Cyclopedia of illustrations for public speakers

by Unknown

PREFACE

In estimating the prospectus of this work a well-known clergyman exprest the judgment that “A book of fresh illustrations should be made as often, at least, as once in ten years.” A somewhat extensive inquiry, to which many responses were received, has convinced the editors and publishers that a liberal use is made of collections of illustrations, by clergymen and other public speakers, and that to meet their requirements a new collection at this time would be welcomed by those whose functions and duties involve public speaking, teaching and preaching.

Paxton Hood’s definitive epigram, “Illustrations are windows,” has often been repeated in varied forms. William Morely Punshon states the relation of the illustration to the truth it is designed to serve when he says, “The illustration is but the handmaid in the palace, while truth is the queen upon the throne.” This is to affirm under a figure of speech that every good illustration should take a place of service, and is valuable only as it assists the understanding in grasping the truth more easily and apprehending it more vividly.

An illustration is regarded as something more than a brief figure of speech, as a simile or a metaphor, tho these may be often expanded to the scope and value of illustration proper. An illustration, as found in this work, whether narrative, fact or series of facts, an incident, anecdote, story, experience, or description, is intended to be such as may be used to make clear the truth or principle indicated in the title.

Inasmuch as the same story, incident or array of facts frequently may be found to suggest more than one thought, principle or truth, a system of cross-references has been used referring under some given head to other titles: or, other titles are inserted separately, with which the illustration may be used, with a cross-reference to the illustration. It is hoped that this system of cross-references may prove an acceptable and valuable feature of the book.

As the title implies, this collection is intended to be serviceable to all public speakers. It has not been the intention either to include or to exclude illustrations because they are specifically religious. We are all coming to recognize that the sacredness or the secularity of anything and everything, is far more a matter of attitude of mind in men than in any specific quality in things themselves. Whether an illustration prove to be secular or sacred is to be determined probably by the use made of it, the purpose which it serves, and the spirit in which it is employed.

It will be noted that here and there in the book there have been included entries that, on the face of them, do not seem to be in the strictest sense illustrations. We think, however, that careful examination will show even these to be susceptible of illustrative uses. Sometimes an array of facts, or a condensed table of statistics, may furnish exemplary instances and throw needed light on a topic.

In inserting poetry, we have tried to adhere to the principle that only poetry that constitutes a real illustration and is quotable, should find place in this work. A poem in its entirety has rarely been used; in most cases only such verses appear as seem to apply to the truth under illustration. The aim, farther, has been to include only such poetry as seemed to us to have true poetical merit. Sometimes this has meant only a pathetic or witty turn of the verse, or a flash of genuine humor, or the metrical illumination of a deep or important truth. In considering this kind of illustration, even tho verse brought to our attention might seem to furnish an apt illustration, if it did not appear to possess poetical merit also, it has been excluded.

The intention of the editors, through the years required to bring this collection together, has been to present a book of newly-prepared illustrations that, for the variety it includes, would not soon be surpassed. They represent research that has extended through hundreds of different publications, books, magazines, papers, of almost every class and kind. The result is a sifted residue, after inspection of a much greater number that have been excluded. It may be doubted if any similar work represents an equal amount of painstaking labor. No illustration has been included without the agreement of at least two competent examiners upon its availability.

The editors, however, are quite well aware that the value and utility of such a work and of the particular illustrations, will be different with different individuals, according to the illimitable differences of view-point, of taste, and of judgment that exist in any given circle of readers. The illustrations from nature will be more welcome to some, those from personal experience to others, and to still others, the extracts from science, or from common life, or from religious activities and experience will appeal more strongly. Some extracts supply the element of humor, which, rightly used, is a valuable asset in public address. The editors feel confident that the variety here provided will meet the different needs and tastes of the readers of this volume.

The alphabetical order of arrangement has seemed to make unnecessary any topical or word indexes. Any one desiring to examine all the illustrations closely applicable to any given topic, may do so conveniently by means of the cross-references. For instance, under “Missions” will be found cross-references to such illustrations, entered under other titles, as apply also to missions.

For the special use of preachers, many of the illustrations have a reference to a Scripture text, and two text indexes are provided. One of these is in the order of the Biblical books, chapters and verses; by turning to which the number of the illustration with which each text belongs will guide to the alphabetical place where the illustration occurs. This index will at once show whether a given text is or is not directly illustrated in the volume. The other text-index, arranged in the order of the topics, includes the text itself, in whole or in part, so that in turning from a text reference in the body of the book to this index, one can determine immediately whether the text promises to be useful in connection with the topic.

The illustrations will be found to have a secondary value in educational directions. A large amount of useful information is conveyed in compact paragraphic form. Facts from almost every department of human knowledge are to be found in these pages. Science has furnished many, including habits and doings of beasts and birds, curious and wonderful feats of surgery; ways and wonders of plant life; useful and valuable data from astronomy; the work of inventors, explorers and discoverers, etc., etc. From history and geography have been gleaned many important, curious, interesting incidents, facts, and sayings. From common and current life there will be found hundreds of useful and usable things worthy of being remembered. Literature has yielded a goodly store of her treasures. The religious life, especially as exprest in missionary work, is represented in numerous paragraphs. In short, merely as a store of useful information, this work should prove valuable.

Unusual care has been taken to make this work accurate. It is apparent without discussion that a public speaker does not wish to use, and ought not to use, even by way of illustration, material that is unreliable in any facts cited, or inaccurate in any statement made. Wherever there has been any doubt as to facts, authorities, or statements, the rule has been to exclude everything subject to such doubt.

This effort at accuracy has led to the practise of citing the source of each extract, wherever it could be ascertained. The occasional exceptions to this have been cases where the matter was a generally circulated piece of news or some extract wherein, from the nature of the case, no question of accuracy or authorship could be involved. In addition to this, there are a few extracts, the sources of which we have been unable to trace.

It is intended that the topic heads shall cover about all the subjects which a preacher or public speaker would ever wish to discuss. But it should be said that these topics are not intended as titles for discourses. They are topics that may sometimes serve as titles, but that are primarily subjects or ideas rather than titles. They are intended to be fairly comprehensive of the range of ideas of the average speaker, and may often represent only a subhead or a passage in his discourse.

If it happens that the user of this book, coming upon these topic heads from new angles and view-points, should not at first deem them exactly descriptive or definitive of the extract with which they appear, it need only be said that such difference of instinct and judgment is inevitable to different men, and if more is seen in any extract than the editors saw, that will add nothing to the confest sense of their undoubted fallibility.

The manner in which such a work as this shall be used will be determined—and should be—by each user for himself. It may not be wholly irrelevant, however, to suggest that so far as the prose extracts are concerned, they are mostly susceptible of profitable paraphrasing and of every sort of manipulation that may fit them to the particular use desired. The chief profit in a book of illustration, doubtless, will be found, for every really vital user, far more in the suggestive values of the extracts than in the actual material furnished. Many of them are in themselves seeds and nuclei capable to be developed into a discourse. They should serve to set the mind working, provide the stimulus for new thought, and lead on to something far greater than they contain.

The editors have been assisted in the gathering of this collection by the staff of contributors whose names are given below, and whose valuable aid we take pleasure in acknowledging: The Rev. G. L. Diven; S. B. Dunn, D.D.; the Rev. William Durban (London); the Rev. Benjamin L. Herr; Mrs. Delavan L. Pierson; the Rev. David Williamson (London); Miss Z. Irene Davis. Editorial acknowledgment is extended also to Franklin Noble, D.D., for valuable suggestions, and to many clergymen who kindly responded to our request for criticism and comment upon the prospectus.

For permission to use extracts from copyrighted books, granted by publishers and authors, who, for the most part, have responded kindly to our requests, we desire to extend our thanks. Among those so responding are the following:

Felix Adler; H. R. Allenson, Ltd.; American Unitarian Association; D. Appleton & Company; The Arakelyan Press; The Arcadian Press; A. C. Armstrong & Son; Edward William Bok; Character Development League; Dodd, Mead & Company; Doubleday, Page & Company; James J. Doyle; Duffìeld & Company; E. P. Dutton & Company; Eaton & Mains; Paul Elder & Company; Ginn & Company; Gospel Publishing House; D. C. Heath & Company; Hodder & Stoughton; Henry Holt & Company; Houghton, Mifflin Company; J. B. Lippincott Company; Longmans, Green & Company; Lutheran Publication Society; The MacMillan Company; A. C. McClurg & Company; Morgan & Scott, Ltd.; Neale Publishing Company; The Pilgrim Press; G. P. Putnam’s Sons; Fleming H. Revell Company; Seeley & Company, Ltd., London; Sherman, French & Company; Small, Maynard & Company, Inc.; Smith, Elder & Company; Frederick A. Stokes Company; Student Volunteer Movement; Sunday-school Times Company; E. B. Treat & Company; University of Chicago Press; The Young Churchman Company; Young People’s Missionary Movement.

A great many of the illustrations have been taken from periodical literature, including monthly and weekly magazines and daily and weekly papers, both secular and religious. We desire to acknowledge our obligation to all these publications, some of which are here indicated:

Ainslee’s Magazine; Andover Review; Appleton’s Magazine; Atlantic Monthly; Art Amateur; Belford’s Magazine; Book Chat; Building; Cassell’s Family Magazine; Chamber’s Journal; Christian Statesman; Christian World Pulpit; Collier’s Weekly; Contemporary Review; Cornhill Magazine; Cosmopolitan; Country Life in America; Decorator and Furnisher; Electricity; Electrical Review; English Illustrated Magazine; Everybody’s Magazine; Forest and Stream; Fortnightly Review; Forward; Good Health; Grace and Truth; Hampton’s Magazine; Harper’s Bazar; Harper’s Magazine; Harper’s Weekly; Health; Home Magazine; Indoors and Out; Journal of Education; Judge’s Magazine; Leslie’s Weekly; Life; Lippincott’s Magazine; McClure’s Magazine; Machinery; Magazine of American History; Metropolitan Magazine; Missionary Review of the World; Munsey’s Magazine; National Geographic Magazine; National Monthly; New England Magazine; Nineteenth Century; North American Review; Open Court; Overland; Penn Monthly; Phrenological Journal; Popular Science Monthly; Pottery Gazette; Progress Magazine; Puck; Putnam’s Monthly; Reader Magazine; Review of Reviews; School Journal; Scribner’s Magazine; St. Nicholas; Strand Magazine; Success Magazine; Sunday-school Times; Sunset Magazine; System; Temple Bar; The American Journal of Theology; The American Magazine; The Argonaut; The Automobile Magazine; The Booklover’s Magazine; The Bookman; The Century Magazine; The Chautauquan; The Critic; The Delineator; The Epoch; The Forum; The Gentleman’s Magazine; The Independent; The Literary Digest; The Metropolitan; The Mid-Continent; The Monthly Review; The National Magazine; The Outlook; The Popular Science Monthly; The Quiver; The Reader; The Saturday Evening Post; The Scrap Book; The Statesman; The Sunday Magazine; The Survey; The Tennesseean; The World To-day; Washington Craftsman; Revue Scientifique; Wide Awake; Wide World Magazine; Woman’s Home Companion; World’s Work; Youth’s Companion.

Cyclopedia of Illustrations
For Public Speakers

ABBREVIATION

I remember a lesson in brevity I once received in a barber’s shop. An Irishman came in, and the unsteady gait with which he approached the chair showed that he had been imbibing of the produce of the still run by North Carolina moonshiners. He wanted his hair cut, and while the barber was getting him ready, went off into a drunken sleep. His head got bobbing from one side to the other, and at length the barber, in making a snip, cut off the lower part of his ear. The barber jumped about and howled, and a crowd of neighbors rushed in. Finally, the demonstration became so great that it began to attract the attention of the man in the chair, and he opened one eye and said, “Wh-wh-at’s the matther wid yez?” “Good Lord!” said the barber, “I’ve cut off the whole lower part of your ear.” “Have yez? Ah, thin, go on wid yer bizness—it was too long, anyhow!”—Horace Porter.

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ABDICATION

“Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.” If men who are obscure and quiet and tempted to envy the glory of kings they might profitably meditate on the speech that Shakespeare puts into the mouth of Richard II while he abandons his crown:

I give this heavy weight from off my head

And this unwieldy scepter from my hand,

The pride of kingly sway from out my heart;

With mine own tears I wash away my value,

With mine own hands I give away my crown,

With mine own tongue deny my sacred state,

With mine own breath release all duteous oaths.

