, the steel gives the shuttles, the spinner gives his fingers, but Arkwright and Jenner explain the warm cloth against the snow and chill of winter. Nature is a loom, the days and the nights are shuttles, the sunbeams tint the texture, forests and mines, herds and flocks furnish the threads, and the cloth of purple and gold is brilliant with towns and cities—but God is the weaver of the web. And if man with higher laws can set aside lower ones, if man with an X-ray can make the body transparent, think you that the great God by His influence upon man’s intellect and imagination can not start influences spiritual that will soon manifest themselves through man’s body upon forces that are physical? If man were spirit, and spirit alone, prayer could not be answered in a physical realm, because there would be no point of connection between a spiritual being and a physical universe. But man’s body is the medium of communication, and the God of spirit moving upon the spirit of man acts through the body of inventor, scientist, surgeon, sower, reaper, nurse, teacher, statesman, and plays upon these delicate strings called the forces of nature and so answers prayer.—N. D. Hillis.

(2443)

PRAYER ANSWERED

A penitentiary convict had been converted, and was released from prison in Chicago. He found it impossible to get work. He woke in the night, and arose and prayed for help. He prayed till daylight, crying in agony, “Oh, God, give a poor fellow a chance!” Then he drest and went out again to hunt work. Presently he heard a cry and saw a runaway horse coming down toward him. He snatched up a cracker-box and smashed it on the horse’s face. Then he seized the bridle and stopt him, tho he was dragged some distance; and in the crowd gathering about him was the father of the children in the carriage, and he was the man God sent to “give the poor fellow a chance.”—Franklin Noble, “Sermons in Illustration.”

(2444)

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Those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength. How many of us really expect an answer to our prayers? How many of us wait for God as they who wait on the morning? Yet it is this expectant attitude of the soul resting upon the divine promise that triumphs over hindrances. There is an example of this in the life of Charles Kingsley. When a young man, he had become engaged to a beautiful girl to whom he had given his whole love. But her parents deemed him an unsuitable match, and they forbade absolutely all communication between the two young people for two years, which were to Kingsley the darkest and most terrible in his life. But in his diary he tells us that during that period he lived on one verse, Mark 11:24, “Therefore I say unto you what things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.” Before the two years were over, Kingsley’s prayer was answered, and the girl became his wife.—Donald Sage Mackay, “The Religion of the Threshold,” page 296.

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PRAYER, AVAILING

In the first parish where I labored lived a man who was not only agnostic in his attitude toward things religious, but even derided them, and was wont to chaff his wife on her devotion to her Church. The wife, however, went on her quiet but earnest way, living out her religion in the home. One morning very early the husband awoke and discovered his wife beside his bed absorbed in whispered prayer. Her pale, upturned face was fixt with intensity upon the Invisible, and her warm hand was resting upon his own, she supposing him to be asleep. As the husband’s eyes opened on the unexpected scene, the suggestion came like a flash to his soul, “My wife’s God is more real to her than her husband is. If she is so earnest for my welfare as to rise at such an hour and pray alone for me, it is time I had some care for my own soul”; and he instantly arose from his bed, knelt beside her and added his own prayer to hers. He gave his heart to God on the spot, and that very morning came to the early meeting at the church and announced his change of heart; the next Sabbath he united with the Church.—H. C. Mabie, “Methods in Evangelism.”

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PRAYER BY GREAT LEADERS

The following is from The Saturday Evening Post:

At the critical hours of American history when the noonday sky was midnight and the atmosphere saturated with murk—where do we find our great American leaders unable by human eyes to see before them? We find them, do we not? on their knees beseeching divine guidance and groping for a clasp of the Unseen Hand which would lead them and this people into the light again. The whole winter of the American troops at Valley Forge is an historical panorama of heroism, self-denial, and sacrifice. Yet every noble incident of that season of doom and dread furnishes but details of the background for the great central picture which the American mind loves to dwell upon—Washington on his knees at Valley Forge. It was Lincoln who in 1864 declared: “God bless the churches, and blest be God who in this hour giveth us the churches.” And Washington, in 1789, immediately after he was made the first President of the republic, wrote to the bishops of the Methodist Church:

“I trust the people of every denomination will have occasion to be convinced that I shall always strive to prove a faithful and impartial patron of genuine, vital religion.... I take in the kindest part the promise you make of presenting your prayers at the throne of grace for me, and that I likewise implore the divine benediction on yourself and your religious community.”

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PRAYER, CONVINCING

George W. Coleman, in his book “Searchlights,” says:

One of my ministerial friends, who has resigned his pulpit because of his out-and-out socialistic views, naturally stirred up a good deal of angry opposition in some quarters, altho he has one of the sweetest characters I have ever known. Hateful and contemptuous things were said. There was much damning with faint praise, especially among former friends.

A level-headed friend of mine, a woman of sixty years or thereabouts, heard something of the commotion, and, to satisfy her curiosity, dropt into the church one Sunday to hear for herself what the minister really had to say for his peculiar and unpopular views. When I met her soon afterward, her only comment was, “Well, I have only to say that a man who can pray like that can’t go very far wrong, whether its socialism or anything else.”

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PRAYER FOR COMMON NEEDS

Mrs. Scranton, a missionary in Korea, writes in the Bible Society’s Reporter of a Korean Christian woman whose reply to a neighbor was a beautiful testimony to her faithfulness in prayer:

The neighbor said she could not pray—she had no time, and furthermore she had no skill with her lips. The Christian replied, “Am I not a busy woman, and yet I pray. When I get up in the morning I say, ‘My Heavenly Father, You have given me these garments with which I clothe my naked body. Without them I should be ashamed. Now please clothe my soul that it may never be ashamed or afraid.’ When I wash my face and hands I pray that I may be made clean inside as well as outside. I make the fire; and if I put on much wood it burns brightly, and I ask that the Holy Spirit may kindle just such a fire in my heart. Then I sweep the room and I say, ‘Please sweep away all the bad there is in and around me.’ When I cook the rice I pray that heavenly food may be given to my soul to keep it from starving to death.” Has not this woman learned the secret of prayer?

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PRAYER FOR OTHERS

James Whitcomb Riley writes this altruistic prayer:

Dear Lord, kind Lord,

Gracious Lord, I pray

Thou wilt look on all I love,

Tenderly to-day!

Weed their hearts of weariness

Scatter every care

Down a wake of angel-wings

Winnowing the air.

Bring unto the sorrowing

All release from pain;

Let the lips of laughter

Overflow again;

And with all the needy

O divide, I pray,

This vast treasure of content

That is mine to-day! (Text.)

—The Reader Magazine.

(2450)

Prayer for the Devil—See [Readiness in Retort].

PRAYER IN SECRET

After I became interested in religion, in seeking a place for retirement for my secret devotions, I thought of a large closet out of the spare chamber. That closet was a place where my mother kept her blankets, comforters and various kinds of bed-clothes. It was large and without a window. When the door was shut it was total darkness; no eye but that of Him who “seeth in secret” could behold any one who there sought retirement from the world.

In that closet I erected my altar for secret prayer. It was my Bethel; and none but God can ever know the Bethel seasons I there enjoyed in communing with the Savior in that time of my first love, and until I left my home to prepare for the work of the gospel ministry. (Text.)—Asa Bullard, “Incidents in a Busy Life.”

(2451)

See [Service, Unseen].

PRAYER MEDIA

The ether is the medium not only of light, electric and other force-vibrations, but of thought-vibrations also. The two souls at the ends of the two thousand miles of distance are something like two wireless telegraphic stations. One sends up its cry for help, its prayer-vibration, into the ether; the whole celestial hemisphere quivers with that cry, that soul-vibration. The soul of the friend at this end of the line, being sympathetic, or keyed in unison, picks out of the ether its own; it hears and reads the cry of the beloved soul yonder, and sends back, through the ether, its answer of comforting thought and suggestion. Now, grant that that sort of thing is a fact in human experience, and we have what is very nearly a demonstration of the possibility and nature of prayer. If two human souls can hear and answer each other irrespective of space and time, then the human soul and the divine soul can do likewise. We have only to think God immanent in the universal ether, filling it as a soul fills the body, and our case is complete.—James H. Ecob.

(2452)

Prayer-meeting Maintained—See [Immigration].

Prayer Only in Name—See [Diplomacy, Cowardly].

Prayer, Power of—See [Persecution and Prayer].

PRAYER, TAKING TIME FOR

“One might as well rush into the street unclothed,” said Mr. Spurgeon, “because he had no time to dress, or into battle unarmed because he had no time to secure his weapons, as to go forth to the experiences of any day without taking time to pray.”

(2453)

PRAYER, THE CALL TO

The call to prayer heard from minarets five times daily in all Moslem lands is as follows: The muezzin cries it in a loud voice and always in the Arabic language: “God is most great! God is most great! God is most great! God is most great! I testify that there is no god but God! I testify that there is no god but God! I testify that Mohammed is the apostle of God! I testify that Mohammed is the apostle of God! Come to prayer! Come to prayer! Come to prosperity! Come to prosperity! God is most great! God is most great! There is no god but God!” In the call to early morning prayer the words “prayer is better than sleep” are added twice after the call to prosperity. (Text.)—Samuel M. Zwemer, “The Moslem World.”

(2454)

PRAYER, VIEWS OF

The Christian conception of prayer is “enter into thine inner chamber and having shut thy door, pray to thy Father, who is in secret, and thy Father who seeth in secret shall recompense thee.”

With the Moslems the first requirement of correct prayer is that it be in the right direction; that is, toward the Kaaba at Mecca. Because of this, private houses, as well as mosques, all over the Mohammedan world, are built accordingly, and not on meridian lines. It is often pathetic to hear a wayfarer or a Moslem who travels on an ocean steamer ask which is the proper direction to turn at the hour of prayer. To pray with one’s back to Mecca would be unpardonable. Many Moslems carry a pocket-compass on their journeys to avoid all possible errors of this character. (Text.)—Samuel M. Zwemer, “The Moslem World.”

(2455)

PRAYERS

Mr. Keppel in his book “Christmas in Art,” tells this story:

I remember a touching little incident which occurred in New York. My dear old mother, who was a Methodist, had died, and our kindly Irish cook prayed twice daily for the repose of the old woman’s soul. A Catholic friend of the cook’s told her that it was wrong to pray for a deceased heretic, and the cook carried the question to her father-confessor. The good priest’s decision was in this wise: “My daughter, I can not tell you whether such prayers can do good to the soul of a deceased heretic—but your prayers will certainly do good to your own soul.”

(2456)

Prayers Unanswered—See [Faith, Steadfast].

PREACHING

Whitefield was just twenty-one when he received deacon’s orders, and he at once leapt into fame as a preacher. “I intended to make 150 sermons,” he says, “and thought I would set up with a good stock-in-trade.” As a matter of fact, this greatest of English preachers only possest a single sermon when he began his preaching career. In his humility he put his first and solitary discourse into the hands of a friendly clergyman, to show how unprepared for the work of the pulpit he was. The clergyman used one-half of the sermon at his morning service, and the other half at his evening service, and returned it to its astonished author with a guinea by way of payment.—W. H. Fitchett, “Wesley and His Century.”

(2457)

See [Consecration]; [Education to be Prized]; [Speech, Common].

Preaching, Call To—See [Influence, Individual].

PREACHING CHRIST

Some man went to hear Spurgeon preach one day, and when he came back to his friend’s house, his friend asked him: “What do you think of Spurgeon?” He replied: “Nothing at all.” The friend in amazement repeated his question, and again the answer was: “I do not think anything of him at all,” and then he brushed away some moisture in his eyes and added: “But I never can forget his Savior.”—Cortland Myers.

(2458)

Preaching, Fearless—See [Fitness].

PREACHING FROM MANUSCRIPT

One year I invited the pastor of a great church in Cincinnati, and he came, and he spoke on Sunday morning. He pulled out a forty-page manuscript and stood there and read the gospel for a whole hour, and those good country people never saw it done before, and when they adjourned for dinner they got under the trees and talked about the proceedings. They said, “What do you think of that letter from Cincinnati?” And I never see a fellow pull his manuscript now that I don’t wonder where that letter is from.—“Popular Lectures of Sam P. Jones.”

(2459)

PREACHING, GOSPEL

I have seen an advertisement reading thus: “If the druggist says, ‘We haven’t Brown’s soap, but here is something just as good,’ don’t take it! Go somewhere else.” The Church is in business, and Church attendance is controlled by business principles. The man who drops in wants the gospel, nothing else will answer, and he can not be expected to continue dropping in unless he gets it.—David James Burrell.

(2460)

Preaching Occasions—See [Opportunities Improved].

PREACHING, RESPONSIBILITY IN

Those who have inadequate views of their responsibility in preparing to preach the gospel ought to be impressively reminded of their failure in this respect, as was a moderate minister, who was a keen fisher, when he said to Dr. Andrew Thompson: “I wonder you spend so much time on your sermons, with your ability and ready speech. Many’s the time I’ve written a sermon and killed a salmon before breakfast.” To which saying Dr. Thompson replied, “Well, sir, I’d rather have eaten your salmon than listened to your sermon.”

(2461)

Preaching, Roosevelt’s—See [Speaking to do Good].

Preaching Spoiled—See [Sympathy, Lack of].

PREACHING THE WORD

When Dr. Cuyler, of Brooklyn, died, the Sunday-school remembered that he used to come in every now and then during the years of his history, and repeat just a single verse from the superintendent’s desk; and the next Lord’s Day after the funeral, they marched up in front of it in a long line, and each scholar quoted any of the texts that he could recollect. The grown people wept as they saw how much there was of the Bible in the hearts of their children, which this one pastor had planted. Yet he was a very timid and old-fashioned man; he said he had no gift at talking to children; he could only repeat God’s Word. If preachers and teachers would follow such a simple example, what a power there would be in their ministrations. (Text.)

(2462)

PRECAUTION

A California vine-grower, in a region where once in a great while the temperature fell a few degrees below the freezing-point, thus endangering his crop, rigged up an electric-alarm system which signalled to him when the temperature out in the fields had fallen low enough to require the lighting of fires to prevent frost. A neighbor, more fond of his ease, immediately improved on this apparatus. He fixt his brushwood ready for firing, and then arranged his electrical apparatus so that when the temperature fell to thirty-two degrees a current should be sent through a platinum wire in some fine combustibles and light the fires, instead of signaling him to do the work himself. The apparatus is cheap and more reliable than hired men, so that it is likely to be adopted in the parts of the state exposed to inopportune frosts.—Philadelphia Ledger.

(2463)

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Justice Willes about 1780 sentenced a boy at Lancaster to be hanged, with the hope of reforming him by frightening him, and he ordered him for execution next morning. The judge awoke in the middle of the night, and was so affected by the notion that he might himself die in the course of the night, and the boy be hanged, tho he did mean that he should suffer, that he got out of his bed and went to the lodgings of the high sheriff, and left a reprieve for the boy, or what was to be considered equivalent to it, and then, returning to his bed, spent the rest of the night comfortably. (Text.)—Croake James, “Curiosities of Law and Lawyers.”