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Aberration, Mental—See [Absent-mindedness].

Abhorrence, Instinctive—See [Antipathy, Instinctive].

ABILITIES

Lord Bacon says that “natural abilities are like natural plants that need pruning by study.” Conversely untrained talents are like wild plants that degenerate when left to themselves.

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Ability Commanding Trust—See [Confidence].

Ability, Determining—See [Worth, Estimating].

ABILITY, GAGE OF

Mr. Edmund Driggs, of Brooklyn, gives a motto that came into his life like an influence, and greatly helped him toward success. At the age of fifteen he left home to engage with an older brother in the freighting business on the Hudson River. The first duty he performed on the vessel was to go aloft to reef the pennant-halyards through the truck of the topmast, which was forty feet above the top of the mainmast, without any rigging attached thereto. When the sailing-master had arranged the halyards over his shoulder, with a running bowline under his right arm, he ordered him aloft. The new sailor looked at the sailing-master and then aloft, and then asked the question, “Did anybody ever do that?” “Yes, you fool,” was the answer. “Do you suppose that I would order you to do a thing that was never done before?” The young sailor replied, “If anybody ever did it, I can do it.” He did it. That maxim has been his watchword through life. Tho he is now over seventy years of age, he is still engaged in active business life, and whatever enterprise he undertakes the watchword still is, “If anybody ever did it, I can do it.” (Text.)—Wilbur F. Crafts, “Successful Men of To-day.”

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ABILITY, USELESS

Plutarch says that a traveler at Sparta, standing long upon one leg, said to a Lacedæmonian, “I do not believe you can do as much.” “True,” said he, “but a goose can.”

There are many who have abilities to do greater things who are content to boast of some accomplishment as useless as standing on one leg.

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Abnormality—See [Deformity].

ABSENT-MINDEDNESS

A Canadian farmer, noted for his absent-mindedness, went to town one day and transacted his business with the utmost precision. He started on his way home, however, with the firm conviction that he had forgotten something, but what it was he could not recall. As he neared home, the conviction increased, and three times he stopt his horse and went carefully through his pocketbook in a vain endeavor to discover what he had forgotten. In due course he reached home and was met by his daughter, who looked at him in surprize and exclaimed, “Why, father, where have you left mother?”—Leslie’s Weekly.

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There are many firm believers in the theory that most people are crazy at times, and facts seem to support their belief. The following will possibly remind a number of our readers of some incident in their experience, which at the time of its occurrence seemed to them most unaccountable:

A wise man will step backward off a porch or into a mud-puddle, a great philosopher will hunt for the spectacles that are in his hand or on his forehead, a hunter will sometimes shoot himself or his dog. A working girl had been feeding a great clothing knife for ten years. One day she watched the knife come down slowly upon her hand. Too late she woke out of her stupor with one hand gone. For a few seconds her mind had failed, and she sat by her machine a temporary lunatic and had watched the knife approach her own hand. A distinguished professor was teaching near a canal. Walking along one evening in summer, he walked as deliberately into the canal as he had been walking along the path a second before. He was brought to his senses by the water and mud and the absurdity of the situation. He had on a new suit of clothes and a new silk hat, but, tho the damage was thus great, he still laughs over the adventure. Our mail collectors find in the iron boxes along the streets all sorts of papers and articles which have been put in by some hand from whose motions the mind has become detached for a second. A glove, a pair of spectacles, a deed, a mortgage, a theater ticket, goes in, and on goes the person, holding on to the regular letter which should have been deposited. This is called absent-mindedness, but it is a brief lunacy.—Public Opinion.

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Absentees—See [Excuses].

Absolution—See [Forgiveness, Conditions of].

ABSORPTION

The Italian mothers get for nurses the most beautiful persons, because they believe that by constantly looking into such faces the infant will unconsciously take on some of the beauty of the nurse.

This may be a fiction; but we do know that where there is mutuality of interest and deep affection, persons thrown closely together, in the process of the years, take on traits each of the other.

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See [Beautiful Life, Secret of; Language, Formation of].

Absorption in One’s Art—See [Thoroughness].

ABSORPTION, MENTAL

The anecdote is a familiar one in the history of painting, of the artist employed upon the frescoes of a dome, who stept back to see from a better point of view the work which he had done, and became so absorbed in comparing the scenes which he had depicted with the forming idea as it lay in his mind, that still proceeding backward he had reached the edge of the lofty scaffolding, when a pupil, observing his instant peril, and afraid even to shout to him, rushed forward and marred the figures with his trowel, so calling back and saving the master. The mind, engrossed in its own operation, had forgotten the body, and was treating it as carelessly as the boy treats the chip which he tosses on the wave.—Richard S. Storrs.

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See [Assimilation].

ABSTAINERS LIVE LONG

An interesting investigation was conducted by the Associated Prohibition Press in April, 1909, as to the causes of death in the city of Chicago of all men who had reached the age of sixty years and over, and whose death was reported during that month. Every death reported in Chicago during this month of April was carefully investigated for the purpose of securing an accurate memorandum of the age, nationality, and cause of death.

Out of 155 men concerning whose deaths this data was obtained, it was found that 73 had been total abstainers, 75 moderate drinkers, and 4 were said to be heavy drinkers. The age ranged from 60 to 92 years.

On the basis of the facts secured in this investigation, the drinking men, by their use of alcoholic poison, shortened their lives nearly four years.

In the aggregate, therefore, by means of its subtle poison, alcoholic liquor helped to deprive these 79 victims of a total of more than 334 years of active life which their abstaining contemporaries had lived to enjoy.—“American Prohibition Yearbook.”

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Abstinence as an Example—See [Example].

ABSTINENCE, DIFFICULTY OF

There was a certain ancient colored gentleman who was addicted to the habit of excessive drink. When asked why he didn’t quit he replied:

“It’s dis here way, boss. Jus’ as long as I kin quit when I wants ter I ain’t in no danger. Jus’ as soon as I fin’ I kain’t quit I’s gwine t’ swar off.”

There are numbers of drinking men who keep right on because they think they can stop when they want to. They frequently find out too late that they can not quit.

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ABSURD NOTIONS

I stumbled upon an English book of etiquette the other day. In it I found this curious statement: “A gentleman may carry a book through the streets if it is not wrapt, but if it is done up in wrapping paper it becomes a parcel and must be carried by a servant.” The wrapping-paper makes a wonderful difference. And so absurd are the fashionable ideas of refinement and gentility.—Obadiah Oldschool, The Interior.

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ABSURDITY IN NOMENCLATURE

All who have seen the ancient maps of North Carolina will remember Win-gin-da-coa as its name. This was the first thing said by a savage to Raleigh’s men. In reply to the question, “What is the name of this country?” he answered, “Win-gin-da-coa.” It was afterward learned that the North Carolina aborigine said in this phrase, “Those are very fine clothes you have on.” And so North Carolina carried a fashion-plate label to unsuspecting readers.—Edward Eggleston.

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Abundance and Incompetency—See [Opportunities Unutilized].

Acceleration of Life—See [Fast Living].

Accident as a Minor Thing—See [Misfortune, Superiority to].

Accident—See [Loss and Profit].

ACCIDENTAL DISCOVERY

Argand, the inventor of the famous lamp which bears his name, had been experimenting for some time in trying to increase the light given out by his lamp, but all to no purpose. On a table before him one night lay an oil-flask which had accidentally got the bottom broken off, leaving a long-necked, funnel-shaped tube. This Argand took up carelessly from the table and placed—almost without thought, as he afterward related—over the flame. A brilliant white light was the magical result. It is needless to add that the hint was not lost by the experimenter, who proceeded to put his discovery into practical use by “inventing” the common glass lamp-chimney. Hundreds of discoveries which have been heralded to the world as the acme of human genius have been the result of merest accident—the auger, calico printing and vulcanization of rubber being among the number.—St. Louis Republic.

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See [Discovery, Accidental; Insulation].

ACCIDENTAL SUCCESS

Protogenes, the Greek painter, was an impatient man. In painting a picture of a tired, panting dog, he met with satisfactory success except that he failed in every attempt to imitate the foam that should have been seen on the dog’s mouth. He was so much provoked over it, that he seized the sponge with which he cleansed his brushes, and threw it against the picture with the intention of spoiling it. It happened to strike on the dog’s mouth, and produced, to the astonishment and delight of the painter, the very effect that he had labored so persistently to imitate.—Frank H. Stauffer, The Epoch.

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ACCIDENTS

Man’s increasing wisdom and growing regard for his fellow man will some day result in a better state of things than is here indicated:

According to an estimate made by Mr. Frederick L. Hoffman, of the Prudential Insurance Company, the annual rate of fatal accidents in American cities is between 80 and 85 in each 100,000. On a basis of 80,000,000 population, this would mean a yearly loss of about 65,000 lives. By the same authority it is calculated that 1,664,000 persons are badly injured every year, and that some 4,800,000 receive wounds of a less serious character. We have a yearly list of fatalities somewhere between 64,000 and 80,240, and of serious maimings of 1,600,000; whereas two great armies, employing all the enginery of warfare, could succeed in slaughtering only 62,112 human beings yearly. (Text.)

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ACCOMMODATION

According to a story told by Rev. J. Ed. Shaw, of Hammonton, N. J., a man should always adapt himself to local conditions if he wants to slip along without falling over his feet.

Some time ago, Mr. Shaw said, a little colored congregation over in Jersey invited a preacher friend of his to occupy their pulpit at the coming Sunday evening service, and the good dominie, wishing to encourage the colored brethren, readily complied.

Reaching the church where he was the only paleface present, the preacher delivered a sermon full of helping advice, made an eloquent prayer, and then announced that the service would be closed by singing the hymn, “Wash Me and I Shall Be Whiter Than Snow.” At this point one of the darksome congregation rose to his feet.

“Look heah, pahson,” said he impressively. “Yo’ will hab to ’scuse me, but I rise to a point ob ordah.”

“What is it?” asked the preacher, with large symptoms of surprize floating over his features.

“It am dis way,” replied the parishioner. “Yo’ hab ebidently made a mistake in de crowd. Dis am a cull’ed congregashun, an’ s’nce all de pump watah an’ sof’ soap in de county can’t make de words ob dat hymn come true, I jes’ wish dat yo’ would change her to some uddah tune.”—Philadelphia Evening Telegraph.

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ACCOMPLISHMENT

Among the influential public men who were wild in their unreasonable prejudice against Grant and cried aloud for his dismissal, was Col. Alexander K. McClure, of Philadelphia. He could not see how the President could sustain himself if he persisted in retaining Grant. So he went to Washington to counsel with Mr. Lincoln, and urge him in the name of the people to remove Grant without delay. I will let the Colonel tell in his own way the result of his visit to the President:

“I appealed to Lincoln for his own sake to remove Grant at once, and in giving my reasons for it I simply voiced the admittedly overwhelming protest from the loyal people of the land against Grant’s continuance in command.... When I had said everything that could be said from my standpoint, we lapsed into silence. Lincoln remained silent for what seemed a very long time. He then gathered himself up in his chair and said in a tone of earnestness that I shall never forget: ‘I can’t spare this man; he fights.’ That was all he said, but I knew that it was enough, and that Grant was safe in Lincoln’s hands against the countless hosts of enemies.”—Col. Nicholas Smith, “Grant, the Man of Mystery.”

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See [Work versus Worker].

Accounting—See [Balance, A Loose].

Accuracy—See [Punctiliousness in Little Things].

ACCUSATION INSUFFICIENT

When Numerius, governor of the Narbonnoise Gaul, was impeached for plunder of his province, he defended himself, and denied the charge and explained it away so skilfully that he baffled his accusers. A famous lawyer thereupon exclaimed, “Cæsar, who will ever be found guilty, if it is sufficient for a man to deny the charge?” To which Julian retorted, “But who will appear innocent, if a bare accusation is sufficient?” (Text.)

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ACHIEVEMENT

The Denver Republican recently contained this brief account of a farmer working heroically on a one-man railroad, and remarked that it is typical of the individual spirit that has achieved great things in the West:

The story of the Kansas farmer, who, with a scraper and a pair of mules, is building a fifty-mile railroad, would indicate that the supply of courageous men is not entirely exhausted.

The farmer who is tackling this tremendous job alone and who is serenely indifferent to all the jeers of his neighbors, scorned to admit defeat when he could not interest any one with capital in the road which he deemed necessary. He went to work with such material as he had at hand and, somehow, even without seeing the man or knowing aught of his project, one can not help sharing the farmer’s belief that he is to “carry the thing through.”