(2464)

PRECAUTIONS

The day when an engineer could drive his train ahead at full speed, at his own discretion, and make up as much lost time as the recklessness of his daring permitted, has passed with the romantic age of railroading. No longer does he gamble thus with death to win back minutes. A cool-nerved human machine sits in an office miles away and tells him exactly how fast he may go. Mute signals stretch out their arms to him by day or glow red-eyed at night along the track and halt him if he rides too fast or if there is danger ahead. At intervals of from a thousand feet to five miles there are towers with men in them who note the minute and second of his passing, and telegraph it forward and back over the line. Nowadays the engineer is rarely out of touch with possible orders for more than a few minutes at a time. In place of the daring and the old speed madness that used to characterize the making up of time, the man who lasts the longest now in the cab is the one who possesses the calculating skill developed by long experience. He accomplishes much more simply by taking advantage of every trifle in winning back his time second by second.—Thaddeus S. Dayton, Harper’s Weekly.

(2465)

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It is said to be scarcely possible to induce working men engaged in dangerous employments to take the most rudimentary precautions against disease and accident. The knife-grinder neglects his mask, the collier his lamp; they are ingenious in evading the regulations framed for their safety.

Similarly in our recklessness and presumption we ignore the things which are designed to secure the safety of our character, the peace of our soul. Let us be sure that we prize those manifold and gracious arrangements by which God seeks to save us from the power of evil, that we profit by them to the utmost.—W. L. Watkinson, “The Transfigured Sackcloth.”

(2466)

Probably the greatest menace to the safety of navigation at sea is the fog. Modern steamships are seldom endangered by the severest storms, but when the impenetrable envelop of mist encloses a vessel, she is exposed to the most terrible of perils—a collision at sea. A single ship may be comparatively safe even in a fog, but when there are a fleet of vessels the danger is greatly multiplied. In addition to the customary fog-horns and sirens a fleet of war-ships often will keep informed of their relative positions by the firing of signal-guns from the flagship. Another excellent method generally employed is the use of the fog-buoy.

Each vessel in a warship fleet carries a fog-buoy, a large cask painted a bright red. This is cast overboard at the first sign of any fog and floats from the stern of the vessel attached by a rope of grass fiber which does not sink beneath the surface of the water. Sufficient rope is paid out by each vessel, so that its fog-buoy floats at the bow of the ship next astern—two cable’s-length (four hundred yards) when in close order and double that distance in open order. By this means the exact stations of the individual ships of a fleet are maintained even tho proceeding at a moderate rate of speed.—Harper’s Weekly.

(2467)

PRECAUTIONS, SCIENTIFIC

The teller of a bank standing behind his window in these days of electricity can touch a push-button close to his hand and close the door of every safe in the place before a thief could have time to operate, and by the same signal he can call the police or give the alarm to all the bank officials.

(2468)

PRECEPT AND PRACTISE

One of the great railroad companies has begun a campaign against the use of tobacco by its employees, and, while none are to be discharged because they indulge in it, they are requested to break the habit if possible. This may be a good thing, but example speaks louder than precept; if the officers want the employees to abandon smoking and chewing, the reform ought to begin in the president’s office and go down all along the line until it reaches the trackmen and laborers. A well-known railroad executive, now deceased, said it was of no use to preach temperance to railroad employees if officers’ special cars ran over the road with wines and liquors on board to be consumed en route. He set an example by keeping intoxicants out of his car even when he had guests.—Manufacturers’ Record.

(2469)

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I am unjust, but I can strive for justice,

My life’s unkind, but I can vote for kindness.

I, the unloving, say life should be lovely;

I, that am blind, cry out against my blindness.

Man is a curious brute—he pets his fancies—

Fighting mankind to win sweet luxury.

So he will be, tho law be clear as crystal,

Tho all men plan to live in harmony.

Come, let us vote against our human nature,

Crying to God in all the polling-places

To heal our everlasting sinfulness,

And make us sages with transfigured faces.

—Nicholas V. Lindsay, Unity.

(2470)

Preciseness Overdone—See [Scruples, Minute].

Precision—See [Ahead of Circumstances].

PRECOCITY

Precocity is not always a cerebral disease, certainly, tho where it is pronounced the presumption is not in its favor. Slower growths are the surer and attain the greater heights. Usually precocity wants a depth which is not supplied to the subject in more mature years. With the comparatively few exceptions that can be noted, it lacks staying power. The most remarkable case of collapsed precocity that occurs to us is that of the Englishman Betty, the “young Roscius.” He went on the stage at the age of twelve years in 1803, played Hamlet and other prominent characters, and in four years amassed a fortune of over $150,000, at a time when money was worth twice its present face value. For twenty-eight nights in Drury Lane he earned over $3,000 a night. He left the stage to go to school, and on his return, three years later, made an utter failure and never amounted to anything as an actor thereafter.—New York World.

(2471)

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It is said of Jonathan Edwards that he commenced the study of Latin at six years of age; at eight he was keenly interested in spiritual matters. At ten he wrote, like a philosopher, a quaint and humorous essay on the immortality of the soul, and at twelve years of age wrote an original paper on the habits of the flying-spider.

(2472)

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Of Mrs. Wesley’s father it is gravely recorded that “when about five or six years old he began a practise, which he afterward continued, of reading twenty chapters every day in the Bible.” The phenomenon of a child not six years old who solemnly forms, in the cells of his infantile brain, the plan of reading twenty chapters of the Bible every day—and sticks to it through a long life—would in these modern days be reckoned nothing less than astonishing. Of Hetty Wesley, the sister of John, it is on record that at eight years of age she could read the Greek Testament. Do any such wonderful children exist in these days?—W. H. Fitchett, “Wesley and His Century.”

(2473)

See [Prodigy, A].

PREDICTION, FALSE

Mr. James A. Briggs cites a paragraph from the Boston Courier of June 27, 1827, then edited by Joseph T. Buckingham, one of the ablest and most liberal of New England editors. It was but sixty-two years ago that he thus spoke of the projected railroad from Boston to Albany:

Alcibiades, or some other great man of antiquity, it is said, cut off his dog’s tail that quidnuncs might not become extinct from want of excitement. Some such motive, we doubt not, moves one or two of our natural and experimental philosophers to get up a project for a railroad from Boston to Albany—a project which every one knows, who knows the simplest rule in arithmetic, to be impracticable and at an expense little less than the market value of the whole territory of Massachusetts; and which, if practicable, every person of common sense knows would be as useless as a railroad from Boston to the moon.

The road was built, and there is no more prosperous road in the country.—Harper’s Weekly.

(2474)

Preferences—See [Selection].

PREFERRED CREDITOR

An Israelite without guile, doing business down in Chatham Street, New York, called his creditors together, and offered them in settlement his note for ten per cent on their claims, payable in four months. His brother, one of the largest creditors, rather “kicked”; but the debtor took him aside and said, “Do not make any objections, and I will make you a preferred creditor.” So the proposal was accepted by all. Presently, the preferred brother said, “Well, I should like what is coming to me.” “Oh,” was the reply, “you won’t get anything; they won’t any of them get anything.” “But I thought I was a preferred creditor.” “So you are. These notes will not be paid when they come due; but it will take them four months to find out that they are not going to get anything. But you know it now; you see you are preferred.”—Heman L. Wayland.

(2475)

PREHISTORIC WOMAN

In the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons lies a famous skull. Discovered at Gibraltar many years ago, it has been agreed to be that of a human being of prehistoric times. Professor A. Keith, curator of the museum, has compared the skull minutely with those of the people of all nations to-day, and has set it side by side with all other available prehistoric relics. “The skull, I have little doubt, is that of a woman,” he said. “From the size of her brain she must have been shrewd—probably a woman, too, of considerable spirit. One can reckon pretty accurately also the time at which she lived. It must have been at least 600,000 years ago. From the jaws and the fact that the muscles of mastication were remarkably strong it is possible to deduce what this prehistoric woman ate. Nuts and roots probably entered very largely into her diet. She was in the habit of eating things which required a great amount of mastication before much nourishment could be derived from them, hence the unusual development of the jaw muscles.”

(2476)

PREJUDGMENT

It is not uncommon for men to judge a cause before they have heard the facts:

Lord Eldon said, “I remember Mr. Justice Gould trying a case at York, and when he had proceeded for about two hours, he observed, ‘Here are only eleven jurymen; where is the twelfth?’ ‘Please you, my lord,’ said one of the eleven, ‘he is gone away about some business, but he has left his verdict with me.’”—Croake James, “Curiosities of Law and Lawyers.”

(2477)

PREJUDICE

Take equal parts of malice, ignorance and hate, mix well and serve hot, and you have prejudice.—N. D. Hillis.

(2478)

PREJUDICE DISARMED

There is a certain famous preacher, perhaps the leading man in his denomination, against whom I have had a prejudice which has been slowly increasing for the last twenty-five years. When he used his influence a few years ago to prevent the recognition in a great ecclesiastical council of two of the noblest spiritual leaders of this generation, because of their adherence to the old-fashioned faith and methods, my bump of prejudice against that man reached full-sized proportions.

It was my lot very recently to be a member of a house of mourning where this same minister was the officiating clergyman, and I had to meet him personally. But when he had finished his prayer, my prejudice had all melted away like dew before the rising sun, and I felt like rushing up to him, putting an arm in his, and saying, “You didn’t do it, did you? I’m sure I’ve misunderstood; please set me right about yourself.”—George W. Coleman, “Searchlights.”

(2479)

PREJUDICE, RELIGIOUS

An old woman at Jhansi, in North India, a Brahman of strictest sect, and mother of a princess who was very ill, called in Dr. Blanche Monro, of the Woman’s Union Missionary Society. She dismissed the lady doctor each time with smiles, thanks, and rich rewards, then grimly ordered her servants to wash everything the foreign lady had touched—the floor, table, chairs, her own clothes, and finally herself. After she has taken a bath, she feels pure once more.

(2480)

PREPARATION

Many disappointments and failures are simply the results of superficial expectations of easy success without patient preparation of the needed preliminary conditions.

A famous English gardener once heard a nobleman say complainingly, “I can not have a rose garden, tho I often have tried, because the soil around my castle is too poor for roses.” “That is no reason at all,” replied the gardener. “You must go to work and make it better. Any ground can be made fit for roses if pains are taken to prepare it. The poorest soil can be made rich.” It was a wise saying, and it is true in other cases than rose gardens. Some young people say, “I can’t be cheerful,” or, “I can’t be sweet-tempered,” or “I can’t be forgiving,” as if they were not responsible for the growths in their soul-garden because the soil is poor. But “any ground can be made fit for roses,” and any heart can be made fit for the loveliest blossoms of character. (Text.)

(2481)

Preparation a Safeguard Against Loss—See [Control of Circumstances].

Preparation, Aimless—See [Aimlessness].

Preparation by Training—See [Toughness].

PREPARATION CONTINUOUS

Michelangelo, when an old man, said: “I carry my satchel still!” indicating that his life was a perpetual study and preparation.

(2482)

PREPARATION, COSTLY

Alonzo Cano, a Spanish sculptor, being employed by a lawyer of Grenada to make a statue of St. Antonio de Padua, and having mentioned how much it would cost, the lawyer began to reckon how many pistoles per day the artist had earned. “You have,” said he, “been five-and-twenty days carving this statue, and your exorbitant demand makes you charge the rate of four pistoles per day, while I, who am your superior in a profession, do not make half your profits by my talents.” “Wretch!” exclaimed the artist; “do you talk to me of your talents? I have been five-and-twenty years learning to make this statue in five-and-twenty days.” So saying, he dashed it on the pavement.—Croake James, “Curiosities of Law and Lawyers.”

(2483)

PREPARATION, PROPHETIC

Shortly before the death of Mozart, the musician, a stranger brought him an anonymous letter in which a request for a requiem was made. To its composition he gave the full strength of his powers. The conviction seized him that he was composing a requiem for his own obsequies. While engaged in this work and under this strange inspiration, he gathered all his strength to complete his work. And when the task was finished, a strange fire lighted his eye, as the melody, even to his exquisite sensibility, was perfect. It bore an unearthly sweetness that was to him, too truly, a warning of his future and fast-coming doom.

All our life work is, in a way, a preparation for death.

(2484)

PREPARATION SUCCEEDS

A life sketch of Richard Mansfield, the great actor, contains the following account of his first success on the stage:

A noted actor had been offered the part but shrank from it, and finally absolutely refused to take it. Mansfield saw its possibilities and was in a fever of eagerness to get it. In the distress and pressure of the situation the manager reluctantly gave it to him. Then the young man began to prepare for the part. He studied everything which would throw light on the character. He interviewed people, visited the haunts of such men as the character represented, and he rehearsed and rehearsed until his eyes gleamed and his whole being was on fire. When he came on the stage for his first act the people were indifferent, not even paying attention to the play, but talking and laughing. Soon a hush fell upon them. They were spellbound. When the curtain fell there was a roar of applause which shook the building, and at the close of the play the audience went out dazed. Richard Mansfield was never to go hungry again. At a bound he had leapt from the dust to the top of the ladder. It makes one’s heart leap just to read about it.

(2485)

Preparation, Thorough—See [Thoroughness in Preparation].

PRESENCE OF GOD

One day a poor leper came to Dr. Pauline Root’s dispensary, in Madura, India, with a small, dirty cloth about his waist. He begged a new garment. It was given and was the cause of great delight. Two weeks later he appeared again, making the same request. Dr. Root asked him, “Where is the cloth I gave you?” “I have it,” the old man replied, “but I am old, and will not live long, and some morning it is probable that the people in passing by my little mud hut to the river will look in and see me lying there dead. When I go into God’s presence I want to be nice. All day long I go about for my food and I am very dirty and very tired, but when I go home I wash myself and I have kept that beautiful long piece of cloth to wrap myself in when I lie down. I commit myself to God thinking that perhaps the next morning I shall have gone into His presence.” (Text.)

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Beneath the shadow of the Great Protection,

The soul sits, hushed and calm.

Bathed in the peace of that divine affection,

No fever-heats of life or dull dejection

Can work the spirit harm.

Diviner heavens above

Look down on it in love.

And, as the varying winds move where they will,

In whispers soft, through trackless fields of air,

So comes the Spirit’s breath, serene and still,

Its tender messages of love to bear,

From men of every race and speech and zone,

Making the whole world one,

Till every sword shall to a sickle bend,

And the long, weary strifes of earth shall end.

—James Freeman Clarke.

(2487)

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This metrical prayer is from the New York Christian Advocate:

Stay with me, Lord; the evening sun declineth,

And I am weary of this rugged way.

To find repose my fainting spirit pineth—

O Lord, be Thou my comfort and my stay!

Tremble my steps with age, my hair is gray,

And earth-born hopes allure me now no more.

But Thou, my Savior, cast me not away.