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ACKNOWLEDGMENT

Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, was kind and courteous to his army, both to officers and soldiers. He shared the toils and hardships of those who were under his command. He gave them, too, their share of the glory which he acquired, by attributing his success to their courage and fidelity. At one time, after some brilliant campaign in Macedonia, some persons in his army compared his progress to the flight of an eagle. “If I am an eagle,” replied Pyrrhus, “I owe it to you, for you are the wings by means of which I have risen so high.”

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ACQUAINTANCES

If we could prove by statistics the number of acquaintances a man had fifty years ago, and those which the modern man has, the difference would be enormous. The tendency is everywhere to enlarge one’s circle—ambitious people with discernment, but the foolish, blindly, without any interest or inclination to guide them. I once heard a woman announce with pride, “I have 2,000 visits to make this winter.” She flaunted this fact before her less favored friends, who had only 1,000 names on their visiting lists. Could there be anything more futile than this thirst for increasing one’s bowing acquaintances? What useless ballast are these interminable lists, in which no place is left for an hour’s intelligent or affectionate intercourse. The habit of going from drawing-room to drawing-room gives certain persons a style in conversation that is as flat as a well-drest stone, not one spontaneous word in it, not an angle, not a defined form!—Dora Melegari, “Makers of Sorrow and Makers of Joy.”

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Acquiescence in Temptation—See [Desires, Inordinate].

ACQUIESCENCE TO PROVIDENCE

Each branch of a vine is bound to a certain point of its wall or its conservatory. It is not growing just where and how it would spontaneously and naturally choose, but is affixt there contrary to its natural bent, in order that it may catch the sunbeams at that point and cover that spot with beautiful foliage and luscious fruit.

Sorrow is like the nail that compels the branch to grow in that direction; inevitable circumstance is like the rough strip of fiber which bends the branch, and pain is like the restraint which is suffered by the branch which would have liked to wander at its own will. We are not to murmur or repine at our lot in life, but are to remember that God has appointed it and placed us there. (Text.)

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ACQUISITION

An interesting side-light on the kind of men who attend the classes of the city evening technical schools was given by a commissioner of the Board of Education in a recent address to young men:

“I visited the forge-room” (said he), “where a class of twenty-five young blacksmiths were shaping and welding various models of iron bars and iron blades. It was an inspiring scene. No man, however indolent or indifferent to the world’s work, could have looked on without having his ambitions revived. The glowing metal yielded to the hammer blows of these youthful artizans, because interest in their work and a desire to become producers directed their bare and brawny arms. I walked about unnoticed. They felt no interest in commissioners of education. At one of the anvils I noticed a particularly fine, well-built young fellow. He was wholly absorbed in his work, so when I picked up the book he had partly hidden under his cap on his toolbench it did not attract his attention. What book do you think it was? Oh, no, not a treatise on tool-work in iron; that would have been fine. It was something even finer than that. The book was a copy of Vergil’s ‘Eneid’ and the marginal notes on the pages show that he was as ambitious to acquire a taste for good literature as for the possession of technical skill.”—New York Press.

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ACTING, ACTOR AFFECTED BY

The following remembrance of Henry Irving is given by his friend and associate Ellen Terry:

My greatest triumph as Desdemona was not gained with the audience, but with Henry Irving! He found my endeavors to accept comfort from Iago so pathetic that they brought the tears to his eyes. It was the oddest sensation, when I said, “Oh, good Iago, what shall I do to win my lord again?” to look up—my own eyes dry, for Desdemona is past crying then—and see Henry’s eyes at their biggest, luminous, soft, and full of tears! He was, in spite of Iago and in spite of his power of identifying himself with the part, very deeply moved by my acting.

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ACTION, INSTANT

I have seen ten years of young men who rush out into the world with messages, and when they find how deaf the world is, they think they must save their strength and get quietly up on some little eminence from which they can make themselves heard. “In a few years,” reasons one of them, “I shall have gained a standing, and then I shall use my power for good.” Next year comes, and with it a strange discovery. The man has lost his horizon of thought. His ambition has evaporated; he has nothing to say. The great occasion that was to have let him loose on society was some little occasion that nobody saw, some moment in which he decided to obtain a standing. The great battle of a lifetime has been fought and lost over a silent scruple. But for this the man might, within a few years, have spoken to the nation with the voice of an archangel. What was he waiting for? Did he think that the laws of nature were to be changed for him? Did he think that a “notice of trial” would be served on him? Or that some spirit would stand at his elbow and say, “Now’s your time?” The time of trial is always. Now is the appointed time. And the compensation for beginning at once is that your voice carries at once. You do not need a standing. It would not help you. Within less time than you can see it, you will have been heard. The air is filled with sounding-boards and the echoes are flying. It is ten to one that you have but to lift your voice to be heard in California, and that from where you stand. A bold plunge will teach you that the visions of the unity of human nature which the poets have sung were not fictions of their imagination, but a record of what they saw. Deal with the world, and you will discover their reality. Speak to the world, and you will hear their echo.—John Jay Chapman.

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Activity and Light-giving—See [Light and Activity].

Activity and Thought-training—See [Thinking, How Coordinated].

Actors Become Preachers—See [Evangelism, Unusual].

ADAPTABILITY

As an illustration of adaptability to circumstances and the willingness to take chances in order to achieve results of any kind, of the men who open up a new country to civilization, a recent incident is instructive:

A little schooner reached Seattle recently from Nome, on Bering Sea. She had made the voyage down during the most tempestuous season of the year in the North Pacific, and had survived storms which tried well-found steamships of the better class. Yet there was not a man on board, from the captain down, who had ever made a voyage at sea, save as passengers, on a boat running to Alaska. There were no navigating instruments on board save a compass and an obsolete Russian chart of the North Pacific.

These men wanted to come out for the winter, and there was no other way within their means to accomplish the trip. They got hold of the schooner and they started with her. They were not seamen or navigators, simply handy men who were accustomed to doing things for themselves. This was out of the routine, but they did it.

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The men who made the voyage down from Nome in a little schooner without any previous knowledge of seamanship probably saw nothing remarkable in the feat. They were used to doing things that had to be done with the material that came to hand, whether they knew anything about how it should be done or not.—Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

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ADAPTATION

If we are unable to bring our surroundings into subjection to our desires, we can often moderate our desires to the measure of our surroundings.

The colonel of a volunteer regiment camping in Virginia came across a private on the outskirts of the camp, painfully munching on something. His face was wry, and his lips seemed to move only with the greatest effort.

“What are you eating?” demanded the colonel.

“Persimmons, sir.”

“Good heavens! Haven’t you got any more sense than to eat persimmons at this time of the year? They’ll pucker the very stomach out of you!”

“I know, sir. That’s why I’m eatin’ them. I’m tryin’ to shrink me stomach to fit me rations.”

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Numerous are the animals that, escaping persecution, have adapted themselves to the altered conditions. Was this adaptation unconscious on their part? There was room and to spare when it was in progress, and did not choice enter into the problem? Or was it mere chance that they stayed near or even in habitations, and with no more volition than the autumn leaves that now filled the air?

It may be mere coincidence, but the skunk that lived under the doorstep yet gave no sign of its presence; the raccoon that occupied a clothes-line box and was not suspected; the opossum that lived in a hollow tree within ten feet of the house and was discovered only by accident—all suggest to me that they considered the several situations, and realizing their advantages in the matter of food supply, were willing to take the chances; yet a fine bit of primitive woodland was not fifty yards away.—C. C. Abbott, New York Sun.

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Why should we not adapt our moral seed-sowing for character to the different types of men as carefully as agriculturists do after close study of the different types of soil?

“The greatest surprize to the agriculturist,” said Mr. David G. Fairchild, “and one which will throw into confusion the calculations of the economist, will come through the utilization of what are now considered desert lands, for the growing of special arid-land crops requiring but a fraction of the moisture necessary for the production of the ordinary plants of the eastern half of the United States, such as corn and wheat.

“We are finding new plants from the far table-lands of Turkestan and the steppes of Russia and Siberia, which grow luxuriantly under such conditions of aridity that the crops of the Mississippi Valley farms would wither and die as tho scorched by the sirocco.”—The Technical World.

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See [Poisons and Medicine].

Adaptation, Lack of—See [Accommodation].

ADAPTING THE BIBLE

The postulate that any portion of the Scripture is as serviceable as any other portion for the purpose of stimulating and nourishing the moral and religious growth of children, regardless of their age—the Bible itself refutes this postulate. In 1 Peter 2:2, “As new-born babes desire the sincere milk of the word.” We have a very plain assertion of the need of different food for different stages of growth in the spiritual life, the assertion clothing itself in terms of the food for the several stages of the physical life. In 1 Cor. 3:2, “I have fed you with milk and not with meat,” we have the same truth set forth by another writer, who employs the same physical analogy. When we turn to Hebrews we find the author employing in more detail the same analogy to teach the same fact—Heb. 5:12–14. Here we really have granted, embryonically, it may be, the principle that is striving to-day for recognition at the hands of the religious teaching world.—A. B. Bunn Van Ormer, “Studies in Religious Nurture.”

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Adding More—See [Margins of Life].

Adjustment—See [Unfitness].

Admiration, Unspontaneous—See [Praise-seeking].

Adolescence—See [Loyalty, Spirit of].

Adolescent Folly—See [Kindness].

Adoption—See [Sympathy, Practical].

ADVANCEMENT, RAPID

When things all move so fast, Christian men must be wide-awake if they would have morals and religion keep pace with material progress:

Such is the pace at which we live to-day that, while millions of people in this country have not yet got up to the stage of “civilization” represented by the use of gas, but when they encounter it casually employ it suicidally, other millions have outgrown and discarded it, and will have none of it even for a curling-iron or a chafing-dish, let alone for lighting. To put it briefly, the use of electricity for lighting in New York State alone has increased over 2,000 per cent in ten years, and the use of electricity for power, also from central stations, has increased in the decade nearly 1,200 per cent. And yet the electricians are inclined to think they have only just started in. (Text.)—The Electrical World and Engineer.

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ADVANTAGE, WORKING TO THE BEST

If we all worked at what we could do best, not only would more work be done, but most of life’s friction and worry would be eliminated.

The English are a ballad-loving people, and few singers could sing a ballad like Antoinette Sterling. She sometimes, but rarely, sang classical music. She knew where she was the strongest, and she wisely kept in that direction, with the result that she shared the same popularity which the English people extended to Sims Reeves, the favorite tenor balladist. It was enough to insure the success of a new song to have it sung by Madam Sterling, and success in London means heavy royalties to singer as well as composer. (Text.)—Chicago Tribune.

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ADVERSITY

The whole tenor of the New Testament inculcates the principle of resignation under adverse conditions, and more. For the follower of Jesus Christ must not be merely a passive sufferer but a strenuous and persevering combatant against opposing force.

Tourists along the shores of the Mediterranean express their surprize at the insipidity of the fishes served up for food. This flavorless quality is easily accounted for. The fish around the shores of Spain, Italy, Greece, and Asia Minor are mostly caught in the quiet lagoons or calm waters of protected bays and gulfs, where they swim lazily and slowly, or bask indolently in the quietude. How different is the life of battling with storm and tempest on the part of the creatures that inhabit the rough waters around the Orkneys, the Shetlands, and the Hebrides of Scotland! Fish caught there is always delicious. (Text.)

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See [Affliction Producing Virtue].

ADVERSITY HELPING GENIUS

There is an apprenticeship to difficulty, which is better for excellence sometimes than years of ease and comfort. A great musician once said of a promising but passionless young singer who was being educated for the stage: “She sings well, but she lacks something which is everything. If she were married to a tyrant who would maltreat her and break her heart, in six months she would be the greatest singer in Europe.”—James T. Fields.

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ADVERTISING

Mr. George Hibbard discovers a new literature in process of development, born of the needs of modern advertising. In The Booklover’s Magazine he writes:

The modern advertisement is worth looking at, whether it is the sounding proclamation of some big corporation, with facts and figures both weighty and impressive, or the light eye-catching notice of some simple trade or contrivance. All forms of literary composition find place in the advertising pages: history, story, verse. Many advertisements measure up to the test of good literature. In truth, there is often an uncommon amount of character in them. A word here or a phrase there is often singularly vivid as “local color,” and behind many an advertisement it is possible to see a vigorous personality. Nor are there lacking in this new literature qualities of humor, both intentional and unintentional. One generation writes an epic, another an advertisement; who shall say that one manifestation is not as important as the other.

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Going into a green field surrounded by beautiful trees, we were once shocked by seeing painted upon a large rock the injunction, “Prepare to meet thy God.” This was the work of some ardent religionist who was entirely unconscious that this was a holy place. God was there, altho he knew it not, else he would not have intruded in that sacred place with his vulgar application of a venerable injunction.—The Christian Register.

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See [Publicity]; [Wholeness].

Advertising, Novel—See [Foolishness Sometimes is Wisdom].

ADVERTISING, PERSISTENCY IN

Any patent medicine, however worthless, will make its advocate rich if he will only persist in advertising it. The dear public succumb in the long run. They can not stand up under the continuous force of his big-lettered suggestions. They rather enjoy being humbugged. What splendid advantage the big stores take of this weakness on our part! All they need do is to keep offering suggestions of cheapness or of the supposed worth and imagined usefulness of their wares, and multitudinous innocent ones, whose sole interests the advertiser seems to have at heart, take hold of the tempting bait.—Robert MacDonald.

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Advice, Bad—See [Success too Dear].

Advice, Benefiting by—See [Mind-healing].

ADVICE, DISREGARDED

We were so sure in the Philippines that we could not get too much light that we built our houses to admit it in floods, and contemptuously disregarded the English and Dutch experience of two centuries. We called people lazy if they hid themselves at midday, and we bravely went abroad in the full glare of the light. Even the heavily pigmented Filipinos darkened their houses, and were astounded at our foolishness in doing what they did not dare to do. Collapse always came in time—if not a real collapse, at least a degree of destruction of nervous vigor which demanded a return to darker climates to escape chronic invalidism or even death.—Major Charles E. Woodruff, Harper’s Weekly.

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ADVICE, UNWELCOME

Andy McTavish was “no feelin’ juist weel,” so he went to the doctor and stated his complaints.

“What do you drink?” demanded the medico.

“Whusky.”

“How much?”

“Maybe a bottle a day.”

“Do you smoke?”

“Yes.”

“How much?”

“Two ounces a day.”

“Well, you give up whisky and tobacco altogether.”

Andy took up his cap and in three steps reached the door.

“Andy,” called the doctor, “you have not paid for my advice!”

“Ahm no’ takkin’ it,” snapt Andy, as he shut the door behind him.

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AERIAL ACHIEVEMENT

Gen. Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, in the world’s first aerial liner, at the ripe age of nearly seventy-two years, performed a magnificent flight of 250 miles from Friedrichshafen to Düsseldorf. The New York Times says of him:

He presents one of the finest examples in history of effort concentrated on a single object, of failure after failure borne with courage, of refusal to give up, of final triumph.

He has had a career which in the case of most men would have been regarded as sufficiently full of honor many years ago. He served in the American civil war as a cavalry officer on the Union side, becoming an intimate friend of the late Carl Schurz, and when he returned to Europe he took part in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 and in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870.

As late as 1907 such words as these could be written about Count von Zeppelin and generally regarded as describing him: “He has sacrificed half a century of time, his wealth, his estates, his reputation, his happiness, his family life, in a futile attempt to solve the problem of flying. It is practically certain that after fifty years of unexampled perseverance Count Zeppelin is doomed to complete failure. There is something unspeakably tragic in the fate of this high-minded aristocrat.”

His failures continued for some time after this verdict was written, but at length the world was startled by the splendid flights made by his dirigible “No. 4,” and when that vessel was wrecked in August, 1908, the German Government and the German people combined to aid the old patriot and inventor to make good his loss.

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Aeroplane—See [Tendencies, Inherited].

Affection, Disinterested—See [Friends, Keeping].

Affection for Animals—See [Animals, Absurd Fondness for].

Affections Misplaced—See [Animals, Absurd Fondness for].

AFFLICTION

At some famous pottery works a visitor selected for purchase an exquisite model of Dante and Beatrice. The price was, however, far greater than he anticipated, being treble what had been asked for some other specimens of the potter’s handiwork. “Why is this so much more expensive?” he asked. “Because it has passed more often through the furnace,” was the reply.

God sends His children sometimes through repeated furnaces of affliction in order that their characters may attain a rare and priceless perfection. (Text.)

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AFFLICTION PRODUCING VIRTUE

The editor of The United Presbyterian writes thus:

On a recent evening during a severe hailstorm we opened our door to observe the progress of the storm, and were surprized to find the air laden with the odor of nasturtiums. There were porch-boxes containing nasturtiums, geraniums and other flowering and foliage plants. Beds of nasturtiums were by the street’s side and at the side of the lawn, and into these the hail had fallen, beating down and breaking the vines until the porch floor and the ground beneath the boxes and the vines were covered with ends of broken sprays, leaves and bright bits of yellow and gold, scarlet and maroon of the mangled flowers. But the air was full of the sweetness of the crusht and wounded vines. They were returning good for evil in the misfortune that had come upon them. For every wound that the hail had made they were giving out the fragrance of a beautiful spirit. Tho bruised and broken, they were filling the whole atmosphere with an aroma which was in beautiful contrast to the adverse rain of hail that still rattled on the roofs and walks and fell among the prostrate vines. Blest is that life which can yield its sweetest fragrance when the storms are at their highest. We have all known men and women who, when lacerated with pain, prostrate under the hand of God, have made the very atmosphere of the sick-room redolent with the incense of Christian hope and trust.

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AFFLICTION, USES OF

The Scriptures say that “It is good to be afflicted,” and experience has her own confirmatory word:

The waters go out over the fields, leaving a waste, where pasture and corn-field had been, and then gradually subside. What have the waters done? Have they ruined the labors of the year? They who do not know Egypt might think so indeed, but the peasants know that to that yearly flood they owe the fertility of the land, that it is that which makes the crops grow and enables them to gather in the harvest. So it is with the river of the grace of God: the waters at times overflow their banks, and one seems to be overwhelmed; the soul is borne down by the flood, all her fruitful land is covered by the waters—waters of desolation, bereavement, affliction. “I am overwhelmed, undone; God has smitten me; my life is all wrong; I shall never smile again.” Nay, the flood which terrifies thee is the water of the river of God. The water is washing away the impurity of thy soul, giving thee fertility; the fruits of love, patience, charity, shall grow now; it is not a flood of desolation, but of blessing and fruitfulness. (Text.)

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Afraid of the Darkness—See [Fear of Man].

AFFLUENCE, THE PRINCIPLE OF

The structural provisions of the living organism are not built on the principle of economy. On the contrary, the superabundance of tissues and mechanisms indicates clearly that safety is the goal of the animal organism. We may safely state that the living animal organism is provided in its structures with factors of safety at least as abundantly as any human-made machine.

The moral drawn from these facts is that to govern the supply of tissue and energy by means of food, nature indicates for us the same principle of affluence which controls the entire construction of the animal for the safety of its life and the perpetuation of its species. In other words, we should eat not just enough to preserve life, but a good deal more. In such cases safety is more important than economy.—S. J. Meltzer, Science.

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AGE

“There are in the suburbs of Rome,” says Cosmos, “two farms where antique medals are made in large quantities. This would seem to be a singular agricultural product, yet nothing is more exact. The people who devote themselves to this odd industry cause to be swallowed by turkeys coins or medals roughly struck with the effigy of Tiberius or Caligula. After remaining for some time in the bodies of the fowls, the little disks of metal become coated with a remarkable ‘patina.’ If this coating were only the result of the gastro-intestinal voyage, it would be easy to secure it by treating the coins to be aged with dilute hydrochloric acid, for instance. But the mechanical action of the tiny stones contained in the gizzard is added to the purely chemical action of the gastric juice, partially effacing the figures and toning down the hardness of the features. It is to be feared that some of the specimens in our public collections have been obtained by this curious process.”

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AGE AND EXPERIENCE

We might find an argument against the “dead line” in such facts as the following:

We make a great mistake in America when we lay our older men on the shelf, while they are still in their prime as counselors. Benjamin Franklin was sent to France as a minister when he was seventy years old, and the best work he did for his country, he did between his seventy-first and seventy-eighth years. The State of New York had an absurd statute which removed Chancellor Kent from the bench because he was sixty-five. After that time he wrote and published his “Commentaries,” a book recognized as one of the most important books in the study of our jurisprudence. So much good did the country gain from one of the frequent absurdities of New York legislation. In England, Lord Palmerston and Mr. Gladstone are recent instances, well remembered, of the force which statesmen gain, almost by the law of geometrical progression, from their memory of the experiments which fail, from what I call organic connection with the national life of the last two generations.—Edward Everett Hale, The Chautauquan.

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AGE AND ORATORY

This is the description of one who had the privilege of hearing Gladstone, in the autumn of 1896, make his last great oration in Liverpool:

See the old man with slow and dragging steps advancing from the door behind the platform to his seat before that sea of eager faces. The figure is shrunken. The eyelids droop. The cheeks are as parchment. Now that he sits, his hands lean heavily upon his staff. We think, “Ah, it is too late; the fire has flickered out; the speech will be but the dead echo of bygone glories.” But lo! he rises. The color mantles to his face. He stands erect, alert. The great eyes open full upon his countrymen. Yes, the first notes are somewhat feeble, somewhat painful; but a few minutes pass, and the noble voice falls as the solemn music of an organ on the throng. The eloquent arms seem to weave a mystic garment for his oratory. The involved sentences unfold themselves with a perfect lucidity. The whole man dilates. The soul breaks out through the marvelous lips. Age? Not so! this is eternal youth. He is pleading for mercy to an outraged people, for fidelity to a national obligation, for courage and for conscience in a tremendous crisis. And the words from the Revised Version of the Psalms seem to print themselves on the listener’s heart: “Thou hast made him but little lower than God, and crownest him with glory and honor.” (Text.)

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AGE, THE NEW

Frederick Lawrence Knowles writes this optimistic outlook for the future:

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 drift 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! (Text.)

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AGENTS, INSIGNIFICANT

Nature shows how the weakness of God is immeasurably stronger than men; so does history with equal clearness. The oft-quoted saying, “Providence is always on the side of the big battalions,” is one with an imposing sound, but it is disproved by history over and over again. Some of the decisive battles of the world were won by the small battalions. More than once has the sling and the stone prevailed against the Philistine army. Battles are won by the big brain; and wherever that may be, slight weapons and resources are sufficient for splendid victories. Now the all-wise God sits on the throne of the world, and we are often filled with astonishment at the insignificant agents with which heaven smites its foes, and causes victory to settle on the banners of right and justice. The world’s Ruler defeated Pharaoh with frogs and flies; He humbled Israel with the grasshopper; He smeared the splendor of Herod with worms; on the plains of Russia, He broke the power of Napoleon with a snowflake. God has no need to dispatch an archangel; when once He is angry, a microbe will do. (Text.)—W. L. Watkinson, “The Transfigured Sackcloth.”

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AGGREGATION

A drop of rain is a very little thing, but here is a calculation of a rainfall:

The rain fell in buckets, the thunder racketed terribly, and the lightning drew zigzag lines of bright gold upon the violet sky.

“So you, too, don’t know what an inch of rain is exactly,” said the weather clerk, as he looked at his rain-measuring instrument. “Very few people do, it seems. I’ll explain it to you.

“An acre is 6,272,640 square inches. An inch of water on an acre is therefore 6,272,640 cubic inches. That amount, at 227 cubic inches to the gallon, equals 22,000 gallons, or 220,000 pounds, or 100 tons.

“An inch of rain is, in other words, rain falling at the rate of 100 tons to the acre.”

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AGGRESSION

Many fail through over-caution. A course duly weighed, venture all.

In a more recent number of Robert L. Taylor’s magazine, a leading article speaks of Admiral Farragut, at Mobile. The Brooklyn hesitated to go forward. “What’s the matter?” asked the Admiral. “Torpedoes,” replied the captain. “D——n the torpedoes,—full speed against the enemy!” He meant no profanity, but it was a time for action of the most pronounced sort. The best protection against the enemy’s fire is a well-directed fire from our own guns.

General Grant in the civil war of 1861–65 said, “The best defense of Washington is an army before Richmond.” These epigrammatic maxims are the best accepted fighting rules known to warfare to this day.