O lead me gently till, my journey o’er,

I reach my Father’s house, safe sheltered evermore.

Stay with me, Lord; even now to the dark valley

My step descendeth, and the chilling gloom

Is gathering o’er my pathway deep and dreary—

Dread shadows of the ay mysterious tomb.

Now may Thy lamp this fearful vale illume;

Its light alone these terrors can dispel.

Where Thou, my Lord, art guide, no ill can come.

Thou mighty Conqueror of death and hell,

To Thee I trust my soul and know that all is well.

(2488)

What may be round the next headland we know not; but this we know, that the same sunshine will make a broadening path across the waters right to where we rock on the unknown sea, and the same unmoving mighty star will burn for our guidance. So we may let the waves and currents roll as they list, or rather as He wills, and be little concerned about the incidents or the companions of our voyage, since He is with us.—Alexander McLaren.

(2489)

See [Perseverance].

PRESENCE OF MIND

On New-year’s eve at one of the largest restaurants in New York, a woman’s dress caught fire, and, altho surrounded by other diners, the flame was not extinguished until she had received burns from which she subsequently died.

It seems incredible, yet it is a fact. And while the woman blazed, and shrieked in her agony, the men sought to extinguish the flame with napkins and their hands!

As I journey through life in town or in the wilderness, the quality I find most lacking in the human animal is presence of mind; and that is one of the good reasons why I am so persistent and outspoken an advocate of games for boys, especially games where the action is quick and where the boy must needs think, and quickly, under stress of combat, so to say.

Had there been any football players within reach of that poor woman, one of them would probably have had the sense to take off his coat and smother the flame.—Caspar Whitney, Collier’s Weekly.

(2490)

PRESENCES, UNRECOGNIZED

In a German art gallery is a famous canvas entitled “Cloudland.” To a casual glance it looks like a daub of confused color without form or beauty. But upon close examination it reveals a mass of exquisite little cherub faces—an innumerable multitude of angels. So Milton:

“Millions of spiritual creatures walk this earth

Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep.” (Text.)

(2491)

Present Alone is Ours—See [To-morrow, Uncertainty of].

Present, The—See [Night, God’s Presence in the]; [Now, Do It].

PRESERVATION

It was one of the coldest days of winter. Benny came home from school, intending to brave the cold and go coasting till dark; but, when he found mama had a sick headache, he said nothing about coasting, but volunteered to amuse four-year-old Lulu while mama lay down for a nap. That’s the kind of a boy Benny was!

“Let’s blow soap-bubbles,” he said, taking Lulu into the kitchen, where he made a cup of beautiful soap-suds. Each had a pipe, and they blew bubbles for a long time. The sun shone in at the window, making them all the colors of the rainbow.

“Oh, I wish I could keep ’em!” sighed Lulu. “They are so pretty!”

An idea came into Benny’s wise young head. He took a piece of an old, soft, woolen blanket, and carrying it out into the shed, spread it very smoothly on the floor in an out-of-the-way corner. Then, going back into the kitchen, he said:

“Now, Lulu, I’m going out into the shed to work a few minutes. It’s too cold for you out there, but, if my plans work well, I’ll wrap you up warm and take you out to see what I have done. You keep on blowing bubbles here.”

“All right,” said Lulu cheerfully.

Benny carried out part of the soap-suds, and as rapidly as possible blew about a dozen bubbles, floating them on to the soft blanket. The cold was so intense that they froze instantly before they could burst; and there they stood, looking like so many delicate glass balls.

When the blanket was well filled, Benny went in and, putting on Lulu’s warm wraps, took her out to see the bubbles. How surprized she was!

“Can’t I roll ’em round?” she asked.

“No indeed!” said Benny. “The least touch would break them all to smash!”

When mama got up with her headache relieved, she had to go out and see the bubbles, and so did papa when he came home.

The night was so cold, and the shed door and windows being closed, so that there was no draught of air, the bubbles were as good as ever in the morning. But before noon they began to crack open and dry away, and, when Benny came home at night, the weather was milder and each bright bubble had vanished, leaving only a bit of soap-suds in its place.

This is a true story, and some sharp day this winter you bright boys and girls can try the experiment for yourselves.—Mattie A. Baker, Youth’s Companion.

(2492)

See [Resuscitation].

PRESERVATION, A PROCESS OF

It is not hard to believe that the passage through death will be the occasion for a new blossoming of the flowers of character, after the analogy of the frozen flowers about which this account from Harper’s Weekly is given:

The latest and most approved method of preserving flowers during transportation is that of freezing them. When this process is employed the flowers are picked while in the bud and will keep perfectly for several weeks in refrigerator boxes. No deterioration in their beauty results from this treatment, and after they have been unpacked and placed in water they slowly revive and the blossoms develop fully. During the period of refrigeration all growth is suspended, and so slowly do the flowers return to their natural state that such blossoms will last much longer in a room than would be the case had they been brought directly from the greenhouse or the garden.

The facility with which horticultural specimens have been transported by this new method has led to experiments in South Africa, with a view to determining whether many of their wonderful flowers may not be safely exported in bulk to supply the trade in Europe and America.

(2493)

Preservatives—See [Evil, Protection from].

PRESS, OMNISCIENCE OF THE

I have been somewhat of a reader of the newspapers for forty years; I could read very well when I was eight years of age. It has given me forty years of observation of the press; and there is one peculiarity that I have observed from reading it, and that is, in all of the walks of life outside of the press, people have entirely mistaken their profession, their occupation. I never knew the mayor of a city, or even a councilman in any city, any public officer, any government official—I never knew a member of Congress, a Senator or a President of the United States, who could not be enlightened in his duties by the youngest member of the profession. I never knew a general of the army to command a brigade, a division, a corps of the army, who could begin to do it as well as men far away in their sanctums.—U. S. Grant.

(2494)

PRESS, PROSTITUTION OF THE

The Salt Lake Herald abstracts from “The Press of the World” some of the “rules of conduct” which Benjamin Franklin followed in his first journalistic venture. “They are so perfectly applicable to present-day newspapers,” it says, “that they are worth preserving and emphasizing.” He had just begun the publication of his Pennsylvania Gazette when an article was submitted to him that did not meet his views of propriety. With his customary deliberation he did not at once reject it, but told the writer he would sleep over it and give his decision the next day. This is how he applied his rules to the subject:

“I have perused your piece,” he wrote, “and find it to be scurrilous and defamatory. To determine whether I should publish it or not, I went home in the evening, purchased a two-penny loaf at the baker’s, and, with water from the pump, made my supper; I then wrapt myself up in my great coat, and laid down on the floor and slept till morning, when, on another loaf and a mug of water, I made my breakfast. From this regimen I feel no inconvenience whatever. Finding I can live in this manner, I have formed the determination never to prostitute my press to corruption and abuse of this kind for the sake of gaining a more comfortable subsistence.”

(2495)

Press, Using the—See [Newspapers and Missionary Intelligence].

PRETENSE

About the time when it was fashionable in France to cut off men’s heads, as we lop away superfluous sprouts from our apple-trees, the public attention was excited by a certain monkey that had been taught to act the part of a patriot to great perfection. If you pointed at him, says the historian, and called him an aristocrat or a monarchist, he would fly at you with great rage and violence; but, if you would do him the justice to call him a good patriot, he manifested every mark and joy of satisfaction. But, tho the whole French nation gazed at this animal as a miracle, he was, after all, no very strange sight. There are, in all countries, a great many monkeys who wish to be thought patriots, and a great many others who believe them such. But, because we are often deceived by appearances, let us not believe that the reality does not exist.—Daniel Webster.

(2496)

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At a recent horse-race one of the horses attracted a great deal of attention before the start by his remarkable appearance, and many spectators thought he would surely win. He was so full of life, and so eager to begin the race, that he broke through the barrier and ran several hundred feet before the jockey could stop him. The animal was full of confidence and life, but he finished fifteenth in a race of sixteen.

This horse furnished a pretty good illustration of the human bluffer, the man who struts and brags, who makes great pretensions, lots of noise, but never gets anywhere. The silent, unpretentious man, who keeps pegging away, distances him in the great life race.—Success Magazine.

(2497)

See [Envy Gratified].

PRETENSE OF VIRTUE

It is a cynical saying that “every man has his price,” but it is difficult at times to judge what any man might do under stress of unusual circumstances. An illustration of this point is the following:

A Scots business representative called upon a firm whose principal desired to make him a Christmas present. The honest fellow was scandalized. He could not dream of accepting presents. If such a thing were in the minds of the firm, let them transfer their favor in the shape of discount to the house which he represented. They did not mean anything of the sort, they told him; this was a little matter personal to himself. He threw back his shoulders; he was not to be bribed. “Oh, but this is no bribe,” he was answered; “all we propose to do is to offer you a nice box of cigars, for which you shall give us, say, sixpence.” The choler of the virtuous one died away. He put his hand into his pocket and drew forth a coin. “I’m to take a box and give you sixpence? Well, I havena’ a sixpence. Here’s a shillin’; I’ll tak’ twa boxes!”

(2498)

PRETENSE, SELFISH

An English writer thus speaks of an indiscreet adventure of a costermonger and an electric eel:

Before this gymnotus was publicly exhibited it was deposited at a French hotel in the neighborhood of Leicester Square. A burly fishmonger’s man, named Wren, brought in the daily supply of fish to the establishment, when some of the servants told him they had an eel so large that he would be afraid to pick it up. He laughed at the idea of being afraid of an eel, and when taken to the tub boldly plunged in both hands to seize the fish. A hideous roar followed this attempt. Wren had experienced a demonstration of the “psychic force” of the electrical eel, and his terror so largely exaggerated the actual violence of the shock, that he believed for the remainder of his life that he was permanently injured by it. He had periodical spasms across the chest, which could only be removed by taking a half-quarter of gin. As he was continually narrating his adventure to public-house audiences, and always had a spasm on concluding, which his hearers usually contributed to relieve, the poor fellow’s life was actually shortened by the shock from the gymnotus.

The man’s recurring pains usually made their appearance at places and times when thirst could be quenched. Many bodily ills are simulated or imaginary.

(2499)

PREVENTION

John S. Wise records this conversation with Grover Cleveland:

“I ought to have a monument over me when I die.” “I am sure of that, Mr. Cleveland,” I answered; “but for what particular service?” “Oh, not for anything I have ever done,” said he, “but for the foolishness I have put a stop to! If you knew the absurd things proposed to me at various times while I have been in public life—things which I sat down on, and sat down hard on—you would say so, too!”—“Personal Reminiscences of Cleveland,” The Saturday Evening Post.

(2500)

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In morals, quite as truly as in physics, the profitable time to deal with any evil is in its incipient stage:

The diseases that occupy the physician most are maladies that have reached an advanced stage, when it is not easy to combat them. On the other hand, the study of diseases at their outset, when they yield best to treatment, is almost neglected. It is certain that if every physician were also a trained physiologist, watching to relieve the slightest functional troubles, he would often be able to recognize small changes that are the common preludes to grave maladies.—Revue Scientifique.

(2501)

See [Fear as a Motive]; [Warning].

PREVISION

Otto Meyer and his wife, Mary, solved the difficulties attending the high cost of living as far as they are concerned. They have lived for years on a thirty-acre farm near the village of Riverside, Cook County. By a deed filed in the Recorder’s office, Meyer, for a consideration of $6,000 in cash, conveyed to his son, Fritz H. Meyer, the farm. But in return for this, the elder Meyer is to be furnished with all the necessities of life, including a house, regardless of the market price, as long as he or his wife lives.

A part of this unique deed reads as follows:

“The grantee is to provide a sufficient supply of fruit, a sufficient supply of vegetables of all kinds, to be delivered on demand; one drest hog of 200 pounds weight, one fore-quarter of fresh beef, to be delivered on December 15 in each year; one-half dozen fat ducks, one-half dozen fat roosters, drest, to be delivered November 1 of each year, and three barrels of best quality of wheat flour, to be delivered, one barrel each time on January 1, May 1, and September 1 of each year; twenty bushels of good eatable potatoes, to be delivered on demand; two pounds of fresh butter each week, one dozen fresh eggs each week, one quart of fresh milk each day, except Saturday; one half-gallon of fresh milk and $40 in cash, $20 on March 1 and $20 on July 1 in each year.”

(2502)

Price as a Test—See [Gold, Taint of].

PRICES AND WAGES

The welfare of wage-earners is intimately affected by the relation between the rate of wages and the prices of necessary commodities that wage-earners have to buy. The diagram below from The Literary Digest, gives the comparison of wages and prices for a term of recent years.

(2503)

Prices, Extravagant—See [Extravagance, Modern].

SHOWING THE RISE IN THE AVERAGE PRICE OF 96 STAPLE COMMODITIES.

SHOWING THE AVERAGE RISE IN WAGES BASED ON AN INVESTIGATION OF 4,000 LARGE INDUSTRIAL ESTABLISHMENTS.

PRIDE

E. H. Harriman, the railroad magnate, has a big country place in Virginia—a hunting-box, he calls it, but it is more like a hunting Waldorf-Astoria. One morning Mr. Harriman arose early and was sitting on one of the porches.

A milkman drove up and got out to bring in some milk. The milkman started in the front door.

“Here, you,” snapped Harriman. “Take that milk around the back way. What do you mean by bringing it in this way?”

“Mean?” said the milkman. “I mean that I am a Virginia gentleman, and I am not accustomed to be talked to in this manner, suh. I shall deliver this milk where I please, suh. If you do not like it you have a means of obtaining satisfaction, suh. No No’therner like you can talk to me like that, suh.”

Harriman retired. Next morning, when the same milkman arrived, Harriman greeted him with a low bow. “You are right,” he said. “Take the milk in the front way and leave it on the piano.” (Text.)

(2504)

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Recently I read the experience of a yachting party on the Mediterranean. A sudden storm had come up and threatened to overwhelm the boat. One of the two women on board lost her head completely and seemed crazed by fear. Suddenly she cried out to the other woman sitting calmly beside her: “You know you are as frightened as I am. Why don’t you show it, too?” “Oh, yes, I am frightened,” replied the other woman, “for I know the danger we are in. But, if we are going to die, do let us at least die like ladies.” And that appeal to pride wrought a complete change in the frightened woman, she became calm and even spoke words of encouragement to the others.—M. O. Simmons.

(2505)

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There was once a proud little Icicle who stood all alone out in the cold. She wore a dress that sparkled like diamonds, but for all that, no one cared to go near her. The snowflakes were having a game of tag in the sky. Nearer and nearer the earth they played until some of them espied Miss Icicle.

“Do come and play with us!” they cried.

But the proud Icicle shook her head. “No,” she said, “you are entirely too common to play with me; I am a princess.”

“I’ll show the world what you are, you silly thing,” called Grandfather Sun from his cloud chariot. So he sent some of his children, the Sunbeams, to breathe on Miss Icicle’s head. This made her feel so sick that she wept great tears. The more she wept the thinner she grew, till at last a tiny pool of water was all that was left. (Text.)

(2506)

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A gourd wound itself around a lofty palm, and in a few weeks climbed to its very top. “How old mayest thou be?” asked the gourd. “About a hundred years,” was the reply. “A hundred years and no taller! Only look, I have grown as tall as you in less than a hundred days,” said the puffed-up gourd. The stately palm calmly replied: “I know that well. Every summer of my life a gourd has climbed up my body and spread over my branches, as proud as thou art, and as short-lived as thou shalt be.”

(2507)

See [Vanity].

PRIDE IN ONE’S TASK

The following is told of John F. Stevens, who was appointed by President Roosevelt to take charge of the Panama Canal:

Sometime in the seventies, and somewhere in Arizona, both the time and place where the Apaches were very seriously on the warpath, it became necessary to send a message across a hundred or two miles of desert. There was offered a reward of five hundred dollars to the man who would carry it. The peril was undeniable and nobody seemed to consider the reward worth the probable cost of it. But presently John Stevens undertook to deliver the message. He eluded the Apaches and made the journey successfully on foot, but declined the five hundred dollars. The thing had been there to do; he preferred to do it for its own sake. (Text.)—American Magazine.

(2508)

Primitive Organisms—See [Choice in Primitive Organisms].

PRINCIPLE

One Sunday morning in Genoa a woman whom British people love stood by the dying bed of a man whose memory the world reveres. Josephine Butler stood by the bedside of Garibaldi, the old hero’s gaunt figure still clothed with the scarlet tunic which recalled the day when ten thousand “Garibaldis” swept on to victory and liberty with his name upon their lips. And the dying man said to the living woman:

“Never forget that tho we pass away and the leaders of a cause fall one by one, principles never pass away. They are world-wide, unchangeable and eternal.”—Charles F. Aked.

(2509)

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The Rev. W. F. Crafts tells this story of a clerk who stood by his principles:

Stephen Girard, the infidel millionaire of Philadelphia, one Saturday bade his clerks come the following day and unload a vessel which had just arrived. One of the clerks, who had strong convictions and the power to act upon them, refused to comply with the demand. “Well, sir,” said Mr. Girard, “if you can not do as I wish, we can separate.” “I know that, sir,” said the hero; “I also know that I have a widowed mother to care for, but I can not work on Sunday.” “Very well, sir,” said the proprietor, “go to the cashier’s desk, and he will settle with you.” For three weeks the young man tramped the streets of Philadelphia, looking for work. One day a bank president asked Mr. Girard to name a suitable person for cashier for a new bank about to be started. After reflection, Mr. Girard named this young man. “But I thought you discharged him?” “I did,” was the answer, “because he would not work on Sunday, and the man who will lose his situation from principle is the man to whom you can intrust your money.” (Text.)

(2510)

See [Feeling and Principle].

PRINCIPLES, MASTERING

Learning must be transformed into life. One would not expect to find the yeast if he made a cross-section of a loaf of bread. A cow eats grass all day, but we do not expect the cow to give grass. She is expected to give milk. A boy may study arithmetic and learn to do a few examples correctly. He can tell if each shoe is to have five nails, how many it will take to shoe a horse. But suppose the horse’s shoes needed six nails? He is baffled because he has found a case which was not met by his example; but when he masters the principle of which his sum is but an illustration, he can address himself to the problems of life as they come.—Everett D. Burr, “Proceedings of the Religious Education Association,” 1905.

(2511)

PRISON LIFE, EASY

French prisons, it is said, are such pleasant places of confinement that at the approach of every winter they are besieged by requests from vagrants for shelter.

Fresnes is notorious for its “hospitality,” and so agreeable is a sojourn there that many criminals, at the approach of winter, regularly arrange to get locked up until it is time to come out into the balmy air of springtime and the genial sunshine.

A short time since, the story goes, a new prison in France was opened to receive its first prisoner, sentenced to six months’ detention. The new establishment had cost nearly $20,000 to build and equip, but unfortunately the prison budget made no allowance for the warders and their “guests.”

The governor finally solved the dilemma by deciding that a policeman, who was married, should take up his quarters in the prison and serve the prisoner with his meals. But after a few days the policeman got tired of this. The profit made on the arrangement was very small, and in a confidential tone he confided to the prisoner that, if he cared to take “French leave,” he would see that every facility was given him to do so. But his charge quickly reassured him on the point.

“I’m all right here,” he said. “Your wife is an excellent cook. You are all very kind to me. This is a nice, new prison. I haven’t been so well off for a long time. You don’t catch me running away. What’s more, if you discharge me, I’ll jolly soon be back.”

Then the chief warder tried to persuade the prisoner that he would be well advised to make himself scarce. But he might as well have saved himself the trouble, for he met with no more success than the policeman. All the doors and windows of the prison were left wide open. He was given permission, he was even asked to go for a walk, in the hope that he would disappear for good. He thanked his jailers, and several times went for a stroll around the neighborhood.

But he always returned again in time for his meals. One night recently, however, he met an old friend when he was out, and after a glass or two of wine they found so many things to talk about that it was three o’clock in the morning when the “prisoner” returned to his lodgings. But altho he hung on to the bell and rung for all he was worth, no one came to the prison gate. At last the policeman opened a window and shouted angrily:

“If you don’t begone, I’ll fire on you.”

The lodger took the hint, but at six o’clock he was back again, and his guardian had to comply with his request to be admitted to his cell. How the affair will end no one knows, but it is said that the Sous-Préfet is seriously thinking of offering the “prisoner” a louis to go elsewhere for his food and lodging.—Baltimore Sun.

(2512)

PRISON LITERATURE

Dumas is of all authors the favorite at Sing Sing, and 1,413 volumes of his work were read by convicts in the course of the year. This shows good literary taste. Other authors, as represented by the number of their books read, ranked as follows: Charles Reade, 720; Collins, 649; Corelli, 596; Doyle, 584; Dickens, 567; Haggard, 481; Crawford, 415, and Henty, 402.

After fiction came biography, of which 1,227 volumes were read; history followed with 953 volumes; religion with 792, and poetry with 205. Of books in foreign languages, German led with 1,686 volumes, Hebrew was next with 1,259; Italian third, with 1,067, and French last, with 545.

What intelligence and vitality is enclosed in the walls of prisons! But it is, at least, something of a comfort to realize that men’s lives no longer drag out in the silence and neglect that once attended punishment. Now the influences of the outside world reach them, conveying still some sense of fellowship, for many, of coming opportunity. (Text.)—The Reader Magazine.

(2513)

Prisoner, A, and His Liberty—See [Dead Tho Alive].

PRISONERS, EMPLOYMENT FOR

The Maryland Prisoners’ Aid Association have established a woodyard and novelty manufacturing shop at No. 311 North Street, Baltimore, where steady employment is furnished those desiring to start anew after liberation from penal institutions. Like all work of this kind, the new plant is conducted with the idea of defraying its own expense, and not to realize profits.

All the machinery in the woodyard, which, in full operation, employs twenty men, is driven by electricity. The principal product is kindling, manufactured from cordwood shipped from Anne Arundel County. The wood is unloaded from cars alongside the sawmill, where it is cut, split and loaded on wagons ready for delivery.

An important feature of the plant is the shop on the second floor, where light cabinet articles of all descriptions are manufactured. Many of the men going to the Aid Society for help in obtaining employment are of a mechanical turn, and these are given positions in the shop. In charge of a skilled cabinet-maker and woodworker, John McVauley, tables, chairs, magazine racks, umbrella-stands, settees, stools, upholstered furniture and miscellaneous household articles are turned out for which the men are paid wages about equal to the rates paid by manufacturing plants.—Baltimore Sun.

(2514)

PRIVACY, LACK OF

Korean homes are in a sense open to all the world. Any one who pleases may try the door, push it open, and come in. He needs no first acquaintance, and no introduction. An ordinary Korean guest-room is free to all the world. On the other hand, the inner quarters are separate, and for a male traveler to venture there would be a breach of the most sacred law of society. Into this outer room come gentlemen of leisure, tramps, fortune-tellers, Buddhist priests, all mankind, in fact. Here is located the high seat of the master. As you live in this guest-room, you feel the fearful lack of privacy. You are as tho encamped on the open highway, under the gaze of all men. If you write a letter, the question is, to whom are you writing it. “Why do you write thus and thus? What reference is here? Who? When?” These are the questions that are asked by those who look over your shoulder, without any breach of proper form or infraction of the eternal law that governs things.—James S. Gale, “Korea in Transition.”

(2515)

PRIVATION, COMPARATIVE

While her husband was still lying in prison for debt, the Archbishop of York asked Susannah Wesley:

“Tell me, Mrs. Wesley, whether you were ever really in want of bread?”

“My lord,” she answered, “strictly speaking, I never did want bread. But then I had so much care to get it before it was eaten, and to pay for it after, as has often made it very unpleasant to me; and I think to have bread under such terms is the next degree of wretchedness to having none at all.”—W. H. Fitchett, “Wesley and His Century.”

(2516)

PRIVILEGE

In “The Gospel of Life,” Charles Wagner writes this sound wisdom:

Never is knowledge more touching or art more radiant than when they illumine the brow of the obscure. I am quite familiar with the fact that there are certain privileged ones of the earth who believe that this kind of good is reserved for them, that these are meats too delicate to be set before common folk. Scandalized at seeing the people walking about in the Louvre or in the halls of the Hotel de Ville, some one said to me one day, “Do you think that it was for these people that Puvis de Chavannes painted his ceilings?” “I don’t know as a matter of fact,” I said, “whether it was for them that he painted them. But I know another ceiling more beautiful than are these of earth; that which at night the myriads of stars cover with their constellations, that on which according to the magnificent image of the poet:

“‘God paints the dawn, like a fresco, on the dark wall of night.’” (Text.)

(2517)

PRIVILEGE INVOLVES RESPONSIBILITY

When T. H. Benton was in the House he was of the opinion that the third day of March, and consequently the congressional term, ended at midnight of that day, instead of at noon on the fourth, as unbroken usage had fixt it. So on the last morning he sat with his hat on, talked loudly, loafed about the floor, and finally refused to vote or answer to his name when the roll was called. At last the speaker, the Hon. James L. Orr, of South Carolina, picked him up and put an end to these legislative larks.

“No, sir; no, sir; NO, sir!” shouted the venerable Missourian; “I will not vote. I have no right to vote. This is no House, and I am not a member of it.”

“Then, sir,” said Speaker Orr like a flash, with his sweetest manner, “if the gentleman is not a member of this House, the sergeant-at-arms will please put him out.”

And so this vast constitutional question settled itself.

(2518)

PRIVILEGES SLIGHTED

Mrs. Mary A. Wright, a veteran Sunday-school teacher of New Jersey, relates an odd story of human interest taken from personal observation.

I went to see a beautiful new farmhouse near Fort Wayne, Iowa. A friend who accompanied me explained that the owner, a prosperous ranchman, had been forty years building it. He had started life in a small home of logs—but in his early days had dreamed of a larger and better home for himself and family. Every tree he saw that struck his fancy he cut down and hewed into lumber so that when he was finally ready to erect his mansion he had all the seasoned material at hand. The new home was at last completed and beautifully finished upon the interior in polished natural woods. There were soft carpets for the floors, and rich furnishings; a bath-room, steam heat, and other modern conveniences.

That was several years before my visit, but I learned that, altho surrounded by all of this luxury, the farmer and his family lived in the basement. He had spent the best years of his life striving to build such a beautiful home, but, after getting it, he thought it too good to use and the family kept it to look at. The farmer and his family washed at the old pump in the yard while the costly tiled bath-room, with hot and cold water equipment, stood idle. They drank out of tin cups and ate off of cracked earthenware in their humble abode in the basement, while fine cut-glass and delicate china pieces reposed undisturbed in china-closets in the elegantly furnished dining-room up-stairs.

All the members of the family entered into the spirit of “keeping the house looking nice,” and they kept it so nice that the wife and mother who had worn out her life in helping to secure the luxuries that she afterward thought too good to enjoy, begged to be allowed to die on a straw mattress in the cellar rather than muss the clean linen in the bed-chambers above.

How much that is like some people. They are living in life’s basement, carefully cherishing the higher and nobler things to look at and show their friends, when they might experience life’s fullest joys and privileges for the choosing.

(2519)

Prize—See [Discovery, Fortunate].

PROBATION

Judge Mulqueen, of General Sessions, New York City, explained why he had sentenced two prisoners to “go home and serve time with their families.” This “punishment” was imposed when both men pleaded drunkenness as their excuse for trivial offenses.

In the case of the first man, said the judge, the offense had been assault. The prisoner, an employee of the Street Cleaning Department, had a wife and five children to support, and had already spent more than a month in the Tombs, waiting for his trial.

“Now, to send such a man to jail,” continued Judge Mulqueen, “would do decidedly more harm than good. He wasn’t a criminal. I think he was penitent, and he promised to do as I said, to cut out drink and attend to business.

“Still, his offense was a misdemeanor in the eyes of the law, and I might have given him a year in the penitentiary and $500 fine, which usually means another year, since the men pay their fines by working for the State. Instead of that, I placed him on probation for a year.

“He must report once a week to the probation officer. Also, he is watched, not suspiciously, but merely as a matter of precaution. If he is caught entering a saloon—I warned him of this—he will be punished. It’s simply giving him a chance to make good.”

(2520)

See [Exclusion from Heaven].

Problems, Gaging—See [Distance].

PROCRASTINATION

He meant to insure his house, but it burned before he got around to it.

He was just going to pay a note when it went to protest.

He was just going to help his neighbor when he died.

He was just going to send flowers to a sick friend when it proved too late.

He was just going to reduce his debt when his creditors “shut down” on him.

He was just going to stop drinking and dissipating when his health became wrecked.

He was just going to provide his wife with more help when she took her bed and required a nurse, a doctor and a maid.—Success Magazine.

(2521)

PRODIGAL, THE

Theodosia Garrison shows in these verses the melting power of love:

When I came to you banned, dishonored,

Brother of yours no more,

And raised my hands where your roof-tree stands,

Why did you open the door?

When I came to you starving—thirsting,

Beggared of aught but sin,

Why did you rise with welcoming eyes

And lift me and bid me in?

You have set me the first at the feast

And robed me in tenderness,

Yet, brothers of mine, these tears for sign

That I would your grace were less.

For I had not been crusht by your hate

Who courted the pain thereof,

But you stab me through when you give anew,

O brothers, your love—your love! (Text.)