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Colonel Henderson, of the British Army, says in the Science of War:

The Federal strategy in the last year of the war, with Grant in command and Sherman his lieutenant, stands out in marked relief to the disjointed, partial, and complicated operations of the previous years.... Grant seems to have been the first to recognize that, as von Moltke puts it, the true objective of a campaign is the defeat of the enemy’s main army.... General Sheridan’s summing up of the handling of the Army of the Potomac, before Grant took command, is to the point: “The army was all right; the trouble was that the commanders never went out to lick anybody, but always thought first of keeping from getting licked.” Grant, like Moltke, was always ready to try conclusions.

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Agitation—See [Quiet, Study to Be].

AHEAD OF CIRCUMSTANCE

In life there are those who keep just ahead of the breaking wave, and others who halt and it engulfs them. Marshall P. Wilder describes in the extract below the skill of the Hawaiian natives with their canoes:

We donned bathing-suits and took a surf ride. This is the national sport and, being at all times sufficiently thrilling, must be taken in a high surf, a tremendous experience. The boats are long, deep and very narrow canoes, with an outrigger at one side to keep them from tipping.

Two natives, and they must be skilled, usually operate these canoes. Three or four passengers at a time are taken out, the natives rowing with broad paddles a quarter or half mile from the shore, where they wait for a large wave. With the nicest precision they keep ahead of it, just as it breaks, and are carried smoothly in, poised on its crest. I sat facing the stern, and the experience was something to remember, the swift bird-like swoop of the canoe, with the white, seething wall of water behind it, apparently just about to engulf us. After we were safely on shore again they told us stories of how the wave, if the rowers miscalculate, will break over the canoe, driving it to the bottom.—“Smiling ’Round the World.”

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Aim—See [Spiritual Gunnery].

AGRICULTURE

The rate at which the people of the United States have been carrying out the divine command to replenish the earth and subdue it may be seen at a glance by the diagram below: (Text.)

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A POPULAR KIND OF RURAL UPLIFT

The total value of farm products in the United States from $2,000,000,000 in 1880 to nearly $8,000,000,000 in 1900.

Ahead, Looking—See [Prevision].

AIM HIGH

The following inspiring advice is by Willis Warren Kent:

Aim high!

Watch the target with an eye

Steady as the eaglet’s glance;

Fit your arrow, let it fly,

Fear no failure, no mischance!

Aim high!

Aim high!

Tho your arrows hurtle by,

Miss the target, sail below,

Pick them up, once more to try,

Arms a-tangle, eyes aglow!

Aim high!

Aim high!

Learn to laugh and cease to sigh,

Learn to hide your deep chagrin!

Life’s a test at archery

Where the true of heart will win!

Aim high!

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AIMLESSNESS

Washington Irving tells a story of a man who tried to jump over a hill. He went back so far to get his start for the great leap and ran so hard that he was completely exhausted when he came to the hill, and had to lie down and rest. Then he got up and walked over the hill.

A great many people exhaust themselves getting ready to do their work. They are always preparing. They spend their lives getting ready to do something which they never do.

It is an excellent thing to keep improving oneself, to keep growing; but there must be a time to begin the great work of life. I know a man who is almost forty years old, who has not yet decided what he is going to do. He has graduated from college, and taken a number of post-graduate courses—but all along general lines. He has not yet begun to specialize. This man fully believes he is going to do great things yet. I hope he may.—O. S. Marden.

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“And he that walketh in the darkness knoweth not whither he goeth.” What a picture comes into the mind as by the aid of the imagination we read these words. I think of a vast forest, with its winding trail, its deep shadows, its tangled underbrush, its decayed trunks here and there. I think of myself at the end of a long day’s tramp. No opening in sight. The sun has gone down. The light coming through the openings above growing less and less. The sky overcast. Soon it is dark. I miss the trail. I get down on my hands and knees to feel for it. Presently no sound but the cracking of the underbrush. Suddenly it dawns upon me that I am lost in the woods. All sense of direction is gone. Any way I turn may be the wrong way. I am utterly aimless. Jesus says the end of the selfish man is utter aimlessness. That as a man in the woods wanders without aim so the selfish man wanders in the moral universe without aim, not knowing whither he goeth.—Robert McLaughlin.

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It is told of Professor Huxley that once, when the British Association met in Dublin, he arrived late in the city; fearing to miss the president’s address, he rushed from the train to the station platform, jumped on a jaunting-car, and said to the Celt in charge, “Drive fast; I’m in a hurry.” Cabby whipt up his horse and proved to be another Jehu. Suddenly it flashed upon the passenger, bounding about the vehicle in a most undignified way, to shout to the driver above the rattle of the car, “Do you know where I want to go?” “No, yer honor,” was Pat’s laughing rejoinder, “but I’m driving fast all the while.”

There are many who keep up a great activity, but who, for want of a definite aim or a great guiding ideal, accomplish little good in the world.

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AIR, EFFECTS OF

Attention has been called to some curious effects of rarefied and of condensed air on human respiration. On high mountains some persons experience distressing shortness of breath, one result of which is that they are unable to whistle. Precisely the same effect is sometimes produced by the condensed air in caissons and diving-bells. Laborers working in comprest air frequently find, however, that their powers of exertion are increased as long as the atmospheric pressure is not more than double that of ordinary air; but beyond that point unpleasant effects are experienced after the men have left the working shafts and returned into the open air. On the other hand, high atmospheric pressure in the case of persons not doing manual labor has been found to act as a mental stimulus, increasing the impulse to talk.—Harper’s Weekly.

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Air of Sea as Purifier—See [Purification].

Airship Flight—See [Ambition].

ALCOHOLIC BAIT

In May, 1880, on Platt River, in Benzie County, Michigan, an old man was showing an Indian named Pokagon how to catch pigeons in their nesting-place. He led him to an open pole-pen which he called his bait-bed, where he scattered a bucketful of wheat. While the two watched in ambush the pigeons poured into the pen and gorged themselves. “Come on, you redskin,” said the old man to Pokagon, and they caught about a hundred fine birds. “How did you do it?” asked the Indian in surprize. With one eye half shut and a sly wink with the other, the old man replied: “That wheat was soaked in whisky.”

How many other than birds have been snared by the same whisky-bait!

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ALIBI

A distinguished jurist once sat down to a course dinner. He had been waited on by one servant during two courses. He had had the soup. Another servant came to him and said, “Sir, shall I take your order? Will you have some of the chicken soup?” “No, sir; I have been served with chicken soup, but the chicken proved an alibi.”—George M. Palmer.

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Alleviation—See [Drudgery Relieved].

ALLUREMENT, FATAL

The Judas-tree, so-called, is a remarkable plant. Its blossoms appear before its leaves, and are a most brilliant crimson. The flowers flaming forth, attract innumerable insects. The bee, for instance, in quest of honey, is drawn to it. But searching the petals for nectar, it imbibes a fatal opiate. Beneath this Judas-tree the ground is strewn with the victims of its deadly fascination.

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Flicker-flick,

Above the wick,

Burned the candle flame.

Through the open window-shutter

Young Moth Miller came.

Straight he fluttered toward the yellow,

Bright, alluring thing.

And, alas, poor foolish fellow

Scorched his downy wing!

Little ones, take lesson from him,

Be not overbold;

Stop and think that glittering things

Are not always gold. (Text.)

—Elizabeth Hill.

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The Venus fly trap is small and shaped as if you placed your two open palms side by side. Its surface is plastered with honey and the other palm has sharp needles pointing outward. The “silly fly” yields to the attraction of the sweets and is immediately shut in as the two palms close upon him. He is instantly stung to death by the needles.

How alluring evil can appear at times. Satan himself can pose as an angel of light. Evil often presents its most subtle attraction to the young. But sin in any guise is the soul’s deathtrap. (Text.)

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Allurement to Evil—See [Sin, Fascination of].

Allurement to Good—See [Fishers of Men].

ALMSGIVING

That is no true alms which the hand can hold;

He gives only worthless gold

Who gives from a sense of duty;

But he who gives but a slender mite

And gives to that which is out of sight,

The hand can not clasp the whole of his alms. (Text.)

—Lowell.

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ALTAR, THE

In the old days a father built a home for his family. It was complete in every part, but the altar around which they gathered in prayer was not yet set in place. The mother wished it in the kitchen; there she was perplexed with her many cares. The father wished it in his study: God seemed nearer to him among his books. The son wished it in the room where guests were received, that the stranger entering might see that they worshiped God. At last they agreed to leave the matter to the youngest, who was a little child. Now the altar was a shaft of polished wood, very fragrant, and the child, who loved most of all to sit before the great fire and see beautiful forms in the flames, said, “See, the fire-log is gone; put the altar there.” So, because one would not yield to the other, they obeyed, and the altar was consumed, while its sweet odors filled the whole house—the kitchen, the study, and the guest hall—and the child saw beautiful forms in the flames.—David Starr Jordan, “The Religion of a Sensible American.”

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ALTRUISM

There is in Cambridge, Mass., an elm-tree of moderate size, which has, according to the estimates of Professor Gray, a leaf surface of 200,000 square feet. This tree exhales seven and three-quarter tons of water every twelve hours. A forest of 500 such trees would return to the atmosphere nearly 4,000 tons in the same time.

Our lives should be like this tree, shedding their refreshment continually. (Text.)

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Good men are not meant to be simply like trees planted by rivers of waters, flourishing in their own pride and for their own sake. They ought to be like the eucalyptus trees which have been set out in the marshes of the Campagna, from which a healthful, tonic influence is said to be diffused to countervail the malaria. They ought to be like the Tree of Paradise, “whose leaves are for the healing of nations.”—Henry Van Dyke.

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The flower blooms not for itself at all,

Its joy is the joy that diffuses:

Of beauty and balm it is prodigal,

And it lives in the life it freely loses;

No choice for the rose but glory or doom,

To exhale or smother, to wither or bloom.

To deny

Is to die.

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See [Vicariousness].

ALTRUISM AMONG BIRDS

An old gentleman in New England told me of a case he once observed. Noticing a little flock of chewinks or towhee buntings who came about the house for food that was thrown out, he saw that one was larger than the others and that they fed him. To satisfy his curiosity, he threw a stone with such accuracy that his victim fell, and on picking him up he was surprized to see that the bird’s mandibles were crossed so that he could not possibly feed himself. The inference was obvious; his comrades had fed him, and so well that he had grown bigger than any of them.—Olive Thorne Miller, “The Bird Our Brother.”

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ALTRUISM IN INSECTS

A gentleman, while reading the newspaper, feeling bothered by the buzzing of a wasp about his head, beat it down. It fell through the open window and lay on the sill as if dead. A few seconds afterward, to his great surprize, a large wasp flew on to the window-sill, and after buzzing around his wounded brother for a few minutes, began to lick him all over. The sick wasp seemed to revive under this treatment, and his friend then gently dragged him to the edge, grasped him round the body and flew away with him. It was plain that the stranger, finding a wounded comrade, gave him “first aid,” as well as he could, and then bore him away home. This is one of many cases in which the law of altruism is traceable in the world of living things below man. How much more should intelligent man exercise this spirit of helpfulness in the rescue of his fallen brother.

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ALTRUISM IN NATURE

The flower does not live for itself. Beautiful, fragrant-making, the tree an incense-holder, hang the apple-blossoms for a day; to-morrow they have let go their hold upon the tree and are scattered over the ground in order that the fruit may grow. The fruit guards the seed until it is mature, then the fruit goes to decay that the seed may be released; the seed gives up its life that a new tree may come. What a glorious parable is this: life for life, the old dying for the new; every tree in the orchard, every grain-stalk in the corn-field, every dusty weed by the roadside living for others and ready to die for others. The doctrine of unselfish love and of sacrifice comes to us fragrant with the odor of ten thousand blossoms and rich with the yellow fruitage of ten thousand harvests. Self-preservation is no longer the first law of nature. The first law seems to be preparation for that which is coming next.—John K. Willey.

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ALUMNI OCCUPATIONS

Beloit College has been coeducational for about fifteen years. The following list of what its women alumni are doing is given in a current number of the college paper:

Eighty-eight are teaching.

Fifty-four are married.

Nineteen are at home.

Three are librarians.

Four are graduate students.

Two are college instructors.

One is supervisor of domestic economy.

One is vice-president of a bank.

One is a nurse.

One is an editor.

One is an assistant postmaster.

One is a visitor of Associated Charities.

One is superintendent of north-west district of United Charities in Chicago.

Two are high-school principals.

One is a student in the Baptist Missionary Training School, Chicago.

One is the industrial secretary of the Y. W. C. A., Detroit.

One is a bookkeeper in a bank.

One is a teacher in North China Union Woman’s College, American Board.