(2522)

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This pathetic incident is told by Dr. J. Wilbur Chapman:

Mr. Moody told me that he was once invited to luncheon in one of the great homes in the city of New York. He noticed that his hostess was continually rising and leaving the room. He said to himself, “She must be in trouble. If she goes again I will follow her.” She did go out again and our great evangelist rose from the table and went out into the next room. When the mother saw him she was plunged into confusion. Her face flushed a fiery red. Seated upon the couch in the room was a boy with dishevelled hair, with bloodshot eyes, with clothing in rags. The mother recovered herself in a moment, walked across the room as if she had been a queen, threw her arms around her boy. Then, walking over to our great preacher, she said: “Mr. Moody, I do not think you have ever met my son. This is my boy, Mr. Moody; he is a prodigal, but I love him.” Mr. Moody said she put her lips up against the boy’s cheek and he suddenly burst into a flood of tears, dropt on his knees and, after Mr. Moody had spoken to him, he came to Christ. (Text.)

(2523)

PRODIGY, A

Professor Boris Sidis has given, in response to requests, an authentic account of the scope and aims of his son’s intellectual career. “I do not believe in the prevailing system of education for children,” writes Professor Sidis. “I have educated my son upon a system of my own, based to some extent upon principles laid down by Professor William James.” This system, Professor Sidis insists, has justified itself by its results in the case of the boy prodigy of Harvard. He knows as much at eleven, the father says, “as a gifted professor of mature years,” and when he grows up “he will amaze the world.” Nor is the result due to heredity or to abnormality of the child’s brain. The results achieved in the case of this eleven-year-old lad are due wholly to the methods of training pursued. To quote the father’s words as given the New York American:

“As the baby grows more rapidly after birth than at any other time, so his brain develops most rapidly then and becomes less sensitive to impressions as he grows older. The process of education can not begin too soon.

“I began to train my boy in the use of his faculties immediately after his birth. He was bound to use them anyway, and therefore I took care that he used them properly. I taught the child to observe accurately, to analyze and synthesize and make sound deductions. Neither his mother nor myself confused him with baby talk, meaningless sounds or foolish gestures, and thus, altho he learned to reason so early, his mind was no more burdened than that of the ordinary child.

“I knew that as soon as he began to speak his first interest would be in the sounds he was uttering, and so I trained him to identify the elements of sound. Taking a box of large alphabet blocks I named each to him day after day.

“In this way he learned to read and spell correctly before he was two years old. What was still more important, he learned to reason correctly.”

(2524)

Productions, Interchange of—See [Christianity, Social].

Profanity—See [Ambassador, The Minister as an]; [Swearing].

PROFANITY AND PRAYER

Is not much of our praying of as little significance as the profanity mentioned below:

Mr. Pierson was a man of no religious principles. Without exception he was the most profane man I ever knew. He would hardly utter a word without an oath. His habit of profanity had become so inveterate that it seemed almost as involuntary as his breathing. The wife of a clergyman, for whom he was working at one time, reproved him, when he pleasantly replied:

“Why, madam, I don’t mean anything when I swear, any more than you do when you pray.”—Asa Bullard, “Incidents in a Busy Life.”

(2525)

PROFANITY IN FORMER TIMES

Swearing in the drawing-room and in the “best society” was no uncommon thing ninety years ago. Even the ladies themselves not rarely indulged in it. Dean Ramsey tells an anecdote that well illustrates how it was regarded. A sister was speaking of her brother as much addicted to the habit, and she said, “Our John swears awfu’, and we try to correct him for it; but,” she added, apologetically, “nae doubt it is a great set-off to conversation.”—Minot J. Savage, The Arena.

(2526)

PROFESSION

The lives of some who are estimated as men of holiness are like the bodies in certain ancient tombs, that retain the form and features they had when living, but which crumble at a touch. They are surrounded with all the ornaments of the living, and have the shape of men, but they are only dust. So a touch of temptation or any test of life applied to some men causes their apparent saintliness to crumble.

(2627)

Profession, Empty—See [Church, Deadness of the].

PROFESSION VERSUS CHARACTER

In a former pastorate there was a man in my congregation who could talk like Demosthenes or Cicero. He used excellent grammar, and seemed to know the Bible pretty well from Genesis to Revelation. He could quote Longfellow, and Tennyson, and Whittier, and a stranger would be charmed by his eloquent utterances. And yet when he rose to talk in a prayer-meeting, the crowd began to wither, and when his talk was over the prayer-meeting was like a sweet-potato patch on a frosty morning, flat and blue. The people knew that in his life there was something unsavory, that he would drink before the bar with worldly friends, and that he was not as honest as he might be. His good grammar and fluent utterances did not make amends for the unsavoriness of his character. There was another man in that congregation who would sometimes come to prayer-meeting with a circle of coal-dust around his hair. He was a coal-cart driver, and he was now and then so hurried to get to the prayer-meeting that he did not make his toilet with as much care as he ought. But the people leaned over to listen when he talked. And why? Because they knew that he lived every day for God. He would pick up a tramp on the road, and give him a mile ride on his cart, that he might talk with him about Jesus. His religion tasted good. Bad religion in good grammar does not taste good. I would rather have good religion in bad grammar, than good grammar in bad religion. (Text.)—C. A. Dixon.

(2528)

PROFESSIONALISM

The subtle casuistry of Johnson’s reply in this dialog from Boswell’s “Life of Johnson” would excuse any amount of lying, if it were only in the interest of one’s profession.

Boswell—“But, sir, does not affecting a warmth when you have no warmth, and appearing to be clearly of one opinion, when you are, in reality, of another opinion—does not such dissimulation impair one’s honesty? Is there not some danger that a lawyer may put on the same mask in common life, in the intercourse with his friends?” Johnson—“Why, no, sir. Everybody knows you are paid for affecting warmth for your client; and it is, therefore, properly no dissimulation; the moment you come from the bar you resume your usual behavior. Sir, a man will no more carry the artifice of the bar into the common intercourse of society than a man who is paid for tumbling upon his hands will continue to tumble upon his hands when he should walk upon his feet.” (Text.)—Croake James, “Curiosities of Law and Lawyers.”

(2529)

PROFIT

S. E. Kiser expresses in the verse below the thought that our kind words and deeds are helpful to ourselves, no matter how small their objective effect:

You may not profit by my word of cheer,

The cares you have may weigh upon you still;

My word of kindness may not dry your tear,

Nor smooth your path upon the storm-swept hill.

The word of hope I speak may not impart

To you the courage that I wish it might;

But, speaking it, I win new strength of heart

And make the burden I am bearing light.

(2530)

PROFIT FROM PESTS

Some points in muskrat-farming are related by a Vermont man in the New England Homestead as his own experience. Some years ago he dammed a small brook on his farm for the purpose of making a trout-pond. The muskrats, however, speedily took possession of it and made it their home, from which they organized forays into the farmer’s corn-field. This suggested a way of getting even. The next year he enlarged his dam, making a shallow pond covering four acres of marsh-land of no use for crops. The rats appreciated the enlarged accommodations and also the marginal corn crop which he planted for their sustenance, and did not suspect the wire traps set for them when the water should be drawn off.

After a couple of seasons he considered the quarry sufficiently mature to test results. The water was drawn off and the game was caught in the netting. A hundred of the largest and darkest of the captives were returned to the pond for breeding purposes, while more than four hundred were put under tribute of their pelts. The result was more than enough to pay for the construction and labor, and he expects a much larger return of better fur next year. Hundreds of New England farms have brook-fed marshes that could be utilized to equal advantage.

The fur market is a rising one; more in proportion, perhaps, for cheap furs than for the more expensive. The trolley and automobile have increased the demand enormously. The people who buy rich furs are constantly becoming more numerous, and they have their imitators among the many who can afford only the lower grades.—Boston Transcript.

(2531)

Prognosis, Cure in—See [Wounds, Curious].

PROGNOSTICATION OF WEATHER

Character has its signs, often accurately read by the simple-hearted man, as easily as farmers foretell the weather.

“I reckon we’ll have to stop hay-carting to-morrow,” said a laborer to me one splendid cloudless July day.

“Why?”

“’Cause I heerd one o’ them old woodpeckers hallerin’ fit to bust hisself while I was a-gettin’ my dinner.”

Next morning the daily paper spoke of settled fine weather, but the rustic was right—it rained heavily. He was a man utterly uneducated, who, without reference to any scientific instrument, could forecast the morrow’s weather with accuracy, when the meteorological office, with all its appliances, was at fault. “Hinery” was only a specimen of hundreds of his fellows who can predict to-morrow’s (and often longer) weather with unerring accuracy, merely from noticing common details of natural phenomena open to every one.—Cassell’s Magazine.

(2532)

PROGRESS

Faith in divine progress is exprest in these verses by John Philo Trowbridge:

The eternal truth of God moves on

In undisputed sway,

While all the narrow creeds of men

Decline and pass away.

The eternal light of God shines on

Beneath an eternal sky,

Tho human luminations cease,

And human watch-fires die.

But faith still mounts the endless years,

And truth grows lovelier still,

And light shines in upon the soul

From some immortal hill.

(2533)

---

Professor Guyot, of Princeton, says that progress in the world is like the development of plant life. It has three periods of growth. The first is that in the soil—growth by the root. The second is more accelerated—growth by the stem. The third is the most rapid of all—growth by the blossom and fruit. The world has been growing by the root, obscurely, lingeringly, slowly. It is growing by the stem now, very much faster. It is beginning to break into the blossom and fruit, when progress will be wonderful compared with our past experience in all other periods.—Henry Ward Beecher.

(2534)

---

Modern ministers, while they should not be stagnantly conservative, are sometimes apt to make too little allowance for the inveterate habits in old saints of clinging to the past. These old saints in many cases can not easily get into line with the word “go.” They are not prepared for new eras of thought or the inauguration of new epochs. Hume destroyed the faith of his mother and made it a wreck. Arterial sclerosis is a hardening of the walls of the arteries, so that they become unable to bear the pressure of the blood when impelled by the heart under excitement. A similar process of hardening of the avenues of mental operations characterizes many excellent folk in old age.

(2535)

See [Improvement].

Progress, a Sign of—See [Surgery, Improvement in].

PROGRESS BY DISPLACEMENT

It is estimated that more than 20,000 families, aggregating 100,000 persons, have been driven from their homes by the steady transformation of New York City which is now near completion. The destruction of homes has not been confined to one locality, nor has it come as the result of one event. Every large undertaking has contributed its quota of persons whose homes literally have been pulled down about their heads.

This transformation is most conspicuous at the approaches to the new bridges across the East River, in the erection of new and stupendous railroad terminals, the encroachment of modern business buildings upon residence property, and the widening of streets.

It is the law of progress that the old shall be displaced by the new and better.

(2536)

Progress by Ideals—See [Ideals and Progress].

Progress by Necessity—See [Necessity and Progress].

Progress by Struggle—See [Struggle].

Progress, Keeping Pace with—See [Modernity].

Progress, Lack of—See [Motion Without Progress].

PROGRESS, MODERN

The late Professor Dolbear, of Tuft’s College, summed up the progress of the nineteenth century as follows:

The nineteenth century received from its predecessor the horse; we bequeath the locomotive, the bicycle, and the automotor. We received the scythe; we bequeathed the mowing-machine. We received the painter’s brush; we bequeathed lithography, the camera, and color photography. We received twenty-three chemical elements; we bequeathed eighty. We received the sailing ship; we bequeathed the magnificent steamships which are the glory of Belfast and of Ireland. We received the beacon signal-fire; we bequeathed the telephone and wireless telegraphy. Best of all, we received unalleviable pain, and we bequeathed aseptics, chloroform, ether, and cocaine. We received an average duration of life for thirty years; we bequeathed forty years. (Text.)

(2537)

Progress of Indians—See [Indians, American].

Progress Resisted—See [Drought, Responsibility for].

PROGRESS, TRUE

Surely we should judge of a man’s progress by inquiring what he has been rather than by his present stage alone:

Men march toward civilization in column formation, and by the time the van has learned to admire the masters the rear is drawing reluctantly away from the totem-pole. Anywhere in the middle you may find a veneration for china pugdogs or an enthusiasm for Marie Corelli—still an advance. Literary people seem to think that every time a volume of Hall Caine is sold, Shakespeare is to that extent neglected. It merely means that some semisavage has reached the Hall Caine stage, and we should wish him godspeed on his way to Shakespeare. It is only when a pretended Shakespeare man lapses into Hall Cainery that one need be excited.—Frank Moore Colby, “Imaginary Obligations.”

(2538)

PROGRESS UNFINISHED

To the end of his life, the student whose frame remains unshaken, writes on morals and history, on science and on fine art, and his inquiries in all the departments of nature are marked by as keen and strenuous an enthusiasm as when in his youth he traversed the hills and the valleys on foot. Each process becomes but a basis for higher ones; and each successful and wide research but opens the path to new discoveries. As the skiff which the boy builds grows at last to the steamship, and the hut of the pioneer to the palace which the citizen rears and adorns—while yet neither of these is felt to be final with him, or adequate to the highest conception he can form—so the thought of the child expands and accumulates to the science of manhood, and still is admitted insufficient and transient.—Richard S. Storrs.

(2539)

PROHIBITION

Of course, the experienced drinker can buy liquor in a prohibition State like Maine. Let me say to any old toper present, going to Portland for his summer vacation, that he can find a drink by going into a side street, slipping down a dark alley, rapping three times at a door, wriggling up a back stairway, and by much twisting, convolution and squirming like a serpent, find what he desires. But boys and girls will grow up without the temptation of the open saloon. Of course, prohibition is not ideal. Making man temperate by law is a makeshift. There are men who have not been drunk for ten years—they are in Sing Sing.

Perhaps, however, if you can not keep some men from committing crime in any other way, it is best to build a stone wall around them. The ideal thing is law enthroned in the heart, an automatic commandment in the brain and will. But the necessary thing for poorly born people may be legal restraints.—N. D. Hillis.

(2540)

---

An English writer refers thus to some impressions of a brother Englishman, traveling through the United States:

When traveling through the United States some years ago, he was much struck with the difference in appearance of the houses in districts where the Maine liquor law was in force, and soon learned to distinguish where it was adopted, by the clean, cheerful look of the workmen’s dwellings, the neatness of the gardens, and the presence of trees and flowers which, in other districts, were wanting. He was not a teetotaler himself, and was not advocating such restrictions; but he could not help noticing the contrast; and he felt sure that in all our large towns great progress in civilization and morals would be effected if such an attraction were offered to the working classes.

It is another of the long line of illustrations showing the intimate connection between moral and material weal.

(2541)

PROHIBITION ARGUED AGAINST

At the fiftieth annual convention of the United States Brewers’ Association, the following absurdity was submitted as part of a report:

The whole vegetable world is in a conspiracy against the prohibitionist. The bees become intoxicated with the distillation of the honeysuckle; the wasps grow dizzy in the drowsy clover-patch, and even the ants wobble in their walk after they have feasted upon the overripe fruit fallen from the tree, which has started a natural fermentation.—New York Evening Post.

(2542)

PROHIBITION AS A BENEFACTOR

“A Swedish teacher going abroad for study,” writes the Karlstadt Tidning, “gave a patriotic lecture in the cabin of a North Sea steamer to Swedish emigrants. After it was over a nice-looking young fellow came up to him and said: ‘Greet the dear old land for me when you return. I should never leave it if the prohibition rescript continued in force. You see, I am a drinking man, tho I have a wife and children to care for. I have a good employment always open to me in Stockholm, but I don’t dare take it. For a whole month under prohibition I have been a free and happy man. If it had continued I should have stayed in Sweden, but now I am making for some American prohibition State where I can’t get drink.’ And he was not the only one. Other passengers said the same thing. The five weeks had brought hope into their life and they were going where the law helped them rather than crusht them.”—The Christian Statesman.

(2543)

PROMISE, AN INDIAN’S

“Sonny” Smith, charged with the murder of Frank Miller, sat in the sheriff’s office at Tulsa, Okla. His two sons were fugitives from justice on the same charge.

“Let me go,” pleaded the half-breed Creek Indian to the sheriff of the county, “and I will go and bring in the two boys you are looking for. If you do not let me go you will never catch those boys.”

Sheriff Newblock smiled grimly.

“What guarantee have I if I let you go after the boys that you will come back? You know you are charged with a capital offense.”

“You have the word of an Indian that he will come back,” replied the half-breed. And the sheriff, with a knowledge of Indian character, let “Sonny” go as a special commissioner to hunt his own boys in the swamps and hills and bring them in.

As time passed there was much grumbling in the community that the sheriff had let a cold-blooded murderer loose among the people. The victim was a young man, popular in the town and connected with the best families in the country. But on the fifth day “Sonny” appeared with his two sons and their wives and all the rest of the kin of the tribe of Smith.

“Here I am,” he announced proudly, “and here are my two boys, whom I arrested in the swamps of the Arkansas, close to Muskogee. I would have written to let you know I was on the trail, but the most of the time I was away from the railroad lines and could not quit the trail long enough to mail you a postal. And if there is anything against me I am going to stay here and fight it out.”

(2544)

Promise, Failing—See [Early Promise].

PROMISE, INVIOLABLE

The following is one of Dwight L. Moody’s illustrations, with the exhortation that followed it:

It is recorded in history that some years ago a man was condemned to be put to death. When he came to lay his head on the block, the prince who had charge of the execution asked him if there was any one petition that he could grant him. All that the condemned man asked for was a glass of water. They went and got him a tumbler of water, but his hand trembled so that he could not get it to his mouth. The prince said to him, “Your life is safe until you drink that water.” He took the prince at his word, and dashed the water to the ground. They could not gather it up, and so he saved his life. My friend, you can be saved now by taking God at His word. The water of life is offered to “whosoever will.” Take it now, and live. May God give you grace to do so this moment! Let feelings go! Say in your heart, “I do believe, I will believe, I now believe on the Lord Jesus Christ with all my heart,” and life everlasting is yours!

(2545)

PROMISED LAND, THE

These verses are part of a longer poem by Michael Lynch:

So we sailed and sailed over stormy seas, till we came to a pleasant land, Where forever were peace and happiness, and plenty was on each hand; And no man wronged his brother there, for no man counted it gain To live by the sweat of another’s brow, or to joy at another’s pain,

---

And the strong man there was a kindly man and aided the one who was weak,

And for those who were simple and trusting men their wiser brothers would speak;

And creed, or color, or land, or birth, caused no man to hate another,

For the same red blood filled each man’s veins, and every man was a brother.

*****

And the old man there was a blessed man, for toilless he wanted nought,

And vice and toil on the little ones no longer their ruin wrought;

And the feeble in body and mind had there no longer a care for bread;

For out of the plenty that was for all, ’twas theirs the first to be fed.

*****

And peace was forever in that fair land, for no man envied his mate,

And no man’s treasures, where all were rich, woke his brother’s sleeping hate,

And the kingdom that Christ had promised was now for all men to see,

And the name of that happy kingdom was, “The land of the soon be be.” (Text.)

(2546)

PROMISES

“Oh, grandpa,” said Charlie, “see how white the apple-trees are with blossoms.”

“Yes,” replied grandpa; “if the tree keeps its promises, there will be plenty of apples; but if it is like some boys I know there may not be any.”

“What do you mean by keeping its promises?” Charley inquired.

“Why,” returned grandpa, “blossoms are only the tree’s promises, just as the promises little boys make sometimes are blossoms. Sometimes the frost nips these blossoms, both on the tree and in the boy.”

“I see,” Charlie remarked; “then you think when I promise to be a better boy, I am only in blossom. But I’ll show you that the frost can’t nip my blossoms.”—The Young Evangelist.

(2547)

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Dr. Alexander MacLaren writes as follows about following the promises:

In the crooked alleys of Venice there is a thin thread of red stone inlaid in the pavement or wall which guides through all the devious turnings to the plaza, in the center where the great church stands. As long as we have the red line of promise on the path faith may follow it, and it will lead to God. (Text.)

(2548)

PROMISES, BROKEN

I remember when I lived in Brooklyn there used to be a fence around the City Hall. A man used to stand there, grasping the iron railing in his hand, and looking up at the clock, every day at noon; and when it struck 12, he would count each stroke and look about him, his face full of joy and hope. But after two or three minutes the light would fade out of his eyes, and he would be turned into an old man, and would drag his feet slowly away. For nine years he did this, until death took him. I was told that at some great business crisis of his life a man had promised to bring him some hundreds of dollars at a particular time, to rescue him from failure. The man did not come, and he found out he never intended to come; and the great disappointment shattered his brain, and day after day he was at the City Hall, looking for the man who never came. The guilt of human hearts has made men give promises to get rid of importunate persons. Some of us have become cynics because we have found men so ready to promise falsely.—D. A. Goodsell.

(2549)

PROMISES, IMPLIED

A promise may sometimes be binding on the conscience even when not made in specific terms:

M. Fallieres was presiding at a banquet at Agen, when a piece of money dropt from his waistcoat pocket to the floor. His neighbor said: “I think you have let fall a 2f. piece.” But he replied, “Let it be; that will be a lucky find for the waiter,” and he called the latter, whispering to him to look out for a 2f. piece, which he would find somewhere under his seat on the floor. Toward the end of dinner M. Fallieres was seen by his neighbor to be feeling with a preoccupied air in his waistcoat pockets. As he rose he looked round, fancied he was not observed, and gently let a 2f. piece slide down to the floor. His neighbor, who had noticed the strange proceeding, asked M. Fallieres afterward if he would tell him what it meant. “The fact is,” Mr. Fallieres answered, “that I remembered that I keep only coppers in my left-hand pocket, from which the piece dropt that you supposed was 2f., whereas it must have been only 2 sous. So I took out of my right pocket, in which I keep my silver, another coin, which that time really was a 2f. piece, and dropt it for the waiter to find. I did not want to disappoint the man after telling him, you see.” (Text.)

(2550)

PROMOTION, HINDRANCES TO

He watched the clock.

He was always grumbling.

He was always behindhand.

He asked too many questions.

His stock excuse was “I forgot.”

He wasn’t ready for the next step.

He did not put his heart into his work.

He learned nothing from his blunders.

He was content to be a second-rate man.

He chose his friends among his inferiors.

He ruined his ability by half-doing things.

He never dared to act on his own judgment.

He did not think it worth while to learn how.

He thought it clever to use coarse and profane language.

He imitated the habits of men who could stand more than he could.

He did not learn that the best part of his salary was not in his pay envelop.—Success.

(2551)

PROOF

A Christian Korean who had his hair cut like a Japanese was met by a company of his fellow countrymen who were out looking for Japanese sympathizers. They accused him of being a traitor, but he insisted that he was not—that he was a Christian. “Have you a Bible and a hymn-book?” they demanded. He produced them. “Repeat the Lord’s Prayer.” He did so. “The Ten Commandments and the Apostles Creed; sing the Doxology.” The Christian was ready with all these, and his captors were satisfied and released him. (Text.)

(2552)

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Dr. Ogden, professor of geology at Cambridge, had taken a fancy to a lad, who had been in his service for some years, and used to manage the garden with great cleverness and skill, much to the admiration of his employer. The doctor, however, came, after a few years, to notice that his favorite cherry-tree never seemed to yield any presentable fruit in due season. At last, one year, some twelve cherries seemed to be approaching the long coveted fruition; but as the doctor was returning from a ride one day, what should he behold but these pet cherries gone! He accused the boy rather abruptly and warmly, but the latter with equal warmth replied, “I have not touched them, as true as God’s in heaven.” The doctor at once went to his closet, told the boy to wait, and gave him a strong dose of antimonial wine as a sort of treat. The boy, who was kept in some conversation, soon began to be uneasy, and wanted to go, saying he felt unwell. “No, no, my lad,” said the doctor; “sit thee still, I’ll soon make thee better of that,” and gave him a glass of warm water from a basin also at his elbow. Very soon nature was irresistible. The boy hiccuped, looked pale, and up came all the cherries.—Croake James, “Curiosities of Law and Lawyers.”

(2553)

PROOF BY EXPERIENCE

In a military journal is related this incident of the ill-starred voyage of the Russian fleet to Eastern waters:

One day, during some gunnery practise, Admiral Rozhestvensky was greatly angered by the poor display made by a certain vessel, which he boarded in a towering rage. “Who is in command here?” he asked excitedly. “I am, sir,” replied an officer, stepping forward. “Consider yourself under arrest,” said Rozhestvensky; “your men are trained disgracefully.” “It is not my fault,” answered the officer. “Our shells won’t explode.” “I’ll soon see whether you are right,” thundered the admiral, and, taking up a small shell, he lit the fuse and held it out at arm’s length. If that shell had burst, both men would have been blown to atoms. But the fuse spluttered out, and the admiral remarked simply, “You are right. The fault is not yours. I will see to it that you have proper shells in future.”

The expedient of the admiral was exceedingly dangerous, but it was highly effective. This proof admits of no gainsaying. (Text.)

(2554)

Proof, Sufficient—See [Evidence, Christian].

Propagation—See [Improvement].

Propagation of Life—See [Life, Self-propagating].

PROPAGATION OF THE GOOD

Great minds that are full of light; great hearts that are full of love—their light will go out into the ends of the earth, and their shining unto the ends of the world.

A recent history of the steam engine says Stephenson knew “that if he could get his engine perfected, the rest would take care of itself.” Certainly! That man who discovered the lucifer match did not have to force it upon poor men, shivering in the cold and frost of winter. When James Watt has an engine that will lift coal out of a mine, he does not have to insist that it be accepted by laborers bowed to the very ground by sacks of mineral. Let Gutenberg get his printing-press, and all these copyists, weary of writing, and the millions of men hungry for knowledge, will greet his printed page with shouts and cheers. Get your seedless orange, and it will take feet unto itself and travel over the world. Get the new palm, the new peach or pear, and millions will stretch out their hands pleading for it. Get Luther—the new Germany will follow. Get Livingstone, and the Dark Continent will soon be full of light. Get your Pilgrim Fathers—the republic will tread closely upon their heels. Get your twelve apostles, and you will soon have a New Jerusalem, a new Antioch, a new Ephesus, a new Rome. Get your new Pentecost for the American churches, and you will have a new era and a golden age of industrial peace and commercial prosperity.—N. D. Hillis.

(2555)

PROPAGATION, PROLIFIC

The May-flies, in their flying stage, make up for their frailness and feebleness, their inability to feed—they have really no mouth-parts and do not eat at all in their few hours or days of flying life—by existing in enormous numbers, and millions may be killed, or may die from very feebleness, and yet there are enough left to lay the eggs necessary for a new generation, and that is success in life for them. Nothing else is necessary. Their whole aim and achievement in life seems to be to lay eggs and start a new generation of May-flies.—Vernon L. Kellogg, “Insect Stories.”

(2556)

Property, Church—See [Church Statistics].

Property, Unvalued—See [Appreciation, Lack of].

PROPHECY

There have been many uninspired prophets, but Joan of Arc was the only one who ever ventured the daring detail of naming, along with a foretold event, the event’s precise nature, the special time-limit within which it would occur, and the place—and scored fulfilment. At Vauchouleurs she said she must go to the king and be made his general, and break the English power, and crown her sovereign—at “Reims.” It all happened. It was all to happen “next year”—and it did. She foretold her first wound and its character and date a month in advance, and the prophecy was recorded in a public record book three weeks in advance. She repeated it the morning of the date named, and it was fulfilled before night. At Tours she foretold the limit of her military career—saying it would end in one year from the time of its utterance—and she was right. She foretold her martyrdom—using that word, and naming a time three months away—and again she was right. At a time when France was hopelessly and permanently in the hands of the English she twice asserted in her prison before her judges that within seven years the English would meet with a mightier disaster than had been the fall of Orleans. It happened within five—the fall of Paris. Other prophecies of hers came true, both as to the event named and the time limit prescribed. (Text.)—Mark Twain, Harper’s Magazine.

(2557)

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In the “Autobiography” of Albert Pell, that fine old English gentleman whose whole life was devoted to the reform of the English poor-laws and to the general uplifting and improvement of the condition, moral, social and political, of the English agricultural laborer, it is related that one of the first well-known men whom he met as a small boy was Wilberforce, who used to stay with his father, Sir Albert Pell, in the country.

When one of Pell’s friends was an infant in arms, his nurse was swept by an election mob to the very foot of the York hustings at a famous contest for the county in which Wilberforce was one of the principal actors. With all the earnestness and vigor which distinguished him he was pressing his beneficent views on the abolition of slavery.

Carried away by the depths of his convictions and enthusiastic inspiration, he reached over the balcony, and snatching the baby from the arms of its astonished nurse, held it up over his head in the face of the people, exclaiming:

“See this and hear my prophecy! Before this child dies there will not be a white man in the world owning a slave.”

My friend, adds Mr. Pell, survived the Civil War in the United States, and virtually Wilberforce’s prophecy was fulfilled.—The Youth’s Companion.

(2558)

Propitiation, Evil—See [Sacrifice, Pagan].

PROPORTION

“I thought it was a pretty fair sort of telescope for one that wasn’t very big,” said Uncle Silas. “I rigged it up in the attic by the high north window and had it fixt so it would swing around easy. I took a deal of satisfaction in looking through it, the sky seemed so wide and full of wonders; so when Hester was here I thought I’d give her the pleasure, too.

“She stayed a long time up-stairs and seemed to be enjoying it. When she came down I asked her if she’d discovered anything new.

“‘Yes,’ she says; ‘why, it made everybody’s house seem so near that I seemed to be right beside ’em, and I found out what John Pritchard’s folks are doin’ in their out-kitchens. I’ve wondered what they had a light there for night after night, and I just turned the glass on their windows. They are cuttin’ apples to dry—folks as rich as them cuttin’ apples!’

“And actually that was all the woman had seen! With the whole heavens before her to study, she had spent her time prying into the affairs of her neighbors! And there are lots more like her—with and without telescopes.”—Christian Endeavor World.

(2559)

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The necessity of having right proportion between the place and the occasion is illustrated by the following:

The only musical sounds which really master vast spaces like the Albert Hall are those of a mighty organ or an immense chorus.