One is nursery visitor of United Charities in Chicago.

One is a private tutor.

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AMBASSADOR, THE MINISTER AS AN

The minister must be something as well as do something. He must consistently make an impression upon everybody he approaches that he is in something unlike the ordinary run of men. I do not mean that he should be sanctimonious, for that repels; it must be something in his own consciousness. My father was a clergyman. One of the most impressive incidents of my youth occurs to me. He was in a party of gentlemen, when one of them used a profane word unthinkingly. With a start he turned to my father, and said, “I beg your pardon, Dr. Wilson.” My father said, very simply and gently, “Oh, sir, you have not offended me.” The emphasis he laid upon that word “me” brought with it a tremendous impression. All present felt that my father regarded himself as an ambassador of someone higher; their realization of it showed in their faces.—Woodrow Wilson, The Churchman.

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Ambidexterity Favored—See [Asymmetry].

AMBITION

When William the Conqueror was born his first exploit was to grasp a handful of straw, and to hold it so tenaciously in his little fist that the nurse could scarcely take it away. This infantile prowess was considered an omen, and the nurse predicted that the babe would some day signalize himself by seizing and holding great possessions. And he did.

But what, after all, were many of the possessions seized by the Norman Conqueror but a handful of straw. And so are not a few of the conquests of earthly ambition, no matter how tenaciously held as well as ardently won. Over many a pile of wealth and massed achievement might be written: “A handful of straw in a baby fist!”

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Daisy Rinehart expresses a very common feeling in this poem:

I’m tired of sailing my little boat

Far inside of the harbor bar;

I want to be out where the big ships float—

Out on the deep, where the great ones are!

And should my frail craft prove too slight

For storms that sweep those wide seas o’er,

Better go down in the stirring fight

Than drowse to death by the sheltered shore!

—Munsey’s Magazine.

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Glenn H. Curtiss, by his successful and spectacular flight of 150 miles from Albany to this city (May 29, 1910), has jumped into the first rank of aviators.

Curtiss began life as soon as he was of a workable age as a newsboy. He is still remembered as a lad always ambitious in sport, particularly if there were any mechanical contrivances to be worked out that might add to his triumph. His ambition was to “arrive” in anything he undertook, and to do this he was not content to accept the suggestions of others, but sought to work out his own original ideas.

When about ten or eleven years old he was very much perturbed over the fact that one of his chums owned a hand-sled that always coasts down-hill faster than his own. Curtiss set to work to construct a sled that would outdistance his rival’s, and after weeks of quiet work had the satisfaction of leaving his rival far behind.

From sleds he turned his attention to bicycles.

“Why not attach a gasoline engine to it?” he asked one day, and immediately he went to work, using the model of an old gasoline engine to work on, and was soon able to amaze his neighbors by chugging through the country on his hand-made machine. The fever of the motorcycle was right on him, and that early success led him to establish a bicycle shop which soon grew from a mere repair shop to a plant for the manufacture of motor-cycles, and the success of the improved Curtiss motor was what gave him his first real fame.

In 1907 he took one of his machines to Ormond, Fla. It was built solely for speed, for it was Curtiss’ aim to go faster than any one else. The judges, greatly to the disappointment of the inventor, pronounced it a freak and not eligible, with the orthodox machines. It was a big disappointment, but Curtiss announced that he would make an exhibition mile trial, and, to the amazement of the experts, he covered the distance in the remarkable time of 0:26 2/5, the fastest mile that had ever been traveled by a man.

From making motors for bicycles it was an easy step to try the construction of light gasoline motors for flying purposes. Captain Thomas S. Baldwin was the first to see the possibilities of the Curtiss motor for balloon purposes, and at his suggestion Curtiss built one for Baldwin’s dirigible airship. This was successful, and others were built.

Then followed the success of the Wright brothers with heavier-than-air machines and the craze for the heavier-than-air type abroad. Curtiss’ little shop at Hammondsport became the headquarters for the aeronautical students of this country and aerial flight received its first big impetus, next to that given by the Wrights when Dr. Alexander Graham Bell, in November, 1907, organized his Aeronautic Experiment Association, and Curtiss was one of its six members.

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By the sheer force of his ambition Pope won his place, and held it, in spite of religious prejudice, and in the face of physical and temperamental obstacles that would have discouraged a stronger man. For Pope was deformed and sickly, dwarfish in soul and body. He knew little of the world of nature or of the world of the human heart. He was lacking, apparently, in noble feeling, and instinctively chose a lie when the truth had manifestly more advantages. Yet this jealous, peevish, waspish little man became the acknowledged leader of English literature.—William J. Long, “English Literature.”

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AMBITION, A WORTHY

Dr. William H. Thomson, speaking of the tubercle bacillus in his book, “What is Physical Life?” says:

For ages upon ages this mighty microorganism has waged a cruel destructive war upon the human race. After fifty years of observation and study of its ghastly doings, I can say that I would rather have the power to cause the tears shed on its account to cease than to be the greatest official or the greatest owner on the earth.

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AMERICA IN SYMBOL

In the hour when for the first time I stood before the cataracts of Niagara, I seemed to see a vision of the fears and hopes of America. It was midnight, the moon was full, and I saw from the suspension bridge the ceaseless contortion, confusion, whirl, and chaos which burst forth in clouds of foam from that immense central chasm which divides the American from the British dominion; and as I looked on that ever-changing movement, and listened to that everlasting roar, I saw an emblem of the devouring activity, and ceaseless, restless, beating whirlpool of existence in the United States. But into the moonlight sky there rose a cloud of spray twice as high as the falls themselves, silent, majestic, immovable. In that silver column, glittering in the moonlight, I saw an image of the future of American destiny, of the pillar of light which should emerge from the distractions of the present—a likeness of the buoyancy and hopefulness which characterize you both as individuals and as a nation.—Arthur Penrhyn Stanley.

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AMERICA, THE NAME

The meaning of the name Amerigo has been often discust, the only thing certain being that it is one of those names of Teutonic origin, like Humberto, Alfonzo, Grimaldi, or Garibaldi, so common in northern Italy, which testifies to the Gothic or Lombard conquest. Americ, which occurs as early as 744 A.D., is probably a contracted form of the name Amalaric, borne by a king of the Visigoths who died in 531. A Bishop Emrich was present at the Council of Salisbury, in 807, and an Americus Balistarius is mentioned in the Close Rolls (thirteenth century). It has been conjectured that the stem is im, from which we get the name of Emma. The meaning of this is not known with certainty, tho Ferguson thinks it may denote “strife” or “noise.” Since, however, the name is probably of Gothic origin, and since the Amalungs were the royal race of the Ostragoths, it is more likely that the stem is “amal,” which was formerly thought to mean “without spot,” but is now more plausibly connected with the old Norse “aml,” labor, work. The suffix “ric,” cognate with rex, reich, and rick, means “rich” or “powerful,” and, therefore, the most probable signification of Amerigo is “strong for labor.”—Isaac Taylor, Notes and Queries.

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American Citizenship—See [Ignorance].

AMERICAN OPPORTUNITY

A young Irishman who settled in Chicago forty years ago, and found his first employment as driver of a baker’s wagon, has just retired from business a millionaire. An Italian, then aged sixteen, who reached Trenton, N. J., thirteen years ago with barely sufficient money to set up in business as a bootblack, now owns twenty-three houses, and announces his intention to take up real estate. Both these passages of contemporary biography are recorded in the same newspaper. Probably they will attract little attention or remark. That is to be explained by the happy circumstance that such progress from poverty is no exceptional thing in this country, and any community could match the stories with many that are equally striking.—Boston Transcript.

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American Prosperity—See [Prosperity as an Advertisement].

AMERICANISM, TRUE

Suppose you are a father, and you have five children. One is named Philip, and Philip says to his brothers and sisters: “Now, John, you go and live in the small room at the end of the hall. George, you go and stay up in the garret. Mary, you go and live in the cellar, and, Fannie, you go and live in the kitchen, and don’t any of you come out. I am Philip, and will occupy the parlor; I like it; I like the lambrequins at the window, and I like the pictures on the wall. I am Philip, and, being Philip, the parlor shall only be for the Philipians.” You, the father, come home, and say: “Fannie, what are you doing in the kitchen? Come out of there.” And you say to Mary, “Mary, come out of that cellar.” And you say to John, “John, don’t stay shut up in that small room. Come out of there.” And you say to George, “George, come down out of that garret.” And you say to the children, “This is my house. You can go anywhere in it that you want to.” And you go and haul Philip out of the parlor, and you tell him that his brothers and sisters have just as much right in there as he has, and that they are all to enjoy it. Now, God is our Father, and this world is a house of several rooms, and God has at least five children—the North American continent, the South American continent, the Asiatic continent, the European continent, and the African continent. The North American continent sneaks away, and says: “I prefer the parlor. You South Americans, Asiatics, Europeans, and Africans, you stay in your own rooms; this is the place for me; I prefer it, and I am going to stay in the parlor; I like the front windows facing on the Atlantic, and the side windows facing on the Pacific, and the nice piazza on the south where the sun shines, and the glorious view from the piazza to the north.” And God, the Father, comes in and sends thunder and lightning through the house, and says to his son, the American continent: “You are no more my child than are all these others, and they have just as much right to enjoy this part of my house as you have.”—T. Dewitt Talmage.

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Americans as Spenders—See Missions, Indifference to.

AMERICA’S ATTITUDE

“The attitude of the United States that she was not warring with China in 1900 and that she recognized no spoils of war; the attitude that made her give back to China the large quantity of silver which fell into her possession at Tien-Tsin; that made her give over to the Chinese Government, unmolested, the treasury and its treasures in the Forbidden City; that caused her, without compulsion, to cancel the Boxer indemnity fund, is an attitude too deep, too broad, too high for word expression. Does not this attitude reveal a strong current of sisterly good will, when it is able to sweep away the heavy weights of financial gain? This attitude is not one of spontaneity; the seed was brought over in the Mayflower; it was planted in the virgin soil of liberty, where it rooted, and was watered with treasured dew-drops; was nourished into being in love’s tenderness; was sustained in truth’s fortitude. This is the story of our country’s attitude.”—“Letters from China.”

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Amity—See [Kindness].

AMITY AFTER WAR

News of an international event of no little pathos comes from Port Arthur. Around the great fortress were buried thousands of Russians who fell in the siege, and whose graves were unmarked. The Russian Government asked permission to gather these remains in one place and erect a tomb for them which should be a suitable monument to their heroism. The Japanese Government replied by asking for permission to engage in this sad duty as a token of honor to the Russian dead. In this Russia readily acquiesced, and the tomb, which is of noble proportions and Etruscan in design, was recently dedicated. At these solemn services the old foes met once more. General Nogi, the hero of Port Arthur, was by special order of the Emperor the representative of Japan. Russia sent two generals and an admiral, who were supported by many Russian officers who had fought over that very ground. Regiments of Japanese troops stood on guard, as did also representatives of the Japanese navy. These latter, at the moment of unveiling, bore a worn and battle-torn flag to the tomb, and reverently lowered it as a tribute of respect. The religious ceremonies were in charge of the Bishop of Peking, of the Russian Church. (Text.)

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AMUSEMENTS

A news item says:

Mrs. A. B. Sims, of Des Moines, winner of the woman’s whist championship of the United States, stood before an audience of 4,000 at Winona Lake and told why she burned up the forty decks of cards that she had at her home.

“It was not uncommon for me to play whist from 10 A.M. to 11 P.M.,” said Mrs. Sims. “After that I saw what I was really doing. I burned up all the pasteboards, and I should like to speak in every church to the women and tell them what card-playing led me to, and what it will lead them to. It was undermining our church. The whist and euchre parties were sweeping the women of the congregation and the church was sinking because of their neglect. The card craze as it prevails among women is the most serious competitor the Church has to-day.”

Worldliness manifests itself in its games as in other phases of its life. As the fathers saw the horror of the gladiatorial shows and their pernicious effect on morals, so in these latter days is caution necessary and salutary.

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Anarchy, Remedy for—See [Evil, Self-destructive].

ANCESTOR WORSHIP

The destructive influence of ancestor worship far outweighs its benefits. It is a ruthless and voracious land-grabber; the best of the hills are for the dead. The living may go to Jericho, or may huddle together down in the malarial flats, while the ancestral shade rests in the high places on the hill. The exhilarating surroundings of the trees and green sod are for the dead, the living are left to the dust and heat and smells of the market-place.