The Handel Festival choruses are fairly proportioned to the Crystal Palace, but on one occasion, when a terrific thunder-storm burst over Sydenham in the middle of “Israel in Egypt,” every one beneath that crystal dome felt that, acoustically, the peal of thunder was very superior to the whole power of the chorus, because the relation between the space to be filled and the volume of sound required to fill it was in better proportion.—H. R. Haweis, “My Musical Memories.”

(2560)

Proportion Distorted by Fatigue—See [Fatigue].

Proportion, Sense of—See [Fatigue].

PROPRIETY

During the battle of Waterloo a British artillery officer rode up to the Duke of Wellington and said, “Your Grace, I have a distinct view of Napoleon, attended by his staff; my guns are well pointed in that direction; shall I open fire?” The duke replied, “Certainly not; I will not allow it; it is not the business of commanders to fire upon each other.”—Edward Cotton, “A Voice from Waterloo.”

(2561)

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The home is where the missionary spends most of the time during the first year. A native of the country to which you go comes in to call, and the first thing noticed may be pictures upon your walls. They may or may not violate the sense of propriety of your caller, but in general one may say that statues, or any pictures approaching the nude, are decidedly out of taste. I recall coming in one Sunday and finding Mrs. Beach hard at work. She was painting, and as we had been brought up as Presbyterians, I was surprized to see her working on Sunday. “Well,” she said, “I must go out to my Sunday-school, and the last time I went they struck. I have been teaching the story of Joseph, and these cartoons of the Religious Tract Society of London represent him with bare calves, and the women simply will not endure them. I have nothing but water-color paints, and I have painted Chinese trousers five times on these legs, and they are bare yet.” We used to have picture-cards sent out by Sunday-school children to help us on in our work. We had to censor those picture-cards, there is no question about that. You can not use every kind of picture-card and preach a pure gospel.—H. P. Beach, “Volunteer Student Movement,” 1906.

(2562)

See [Religious Infractions of Propriety].

Propriety a Matter of Religion—See [Religious Infractions of Propriety].

Propriety and Taste Violated—See [Missionaries’ Mistakes].

Propriety, Lack of—See [Accommodation].

PROPRIETY, OBSERVING RULES OF

Leaving the home (in China), you go out into the street, and what is there that first offends your friends—those whom you have come to help? Very possibly it is your dress. You do not have enough of it oftentimes. One function of garments is to conceal the form, and many modes of dress do not conceal but simply reveal it. While we are to remember this, going to the other extreme and walking the streets in bathrobe coats is also questionable. Anything approaching decolleté would weaken a woman’s influence, even if she appeared thus only on a state occasion.

Over against this lack of dress is too much dress, which is quite as offensive. I saw the other day a photograph of Governor Tuan, one of the two commissioners who have just been visiting the United States. He sat in his yamen surrounded by some missionaries and other foreigners living in the governor’s province. It was a very beautiful picture, but one of the missionaries in the group, who was stylishly drest, had a cane—a dapper little pipe-stem cane in China! To Governor Tuan there could be no rational explanation of that sort of thing. If it had been a staff and the missionary had been lame, it would have been appropriate. But he was not lame, no beggars were allowed in the governor’s yamen, there were no dogs to bite him, and why in the world should this man bring a cane? It was just as if native Australians were being received by President Roosevelt and had brought with them boomerangs. Boomerangs have their place, but not in the White House; and to swing a cane causes trouble for China missionaries. Glasses are a necessity, but the missionary to the Chinese unconsciously offends high officials by his glasses, especially if he does not remove them when greeting the official. Many, even of the older missionaries, do not know such a fact as that.—H. P. Beach, “Student Volunteer Movement,” 1906.

(2563)

Prosperity and Temperance—See [Prohibition].

PROSPERITY AS AN ADVERTISEMENT

The United States Immigration Commission informs the American Congress that savings of immigrants to the amount of $275,000,000 are annually sent abroad to be used in foreign countries, and the commission says in its report: “The sum is sent abroad for the purpose of supporting families in foreign countries, for bringing other immigrants to the United States, for the payment of debts or for savings and investment in the countries from which the immigrants come.”

More than 2,300,000 persons throughout the United States are doing an unregulated banking business, handling yearly hundreds of millions of dollars, their customers being found wholly among immigrant laborers who for the most part do not speak English.

The money actually sent abroad is thus distributed according to countries: Italy, $85,000,000; Austria-Hungary, $75,000,000; Russia, including Finland, $25,000,000; Great Britain, $25,000,000; Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, $25,000,000; Germany, $15,000,000; Greece, $5,000,000; the Balkan States, $5,000,000; Japan, $5,000,000; China, $5,000,000; all other countries, $5,000,000.

Even reducing the amount estimated as being too large, there must be an immense outflow of money from the United States in the direction indicated, and it helps explain why there is an excess of commodity exports, averaging $400,000,000 annually, over imports, to settle the invisible indebtedness of the country abroad.

The great outflow of cash sent home by immigrants serves one useful purpose: it advertises the general prosperity of the great republic, and so helps keep up the volume of emigration from Europe. A growing country requires people as well as capital.

It has been estimated that every able-bodied immigrant is worth to the country $5,000; the Northern republic is receiving nearly a million immigrants annually, and allowing that a fifth part are workers of sound physique the gain to the United States is $1,000,000,000, gold, value a year.—Mexican Herald.

(2564)

PROSPERITY, PERIL OF

The following extract points a needed caution to those who are blest with prosperity:

Some time ago we saw a tree that had been struck by lightning and actually rent asunder. It had been blown open as perfectly as if the pith of the tree had been lined with gunpowder and touched off. The reason for this is easily explained. The tree had been struck by lightning before it had been wet by the storm. Consequently the lightning bolt followed the line of least resistance, which was the damp wood under the bark. The electric current heated the sap, and, converting it so quickly into steam, the explosion was the result.

How very like that tree are a great many people! Prosperity is the electric current. Coming upon them so suddenly, as is so often the case, they are unable to bear the pressure of elevation and honor and distinction, and are rent asunder with a crash. They “go down” with a thud.

As the forest tree that has been struck by the killing bolt drops only to rot, so does the man who has been overelated by prosperity.

(2565)

PROTECTION

One of the artizan class of Manchester was the owner of a very pretty black spaniel dog. The little thing followed him and nestled to his side as a child might, and by many endearing ways evinced the winsomeness of its disposition. It happened that the man was worse for drink, became irritated by the affectionate attentions of his dog and vowed he would throw her into the lion’s den in Manchester; went there for the purpose, and reaching out, took up the little fawning thing and flung her through the bars of the cage. The spectators expected that the lion with one muscular movement of its paw would stun and kill it, but the dog fawned up to the lion and the lion turned and licked her. They became good friends, and when presently the lion’s food was brought, the dog even snarled at her new protector and began to partake first, keeping the lord of creation waiting. So it went on for some weeks. The papers were full of it; crowds came to see. The news came to the man; he repented of his rash act; he went to the gardens and said to the keeper, “I want my dog.” The keeper said, “I don’t dare to attempt to bring your dog out of the den.” “Oh,” the man said, “of course I must have it.” “Well,” said the keeper, “if you want it, you must get it yourself.” But when he called to the dog, the dog slunk closer to her new protector, and when presently he tried to exert force, the lion gave such an ominous growl that the man shrank back. From that moment the lion and the dog lived together, and any attempt made to extricate the dog was met instantly by the low growl of the lion.

You have been too long the slave of lusts, of passion, of pride, of sin. I want you to get under the covert of the Lion of the tribe of Judah, and then if your old enemy shall endeavor to induce you and get you back, remember that the Lion of the tribe of Judah is going to interpose between you and your old master.—F. B. Meyer.

(2566)

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There are ways of escaping evil influences, just as there are of protecting oneself from sunstroke:

Attention is called in the New York Medical Journal to the fact that sunstroke is due to the chemical, and not to the heat rays, as generally supposed. The writer’s argument is based on “the fact that no one ever gets heat-stroke from exposure to a dark source of heat, and when there is an absence of chemical rays. The actinic rays are the dangerous ones. They will pass through anything except an interposed color filter. It is therefore necessary, in order to ward off sunstroke, to treat the body as a photographer treats his plates, and surround it with red or yellow. He mentions the case of an Egyptian army officer, who had had several sunstrokes, and avoided further difficulty of the kind during five years’ exposure by lining his helmet and coat with yellow. (Text.)

(2567)

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The queer Chinese change pigeons into song-birds by fastening whistles to their breasts. The wind of their flight then causes a weird and plaintive music that is seldom silenced in the pigeon-haunted cities of Peking and Canton. The Belgians, great pigeon-fliers, fasten whistles beneath the wings of valuable racing carriers, claiming that the shrill noise is a sure protection against hawks and other birds of prey. As a similar protection, reeds, emitting an odd wailing sound, are fixt to the tail-feathers of the dispatch-bearing pigeons of the German army.

Hannibal’s army withdrew from Rome, it is said, at the sound of a tumultuous laughter inside the walls. Luther said: “The devil hates music.” (Text.)

(2568)

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Paul speaks of a breast-plate even more secure than that mentioned in the extract:

The authors who tell us of the conquests of Cortez say that to protect his soldiers from the arrows of the Mexicans, which could pierce the cuirasses of hammered iron that they wore, he replaced these with thick breast-plates of wool prest between two layers of linen. In fact, he practically covered his men with mattresses, and they were thus enabled to defy the arrows and lances of the Mexicans. (Text.)—Dr. Battandier, Cosmos.

(2569)

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The birds were the red- and blue-headed parrakeets. When frightened they always flew to a curious tree which, tho bare of leaves, was sparsely covered with an odd-looking, long, and four-sided fruit of a green color. Under such circumstances they alighted all together, and unlike their usual custom of perching in pairs, they scattered all over the tree, stood very upright, and remained motionless. From a distance of fifty feet it was impossible to distinguish parrakeet from fruit, so close was the resemblance. A hawk dashed down once and carried away a bird, but the others remained as still as if they were inanimate fruit. This silent trust in the protective resemblance of the green fruit was most remarkable, when we remembered the frantic shrieks which these birds always set up at the approach of danger, when they happened to be caught away from one of these parrot-fruit trees.—Olive Thorne Miller, “The Bird Our Brother.”

(2570)

See [Nature’s Protection].

---

In the tropics of Mexico, where torrential rains fall a part of each year, raincoats are a very necessary part of man’s apparel. Owing to the intense heat which prevails in the summer season, the ordinary rubber raincoat can not be worn. A rain-proof coat is made from native grasses. The grasses are woven close together, and it is impossible for the rain to beat through them, no matter how hard the storm may be. It would be the height of folly for a man in that part of Mexico to fail in providing himself with this most necessary part of his raiment. “The fiery darts of the wicked one” may be shed by a certain breast-plate mentioned by Paul.

(2571)

PROTECTION, UNSEEN

A butterfly was once seen behind a window-pane fluttering in fear of a sparrow outside that was pecking at it in an attempt to get at its victim, which, after all, was beyond the sparrow’s reach.

That window-pane was an unseen protector. (Text.)

(2572)

Protective Coloration—See [Nature’s Protection].

Protective Occupations—See [Disease, Exemption from].

PROVIDENTIAL INTERPOSITION

I had an experience a while ago on a Chautauqua platform that I never shall forget.

It was a very large assembly, and it was held in a place where I had never been before, and where I had no old friends on hand to serve as “claqueurs.” I discovered very soon after beginning my lecture that for some unaccountable reason I was not en rapport with my audience, who listened to me, as it were, out of the corners of their eyes and with half-averted faces.

I felt instinctively that that lecture was foredoomed to failure unless in some way Providence interposed for my deliverance.

Well, Providence did; for presently a big dog entered the auditorium, and gazed wistfully about him. Then, facing the platform and seeing me hard at work, he compassionately concluded to come up and help me. And on he came, straight up the aisle, and climbed the platform steps, while everybody watched him.

He walked around me, sized me up, and then deliberately planted himself in front of me, sat down, and pricked up his ears like a pulpit committee listening to a candidate.

I ceased addressing the audience, and, turning to the dog, I said: “I am delighted to welcome you to this platform. I have been anxiously waiting for you, and had begun to fear that you would not be here. You have come to the kingdom for just this time, and I am happy to discover that in this large and evidently critical audience I have at last found one hearer who has sense enough to appreciate a good thing when he hears it.”

The dog seemed to understand that he was addrest; and so he howled, and then the people howled, and I went on howling. The dog went his way without ever knowing that he saved my life that day.—P. S. Henson, Christian Endeavor World.

(2573)

Providential Rescue—See [Kongo Pioneer Missionary Work].

Providing Against Disaster—See [Control of Circumstances].

Providing for Great Men—See [Great Men Should be Provided for].

PROVIDENCE

Men who know all the risks attending an unguided machine going eighty miles an hour will calmly tell you that a planetary system moving thousands of times as fast needs no guidance of God.

When these racing motor cars reach a speed of eighty miles an hour, they must drive themselves, for no human brain is capable of dealing with all the emergencies that may arise should that rate be maintained for any period worth speaking of. The human animal is not designed to travel eighty miles an hour. Neither the human brain nor the human eye can keep pace with it. The brain declines to respond to the tax upon it; so the big racing-car dashes on minus the brain by which it is supposed to be controlled, and the unexpected obstruction is smashed up, or the car is, before the mental activities come into play.—Forbes Winslow, The Automobile Magazine.

(2574)

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Grant planned, but a power unseen disposed. It was his firm purpose not to remain in the army. He could not warm up to the profession of arms. He saw nothing in it for one of his temperament and bent of mind. So he resolved to prepare himself for the chair of mathematics in some college, preferably a professorship in the military academy. He wrote a letter to Professor Church, at West Point, asking to become his assistant when the next detail should be made. The answer was satisfactory, and the lieutenant was hopeful. He began to review his West Point course, but this was as far as he ever got toward the goal of his ambition. As the stars in their courses fought against Sisera, so the course of events defeated all his cherished plans to escape an army life. The trouble with Mexico began before Professor Church saw an opportunity to give the lieutenant an assistant professorship, and his hope of ever being ordered to the academy vanished forever.—Nicholas Smith, “Grant, the Man of Mystery.”

(2575)

See [Faith and Support].

PROVIDENCE, DIVINE

Wordsworth expresses the thought of an infinite and beneficent power guiding the affairs of men in the following lines:

One adequate support

For the calamities of mortal life

Exists—one only; an assured belief

That the procession of our fate, howe’er

Sad or disturbed, is ordered by a Being

Of infinite benevolence and power

Whose everlasting purposes embrace

All accidents, converting them to good.

(2576)

Providence, Unswerving—See [Steadiness of Providence].

PROVINCIALISM

Provincialism is local pride unduly inflated. It is the temper that is ready to hail as a Swan of Avon any local gosling who has taught himself to make an unnatural use of his own quills. It is always tempting us to stand on tiptoe to proclaim our own superiority. It prevents our seeing ourselves in proper proportion to the rest of the world. It leads to the preparation of school manuals in which the threescore years and ten of American literature are made equal in importance to the thousand years of literature produced in Great Britain. It tends to render a modest writer, like Longfellow, ridiculous by comparing him implicitly with the half-dozen world poets. In the final resort, no doubt, every people must be the judge of its own authors; but before that final judgment is rendered every people consults the precedents, and measures its own local favorites by the cosmopolitan and eternal standards.—Brander Matthews.

(2577)

PROVOCATION, SILENCE UNDER

I have read somewhere the following arrangement for avoiding quarrels: “You see, sir,” said an old man, speaking of a couple who lived in perfect harmony in his neighborhood, “they’d agreed between themselves that whenever he came home a little contrary and out of temper, he wore his hat on the back of his head, and then she never said a word; and if she came in a little cross and crooked, she threw her shawl over her left shoulder, and then he never said a word.” As it takes two to make a quarrel, either the husband or the wife might often prevent one by stepping out of the room at the nick of time; by endeavoring to divert attention and conversation from the burning question; by breathing an instantaneous prayer to God for calmness before making any reply; in a word, by learning to put in practise on certain occasions the science of silence. Robert Burton tells of a woman who, hearing one of her “gossips” complain of her husband’s impatience, told her an excellent remedy for it. She gave her a glass of water which, when he brawled, she should hold still in her mouth. She did so two or three times with great success, and, at length, seeing her neighbor, she thanked her for it, and asked to know the ingredients. She told her that it was “fair water” and nothing more; for it was not the water, but her silence which performed the cure. (Text.)—J. E. Hardy, The Quiver.

(2578)

Pruning—See [Ignorance, The Cost of]; [Soul Surgery].

PRUNING TO DESTROY

Said Luther: “Sin is like the beard, the oftener it is cut off, the more shaving seems to be necessary!”

Perennial weeds continue to live and bear seeds from year to year. Some weeds of this class, as the quack-grass, sow-thistle, and the wild morning-glory, multiply from buds on underground parts as well as by seeds. They are the hardest of all to destroy. As the leaves manufacture the food that nourishes roots, by preventing the leaves from growing, the roots will starve—the surest way to kill perennial weeds, tho often hard to carry out. (Text.)

(2579)

Psychical Activity—See [Multiple Consciousness].

Psychology in Penology—See [Children, Saving].

Psychology of Suggestion—See [Negative Teaching].

PUBLIC SPEAKING

A greenhorn, who had never seen a great banquet, came to the city, and, looking through the door, said to his friends who were showing him the sights: “Who are those gentlemen who are eating so heartily?” The answer was: “They are the men who pay for the dinner.” “And who are those gentlemen up there on the elevation looking so pale and frightened and eating nothing?” “Oh,” said his friend, “those are the fellows who make the speeches.”—T. De Witt Talmage.

(2580)

PUBLICITY

A woman took a pair of gloves to Wanamaker’s not long ago, insisting that she bought them there, notwithstanding that the head of the department told her the house never carried that make of gloves. She insisted, however, and the gloves were taken and she was given the money for them. The manager says that he knew the woman was telling an untruth, but that he did not want to quarrel with her, and he regarded the transaction as a very good advertisement for the house, because she would probably many times tell her friends how she beat Wanamaker’s, and that this publicity would be worth more than the gloves.—Success Magazine.

(2581)

Pulpit Raving—See [Heads, Losing].

PUNCTILIOUSNESS

Concerning whistling on Sunday in Scotland, two men, who had done a house-breaking job on Saturday night, went on Sunday morning into a wood to divide the plunder. One of them began to whistle over the sharing out when his companion said, with horror: “Hoot, mon, I would no have come out wi’ ye if I had known you would whustle on the Sawbath.” (Text.)

(2582)

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When Justice Lovell, a Welsh judge, was traveling over the sands at Beaumaris, while going his circuit about 1730, he was overtaken at night by the tide, and the coach stuck in a quicksand. The water rose in the coach, to the horror of the registrar and other officers, who crept out of the windows and scrambled on the top behind the coach-box. They urged his lordship to do the same, but with great dignity and gravity he sat till the water rose to his lips, and then he was just able to exclaim, “I will follow your counsel if you can quote to me any precedent for a judge mounting on a coach-box.” No “authority” could be produced, owing to the darkness of the night! (Text.)—Croake James, “Curiosities of Law and Lawyers.”

(2583)

PUNCTILIOUSNESS IN LITTLE THINGS

The late Edmund Clarence Stedman told of his experiences as a clerk in the office of the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad:

Finding his cash short one day, to the extent of two cents, Stedman took the money out of his pocket and dropt it into the till. After he had left the employment of the company he met in the street one day the treasurer of the company, who asked him whether his cash account was right every time while he was with the company. When the treasurer’s attention was called to the exception he exclaimed, “Confound you, Stedman, we have had the whole force of the office at work for weeks trying to find that two cents.”

(2584)

PUNCTUALITY

A New York motorman is the subject of the following news item in a daily paper:

For the first time in thirty years Robert Willoughby failed to wake up this morning when his thirty clocks, simultaneously setting off a series of gongs, gave their customary alarms at six o’clock. He had died some time during the night of Bright’s disease.

Willoughby was fifty-seven years old and had been employed as a motorman by the Third Avenue Elevated Railway. He was the most punctual employee in the service. No matter what the weather was, Willoughby was never late.

The secret of his punctuality came to light when his room was inspected to-day. Ranged round his bed were thirty clocks of different sizes and makes. All struck the same hour at the same time.

(2585)

Punishment—See [Crime Exposed].

Punishment Escaped—See [Discipline Evaded].

Punishment Fitting Offense—See [Patriotism, Lack of].

PUNISHMENT, FORMER SEVERITY OF

In the reign of Henry VIII, 72,000 thieves were hanged, being at the rate of 2,000 a year. In the reign of George III, twenty persons were executed on the same morning in London for stealing. In 1785, ninety-seven persons were executed in London for stealing from a shop to the value of five shillings or more. If the amount were less than five shillings the punishment was not capital.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century the punishment of death might be inflicted for more than two hundred crimes. These are some of the offenses that were punished with death: Picking a man’s pocket, taking a rabbit from a warren, stealing five shillings or more from a shop, cutting down a tree, catching and stealing a fish, personating a Greenwich pensioner, stealing a sheep or horse, harboring an offender against the revenue acts.

(2586)

Punishment in China—See [Crime Exposed].

Punishment of Sinners—See [Sinners and God].

PUNISHMENT, PROFITABLE

Oscar Wilde wrote:

I want to get to the point when I shall be able to say quite simply, and without affectation, that the two great turning-points in my life were when my father sent me to Oxford, and when society sent me to prison. I will not say that prison is the best thing that could have happened to me; for that phrase would savor of too great bitterness toward myself. I would sooner say or hear it said of me that I was so typical a child of my age that, in my perversity and for that perversity’s sake, I turned the good things of my life to evil, and the evil things of my life to good.

And if I then am not ashamed of my punishment, as I hope not to be, I shall be able to think, and walk, and live with freedom.

In the very fact that people will recognize me wherever I go, and know all about my life, as far as its follies go, I can discern something good for me. It will force on me the necessity of again asserting myself as an artist, and as soon as I possibly can. If I can produce only one beautiful work of art I shall be able to rob malice of its venom, and cowardice of its sneer, and to pluck out the tongue of scorn by the roots. (Text.)

(2587)

PUPILS OF CHRIST

It is customary for students who have been attending colleges and academies to return home during the summer vacation or during the Christmas or Easter holidays, when they will recount to their father their trials and triumphs in the field of literature, and express to him their gratitude for the education they receive. They will gladly listen to his counsel, and will sit once more with joy at the family table.

We all are, or we ought to be, pupils of Christ, preparing ourselves during this life of probation to receive a diploma of sanctity which will admit us to the kingdom of heaven.—Cardinal Gibbons.

(2588)

PURIFICATION

Moral life is often purified by storms, as the air by a rainy day:

The health-giving properties of rain are not appreciated by the general public. Rain is an essential to physical vigor in localities that have any extensive population. Man and his occupations load the air with countless and unclassified impurities. The generous, kindly rain absorbs them, even as a washerwoman extracts the dirt from soiled clothes. The ammoniacal exhalations, the gases resultant from combustion and decay, are all quietly absorbed by a brisk shower. People talk about a “dry climate,” but it is a snare and a delusion. There is nothing in it. A very dry climate will never support a large population, for it would soon become so poisoned that it would be fatal to the human race. A scattering few might inhabit it, but not the multitude.—Colliery Guardian.

(2589)

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The life of God, if allowed to sweep through the earth unhindered, would purify man’s life, as ocean waves, described below, purify the lands they reach:

The air of the sea, taken at a great distance from land, or even on the shore and in ports when the wind blows from the open sea, is in an almost perfect state of purity. Near continents the land winds drive before them an atmosphere always impure, but at 100 kilometers from the coasts this impurity has disappeared. The sea rapidly purifies the pestilential atmosphere of continents; hence every expanse of water of a certain breadth becomes an absolute obstacle to the propagation of epidemics. Marine atmospheres driven upon land purify sensibly the air of the regions which they traverse; this purification can be recognized as far as Paris. The sea is the tomb of molds and of aerial schizophytes.—Public Opinion.

(2590)

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Longfellow pictures life as a wave hastening to cleanse itself in the ocean:

Whither, thou turbid wave?

Whither with so much haste,

As if a thief wert thou?

I am the Wave of Life

Stained with my margin’s dust;

From the struggle and the strife

Of the narrow stream I fly

To the sea’s immensity,

To wash from me the slime

Of the muddy banks of time.

(2591)

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God uses many unseen agencies to offset the moral poisons of the universe:

“A device has been perfected by the chemist of the mechanical department of the Erie Railroad,” says The Railway and Engineering Review (Chicago), “by which all the cars on the Chicago limited train are thoroughly sterilized at Jersey City after each round trip between Jersey City and Chicago, a run of about 2,000 miles. Experiments looking to this method of cleaning cars so as to kill all disease germs and destroy all bad odors have been in progress for some time. A deodorizing apparatus has also been devised which is placed under the seats in the cars, out of sight of passengers, and gives off an odorless gas, which combines with the stale tobacco-smoke or other offensive odors which may accumulate in the cars, and serves to completely nullify them. This treatment has been so effective that it is expected it will be extended to all the passenger cars in the Erie service.”

(2592)

See [Evil, Purging from].

PURIFICATION BY PRESSURE

The man in narrow circumstances, or prest severely with many cares may be purified by such pressure like the water described in this extract:

The best water is that which has gone deepest in the earth, where there is the tightest pressure, atmospheric and telluric. Continued and intensified filtration has refined it; but it is here, and not in its open-air exposure, before or after, that the water gets effective oxidation. The remarkable fact that water absorbs oxygen in something like a geometrical ratio to the increase of pressure, coupled with the other equally important fact that under a certain pressure and temperature organic germs cease to exist; both these conditions, protracted for the water by a long detention in the depths of the earth, secure the rarest refinement and also vitalization of the element.—The Sanitary Era.

(2593)

PURITANISM, POETRY OF

How is it, then, that out of the hard soil of the Puritan thought and character, out of the sterile rocks of the New England conscience, have sprung flowers of poetry? From those songless beginnings have burst, in later generations, melodies that charm and uplift our land—now a deep organ peal filling the air with music, now a trumpet blast thrilling the blood of patriotism, now a drum-beat to which duty delights to march, now a joyous fantasy of the violin bringing smiles to the lips, now the soft vibrations of the harp that fill the eyes with tears. What is it in the Puritan heritage, externally so bare and cold, that makes it intrinsically so poetic and inspired?—Samuel A. Eliot.

(2594)

PURITY

A pastor visiting in the home of a laundress exprest admiration of the whiteness of the linen hung out upon the lines. They gleamed in beautiful purity as compared with the dark slates on the roof of the house behind them. But presently snow fell and quickly covered the roofs and streets with an absolutely unsullied mantle, and now the linen clothes seemed actually to have lost all their whiteness. The preacher said to the laundress that the clothes did not look anything like so white as before. She replied, “Ah, sir, the clothes are just as white as they were, but what can stand against God Almighty’s white?”

It is a fact that the whitest sheet of paper looks yellow and dingy when placed on freshly fallen snow. So looks the morality of ordinary man beside the sinlessness of Jesus. (Text.)

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The ermine, whose fur is so famed for its perfect whiteness, has been taken as the emblem of the integrity and incorruptibility that should characterize the judiciary. Thus a judge is spoken of as wearing the ermine. The dainty little creature makes it the business of its life to keep clean. So strong is this instinct that it will suffer capture or welcome death rather than defilement. Knowing this, trappers and others seeking its fur will smear the paths it might take to escape, and it keeps itself unspotted, tho it yields its life. (Text.)

(2596)

See [Associations Mold Men].

PURITY OF ASSOCIATIONS

Most people would like to be reckoned with the good and true of earth, but they often overlook the necessity of a change in their moral conditions before that which they hope for can come to pass. A mother, speaking on this point, says:

As a companion for my children there was brought into the family a little lamb, to which, in its helplessness, our hearts went out in love. We were about to take it in our arms to love and cherish when we discovered it was alive with what are commonly called “ticks.” Horrified, I ordered the lamb tied to a tree, and forbade the children, or any one, in fact, to go near it until it could be cleansed. I stood with my children on the piazza, watching it with mingled emotions. Its pathetic bleatings made us long to take it in our arms and caress it, “mother” it, in its separation and loneliness. But I and my children were clean. The lamb was not. Far from being clean, it was alive with filth. The standard of approach to me, as to all cleanly people, was cleanliness. Much as we yearned over the lamb and longed to care for it, until purified with a cleansing wash, communication could not be established. When the conditions were fulfilled, children and lamb, the latter white as newly-fallen snow, “clean every whit,” played together in happy companionship. (Text.)

(2597)

PURPOSE

The man without a purpose is like a ship without a rudder; a waif, a nothing, no man. Have a purpose in life, if it is only to kill and divide and sell oxen well, but have a purpose; and having it, throw such strength of mind and muscle into your work as God has given you.—Thomas Carlyle.

(2598)

See [Resoluteness].

PURPOSE DISCERNED

A stone-mason may be a mere machine for breaking rock or he may be an architect’s assistant. It all depends on his point of view. If he is absolutely ignorant of the purpose of the stone which he hammers he will be the machine. But if he has even a remote idea that his block of stone is going to be set somewhere between the base line and the finial of a cathedral of a thousand years his work graduates into the artistic. The knowledge that the earnest expectation of the cathedral waits for his chunk of stone makes that stone mean something more than stone to him.—T. C. McClelland.

(2599)

Purpose of God—See [Plans, Human, Transcended].

Purpose, Organic—See [Design of God].

Puzzling, Things that are—See [Mystery in Religion].