Ancestral piety forbids the digging of the hills for gold or silver or any other treasure. What are the living and what is yellow gold compared with the sweet repose of my father’s ghost? Away with all sordid visions and leave the hills in peace!—James S. Gale, “Korea in Transition.”

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ANCESTRAL EXAMPLE

It was the custom of the primitive Romans to preserve in the halls of their houses the images of all the illustrious men whom their families had produced. These images are supposed to have consisted of a mask exactly representing the countenance of each deceased individual, accompanied with habiliments of like fashion with those worn in his time, and with the armor, badges, and insignia of his offices and exploits; all so disposed around the sides of the hall as to present, in the attitude of living men, the long succession of the departed; and thus to set before the Roman citizen, whenever he entered or left the house, the venerable array of his ancestors revived in this imposing similitude. Whenever, by a death in the family, another distinguished member of it was gathered to his fathers, a strange and awful procession was formed. The ancestral masks, including that of the newly deceased, were fitted upon the servants of the family, selected of the size and appearance of those whom they were intended to represent, and drawn up in solemn array to follow the funeral train of the living mourners, first to the market-place, where the public eulogium was pronounced, and then to the tomb. As he thus moved along, with all the great fathers of his name quickening, as it were, from their urns, to enkindle his emulation, the virtuous Roman renewed his vows of respect to their memory, and his resolution to imitate their fortitude, frugality, and patriotism.—Edward Everett.

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Ancestry—See [Pedigree].

ANCHOR, AN

Every ship has an anchor, and there are times when the safety of the ship depends on its right use of its anchors. When I was a boy in Constantinople, an American captain visited our house. He told us that his ship was anchored in an exposed harbor in one of the islands of the Ægean, when a violent storm broke upon them. Both of the anchors which they had down began to drag, and it was only a question of time when they would be cast ashore. They had one little anchor still unused, and tho they did not hope much good could come from dropping it they took the chance. To their great surprize and equal delight, tho the two larger anchors would not hold, the smaller one held, and they rode out the storm in safety. When they came to weigh the anchors, the two large ones came up easily, but the smaller one came with great difficulty. When at last it appeared above the surface of the water, lo and behold, the fluke of the anchor had caught in the ring of a large man-of-war’s anchor that had been lost there long before! The man-of-war’s anchor had been embedded in the soil, and this accounted for the fact that the little anchor held.

Every man voyaging on the ocean of life ought to have an anchor. The apostle speaks about a good hope, which he says we have as an anchor sure and stedfast entering into the unseen, which is within the veil.—A. F. Schauffler, The Christian Herald.

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ANCIENT ART

To the student of architecture it may be surprizing to learn that the arch, until recently supposed to have been unknown to the ancients, was frequently employed by the pre-Babylonians of more than 6,000 years ago. Such an arch, in a poor state of preservation, was, a few years ago, discovered in the lowest stratum, beneath the Babylonian city of Nippur. More recently an arched drain was found beneath the old city of Fara, which the Germans have excavated in central Babylonia. The city, altho one of the earliest known, was built upon an earlier ruin, and provided with an arched drain constructed of small, plano-convex bricks. It measures about one meter in height, and has an equal width.

While delving among the ruins of the oldest cities of the world, we are thus finding that at the time when we supposed that man was primitive and savage, he provided his home and city with “improvements” which we are inclined to call modern, but which we are only reinventing. (Text.)—Prof. Edgar James Banks, The Scientific American.

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Ancient Human Remains—See [Prehistoric Women].

Ancient Masters—See [Compliment].

Anesthetics—See [Benefaction of Anesthetics].

Angel Ministers—See [Cooperation, Lack of].

Angel Visitants—See [Indifference to the Good].

Angels—See [Friend, The Sympathetic].

Angels Astray—See [Rescue].

ANGER

A cobbler at Leyden, who used to attend the public disputations held at the Academy, was once asked if he understood Latin. “No,” replied the mechanic, “but I know who is wrong in the argument.” “How?” replied his friend. “Why, by seeing who is angry first.”

Let not your angry passions rise, if you would be a full overcomer. (Text.)

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ANGER, FUTILE

The camel has one very bad fault. He likes to “pay back,” and if his driver has injured him in any way he will not rest till he has got even.

The Arabs, people who wander about the desert, and so use the camel a great deal, know about this fault of his, and have a queer way of keeping themselves from getting hurt.

When a driver has made his camel angry, he first runs away out of sight. Then, choosing a place where the camel will soon pass, he throws down some of his clothes, and fixes them so that the heap will look like a sleeping man.

Pretty soon, along comes the camel, and sees the heap. Thinking to himself, “Now I’ve got him,” he pounces on the clothes, shakes them around, and tramples all over them. After he tires of this and has turned away, the driver can appear and ride him away without harm.

Poor, silly camel! He has been in what we call a “blind rage,” so angry that he can’t tell the difference between a man and a heap of clothes.

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Angle, At the Right—See [Place, in the Right].

Anguish—See [Suffering Transformed].

ANIMAL ANCESTRY

A simple-minded Irish priest I have been told of, having heard that we were descended from monkeys, yet not quite grasping the chronology of the business, recently visited a menagerie, and gave particular and patient attention to a large cage of our alleged poor relations on exhibition there. He stood for a long time intently scrutinizing their human-like motions, gestures, and expressions. By and by he fancied that the largest of them, an individual of a singularly grave demeanor, seated at the front of the cage, gave him a glance of intelligence. The glance was returned. A palpable wink followed, which also was returned, as were other like signals; and so it went on until his reverence, having cast an eye around to see that nobody was observing him, leaned forward and said, in a low, confidential tone: “Av ye’ll spake one w-u-r-r-d, I’ll baptize ye, begorra!”—Joseph H. Twichell, D.D.

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ANIMAL DOMINION

An English hunter tells the story of a tigress that was known all over India as the man-eater, who once had given her whelps a live man to play with. She carried off the man from an open hut in the forest where some wood-cutters were sleeping. His companions took refuge in trees, and from their place of safety saw her take the man alive to where the whelps were waiting close by, and lay him down before them. As the man attempted to crawl away the whelps would cling to his legs with teeth and claws, the tigress looking on and purring with pleasure. (Text.)—Louis Albert Banks.

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Animal Friendliness—See [Protection].

ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE

A recent dispatch from an Indiana town says:

Jeff Clarke, a farmer of Wabash township, owns a mule that plays the part of an alarm-clock every morning with such regularity that Clarke has about discarded the little alarm-clock that hangs on the bed-post and firmly refuses to part with the animal.

Promptly at 4 o’clock this mule kicks the side of the barn four times in succession. At first Clarke thought the animal was ill, and for several mornings he got up and investigated. He took note, however, that the gong of the alarm-clock started buzzing when the mule started kicking.

He put two and two together, and reached the conclusion that the mule knows the hour when the Clarke household should arise and begin the day’s work.

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The criminal classes of Moscow, Russia, are beginning to believe that the police dog “Tref” is possest of an evil spirit.

It was rumored recently, in the night shelters and criminal dens of Moscow, that “Tref” and his keeper were on the track of certain robbers, and were about to scour the town.

It transpired that a number of bank-notes and other valuables had been stolen from a Moscow gentleman named Pokrofsky. “Tref’s” services were immediately requisitioned. He was put on the scent of the thief, and, after taking a circuitous course, entered a night shelter and made straight for an old coat belonging to a house-painter who was known under the name of Alexander. The sum of five hundred rubles, which had been stolen from M. Pokrofsky, was found in one of the pockets of the coat.

“Tref” then left the night shelter, and, still hot on the scent, went to the shop of a second-hand dealer named Gussef, and here a number of silver articles stolen from M. Pokrofsky were discovered. A cabman drove up at this time, and complained that he had just been robbed of a fur coat and an ordinary overcoat. “Tref” was at once taken to the scene of the theft, and within a few minutes found the clothing concealed in the courtyard of a neighboring house.—Philadelphia Record.

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See [Conviction Through a Monkey]; [Direction]; [Instinct, the Homing].

Animal Instinct—See [Faith Better Than Sight].

Animal Retaliation—See [Anger, Futile].

ANIMAL SAVES LIFE

St. Clair McClary, a miner, buried deep in a snow-slide, at Seward, Alaska, owed his life to the keen scent of his dog. The snow-slide swept down the mountain. Four men at work on the property were caught without warning and buried under several feet of snow and débris. Two escaped without serious injury. So deep was the slide, however, that difficulty was experienced in reaching the others. The dog led the rescuers to a place several yards distant, where, after hard digging, they came on the men, who had been buried eight hours. Thomas Coales was dead under the icy weight. McClary was barely alive when taken out.—The Associated Press.

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ANIMAL SOLVING PROBLEM

A tiny mouse recently solved the problem of getting an electric wire through a pipe 197 feet long at the Vinery Building (Norfolk, Va.). There were several bends in the pipe, and modern methods, such as blow-pipes, failed to produce results.

A mouse was caught and a thread tied to its leg. A tape was tied to the thread, and the wire to the tape. The mouse was given a start, and went through the pipe in a hurry. Liberty was its reward.—Philadelphia Record.

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Animal Traits—See [Peaceful Instinct of Simians].

ANIMALS, ABSURD FONDNESS FOR

A seamstress whom I know was sewing in the home of a wealthy woman in one of the aristocratic suburbs of Boston. She was there every day for nearly a week, when finally her patience became exhausted and she left the house never to return.

She said she could stand being fed on crackers and milk every day at the noon meal, but when she heard the mistress of the house at the telephone ordering half a chicken for her pet dogs she could withhold her wrath no longer.

Of course, the good woman of the house was sweetly unconscious of the absurd comparison between the dogs’ food and the food for the seamstress. Had she had any sense of the meanness of her conduct, she never would have telephoned that message within the hearing of the seamstress.

The truth of the matter was that her heart—as much as she had left of it—was all wrapt up in her pet dogs, and her interest in human beings had become as a matter of habit, simply a question of the amount of service they could render her. She is probably whining to-day about the seamstress who didn’t know her place and who was jealous of people who had means.—George W. Coleman, “Searchlights.”

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Animals as Pest Destroyers—See [Barriers].

Animals Before Men—See [Heartless Pagans].

Animals, Inferior to Man—See [Man’s Conquest of Animals].

Animals not Original—See [Originality of Man].

Animals, Reason in—See [Reasoning Power in Animals].

ANIMISM

The child’s religious nature, like that of primitive man, is animistic. Professor Dawson, in “The Child and His Religion,” says:

It is hard for children to resist the feeling that a summer shower comes with a sort of personal benevolence to water the dry flowers and grass. A little girl of four years illustrated this feeling on a certain occasion. There was a thunder-shower after a long dry spell. The rain was pattering on the sidewalk outside the house. The child stretched forth her hands toward the rain-drops and said: “Come, good rain, and water our plants!” Flowers and trees have individuality for most children, if not for all. Ruth’s mama found her sitting among the wild geraniums, some distance from the house. “What are you doing, Ruth?” “I’m sitting by the flowers. They are lonesome and like to have me with them, don’t you know?” At another time she said: “Mama, these daisies seem to look up at me and talk to me. Perhaps they want us to kiss them.” On one occasion she said to her brother, who was in the act of gathering some flowers she claimed for herself, “I don’t think it nice to break off those poor flowers. They like to live just as well as you do.” The boy thus chided by his sister for gathering her flowers was generally very fond of plants and trees, and felt a quite human companionship in them. He could not bear to see flowering plants hanging in a broken condition, or lying crusht upon the sidewalk. Even at the age of ten years, he would still work solicitously over flowers like the violets, bluets, and crowfoots, with evident concern for their comfort.

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Announcement, Apt—See [Choir, The].

ANSWER, A SOFT

A drunken carter came into a Greenock (Scotland) train and sat opposite a clergyman, who was reading his paper. Recognizing the profession of his vis-a-vis, the carter leaned forward and in a maudlin way remarked, “I don’t believe there’s any heaven.” The clergyman paid no heed. “Do you hear me?” persisted the carter. “I don’t believe there’s any heaven.” Still the clergyman remained behind his newspaper. The carter, shouting his confession loudly, said, “I tell ye to your face, and you’re a minister, that I don’t believe there’s any heaven.” “Very well,” said the clergyman; “if you do not believe there is any heaven, go elsewhere, but please go quietly.” (Text.)—London Graphic.

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Anthem, Extending a National—See [Praise, United].

ANTHROPOMORPHISM

Spiritual manhood has put away childish thinking. What, for instance, does a child think about God? Professor Street publishes some first-hand illustrations of childish conceptions of God. He says that children “completely anthropomorphize God, making Him subservient to time, space, and passions, just the same as they themselves are.” I recall an example or two: When a girl was told that the stars were God’s eyes, she at once asked where His legs were. Another saw, for the first time, a cupola on a barn. Gazing at it she asked, “Does God live in that little house?” A boy asked some one if God made the river running back of his house. On receiving an affirmative answer, he promptly replied, “He must have had a big shovel.” When another boy refused to say his prayers, he was asked for the reason. He answered, “Why, they are old. God has heard them so many times that they are old to Him, too. Why, He knows them as well as I do myself.”—F. F. Shannon.

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ANTICIPATING SUCCESS

One may so believe as already in a sense, to possess:

In a little parlor down-stairs of Mencci’s house in Staten Island were three large altar-candles in the Italian colors of red, white and green which, Mencci told us (says a correspondent of the Century) he and Garibaldi had amused themselves at making in a leisure hour “to illuminate the Campidoglio of Rome when the Italian army should enter the Eternal City and make it the capital of United Italy.” When Rome was recovered, three other candles in the Italian colors were actually sent to Garibaldi there. (Text.)

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ANTICIPATION

It was Schelling who said that if he had truth in one hand and the search for truth in the other, he would let truth go in order that he might search for it. Something of this philosophy is in these verses:

For me the loitering of the road,

The hidden voice that sings;

For me the vernal mysteries,

Deep woods and silent springs.

I covet not the ended road,

The granary, the sheaf;

For me the sowing of the grain,

The promise of the leaf. (Text.)

—Lippincott’s Magazine.

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See [Nature’s Antidote].

ANTIPATHIES, INSTINCTIVE

It would be an excellent accomplishment if an abhorrence of moral evils could be bred in men similar to the instinctive antipathies described in this extract:

It seems absolutely incredible that Peter the Great, the father of the Russian navy, should shudder at the sight of water, whether running or still, yet so it was, especially when alone. His palace gardens, beautiful as they were, he never entered, because the river Mosera flowed through them. His coachman had orders to avoid all roads which led past streams, and if compelled to cross a brook or bridge, the great emperor would sit with closed windows, in a cold perspiration. Another monarch, James I, the English Solomon, as he liked to be called, had many antipathies, chiefly tobacco, ling, and pork. He never overcame his inability to look at a drawn sword, and it is said that on one occasion when giving the accolade, the king turned his face aside, nearly wounding the new-made knight. Henry III of France had so great a dislike for cats that he fainted at the sight of one. We suppose that in this case the cat had to waive his proverbial prerogative, and could not look at a king. This will seem as absurd, as extraordinary to lady lovers of that much-petted animal, but what are we to say of the Countess of Lamballe, of unhappy history, to whom a violet was a thing of horror? Even this is not without its precedent, for it is on record that Vincent, the painter, was seized with vertigo and swooned at the smell of roses. Scaliger states that one of his relations was made ill at the sight of a lily, and he himself would turn pale at the sight of watercresses, and could never drink milk. Charles Kingsley, naturalist as he was to the core, had a great horror of spiders, and in “Glaucus,” after saying that every one seems to have his antipathic animal, continues: “I know one (himself), bred from his childhood to zoology by land and sea, and bold in asserting and honest in feeling that all, without exception, is beautiful, who yet can not after handling and petting and examining all day long, every uncouth and venomous beast, avoid a paroxysm of horror at the sight of the common house-spider.” (Text.)—Cassell’s Family Magazine.

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A well-known officer of Her Majesty’s army, who has proved his strength and courage in more than one campaign, turns pale at the sight of a cat. On one occasion, when asked out to dinner, his host, who was rather skeptical as to the reality of this feeling, concealed a cat in an ottoman in the dining-room. Dinner was announced and commenced, but his guest was evidently ill at ease; and at length declared his inability to go on eating, as he was sure there was a cat in the room. An apparently thorough but unavailing search was made; but his visitor was so completely upset that the host, with many apologies for his experiment, “let the cat out of the bag,” and out of the ottoman at the same time.—Cassell’s Family Magazine.

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Antiques, Artificial—See [Age].

ANTIQUITY

Sven Hedin has furnished additional evidence of the Chinese invention of paper. On his recent journeys he found Chinese paper that dates back to the second half of the third century after Christ. This lay buried in the sand of the Gobi desert, near the former northern shore of the Lop Nor Sea, where, in the ruins of a city and in the remnants of one of the oldest houses, he discovered a goodly lot of manuscripts, many of paper, covered with Chinese script, preserved for some 1,650 years. The date is Dr. Himly’s conclusion. According to Chinese sources, paper was manufactured as early as the second millennium before the Christian era. The character of the Gobi desert find makes it probable that the making of paper out of vegetable fibers was already an old art in the third Christian century.—The Scientific American.

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See [Pedigree].

ANXIETY, COST OF

An English auctioneer tells the following story:

I had eight acres of land to sell, and there was one landowner in the district, whom I will call Mr. Robinson, who was very anxious to secure this particular piece of land because it adjoined his own estate. He had already attempted to acquire it by private arrangement, but the negotiations had fallen through.

Being engaged at the funeral of a relative on the day of the sale, he left very definite instructions with his butler, who had only entered his service a day or two before, to attend the sale and buy the land at any price. The butler duly came to the sale and took up his station in the old chimney-corner, out of sight of every one excepting myself. It so happened, however, that Mr. Robinson was back from the funeral earlier than he expected, and, going to the sale and failing to observe his butler, began the bidding with an offer of $2,500. Up and up went the price, the landowner and the butler bidding against one another like Trojans, until at last the field was knocked down to the latter at $7,500. The feelings of Mr. Robinson and the amusement of the company may be easily imagined when the purchaser remarked in a quiet voice, “For Mr. Robinson. Here’s his check for you to fill in for the deposit.”

Fortunately, Mr. Robinson was anything but a poor man, and he had benefited to the tune of $200,000 in the loss of his relative, so the few extra thousands he paid did not hurt him.

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ANYHOW, THE LAND OF

Beyond the Isle of What’s-the-Use,

Where Slipshod Point is now,

There used to be, when I was young,

The Land of Anyhow.

Don’t Care was king of all this realm—

A cruel king was he!

For those who served him with good heart

He treated shamefully!

When boys and girls their tasks would slight

And cloud poor mother’s brow,

He’d say, “Don’t care! It’s good enough!

Just do it anyhow.”

But when in after life they longed

To make proud fortune bow,

He let them find that fate ne’er smiles

On work done anyhow.

For he who would the harvest reap

Must learn to use the plow,

And pitch his tent a long, long way

From the Land of Anyhow!

—Canadian Presbyterian.

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APOLOGY APPRECIATED

The Hon. W. P. Fessenden unintentionally made a remark against Seward, which was considered to be highly insulting. When Fessenden was informed of the construction placed upon it, he went frankly to Seward, and said, “Mr. Seward, I have insulted you, but I did not mean it.” Mr. Seward was so delighted with the frank apology that he exclaimed, “God bless you, Fessenden! I wish you would insult me again.”—James T. White, “Character Lessons.”

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APPAREL

The late Mark Twain, in The North American Review, gave a striking “Sartor Resartus” sketch of what might be the Czar’s morning meditations, from which we quote the following paragraph:

“After the Czar’s morning bath it is his habit to meditate an hour before dressing himself.”—London Times Correspondence.

(Viewing himself in the pier-glass.)

Naked, what am I? A lank, skinny, spiderlegged libel on the image of God! Look at the waxwork head—the face, with the expression of a melon—the projecting ears—the knotted elbows—the dished breast—the knife-edged shins—and then the feet, all beads and joints and bonesprays, an imitation X-ray photograph! There is nothing imperial about this, nothing imposing, impressive, nothing to invoke awe and reverence. Is it this that a hundred and forty million Russians kiss the dust before and worship? Manifestly not! No one could worship this spectacle, which is Me. Then who is it, what is it, that they worship? Privately, none knows better than I: it is my clothes. Without my clothes I should be as destitute of authority as any other naked person. Nobody could tell me from a parson, a barber, a dude. Then who is the real Emperor of Russia? My clothes. There is no other. (Text.)

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See [Dress Affecting Moods].

APPAREL IN FORMER TIMES

When Governor Bowdoin, a tall, dignified man, reviewed the troops assembled at Cambridge, in 1785, he was drest in a gray wig, cocked hat, a white broadcloth coat and waistcoat, red small-clothes, and black silk stockings. John Hancock, thin in person, six feet in stature, was very fond of ornamental dress. He wore a wig when abroad, and a cap when at home. A gentleman who visited Hancock one day at noon, in June, 1782, describes him as drest in a red velvet cap lined with fine white linen, which was turned up two or three inches over the lower edge of the velvet. He also wore a blue damask gown lined with silk; a white stock, a white satin embroidered waistcoat, black satin small-clothes, white silk stockings, and red morocco slippers. Washington, at his receptions in Philadelphia, was drest in black velvet; his hair was powdered and gathered behind in a large silk bag. His hands were encased in yellow gloves; he held a cocked hat with a cockade on it, and its edges adorned with a black feather. He wore knee and shoe buckles, and at his left hip appeared a long sword in a polished white leather scabbard, with a polished steel hilt. Chief-Justice Dana, of Massachusetts, used to wear in winter a white corduroy surtout, lined with fur, and held his hands in a large muff. The judges of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts wore, till 1793, robes of scarlet, faced with black velvet, in winter, and black silk gowns in summer. At the beginning of this century powder for the hair became unfashionable, tying up the hair was abandoned, colored garments went out of use, buckles disappeared, and knee-breeches gave place to trousers.—Youth’s Companion.

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See [Judging from Facts].

APPEAL, A LIVING

Dr. Bernardo, of London, the great philanthropist, was standing at his front door one bitter day, when a ragged urchin came up to him and asked to be admitted to the Orphans’ Home. “How do I know what you tell me is true? Have you any friends to speak for you?” asked Dr. Bernardo, assuming a tone of severity. “Friends!” echoed the little fellow—“friends! No, I ain’t got no friends. But if these ere rags,” holding up his tattered garments, “if these ere rags won’t speak for me, nothing else will.” (Text.)

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Appeal Wasted—See [Omniscience].

APPEARANCE

The Late Charles P. Thompson, of the Massachusetts Supreme Court, at one time in his practise had a client named Michael Dougherty, who had been arrested for the illegal sale of liquor, but the police had no evidence except one pint of whisky, which they found in his alleged kitchen barroom. The Boston Herald, in relating this story, says:

In the superior court this evidence was produced and a somewhat vivid claim made of prima facie evidence of guilt by the prosecuting attorney. During all this time Mr. Thompson was silent. When his turn came for the defense he arose and said:

“Michael Dougherty, take the stand.”

And Mike, with big red nose, unshaven face, bleared eyes, and a general appearance of dilapidation and dejection, took the stand.

“Michael Dougherty, look upon the jury. Gentlemen of the jury, look on Michael Dougherty,” said Mr. Thompson. All complied. Mr. Thompson himself silently and steadily gazing at Mike for a moment, slowly and with solemnity turned to the jury and said: “Gentlemen of the jury, do you mean to say to this court and to me that you honestly and truly believe that Michael Dougherty, if he had a pint of whisky, would sell it?”

It is needless to say Mike was acquitted. (Text.)

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APPEARANCES

An officer of a Cunard steamer remarked that there is “a vast difference between the appearance of steerage passengers returning to Europe and those coming to America. On the western voyage the faces of the immigrants are bright with expectancy. You can see that they have been inspired by the roseate visions painted for them by their friends who have succeeded on this side of the water. Those who go back are not many. You can pick them out by their dejected looks. They have not succeeded. They have found that hard work is just as necessary to get along in the States as in Europe.”

The sad faces of those who go back because they failed is an illustration of the gloomy hearts that are carried by those who have turned away from their Christian profession and gone back to their sins.

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See [Profession versus Character]; [Spiritual Declension].

Appearances, Judging by—See [Judgments, Indiscriminate].

APPEARANCES MISLEADING

It is the custom in European, if not in all American, prisons to shave the head and face of criminals in order to have the full force of the moral expression furnished by the contour of one and the outlines of the other. A profusion of hair may disguise the head whose shape often reveals a degree of turpitude. A luxuriant mustache may hide a mouth about which lurks the evidence of the basest instincts. (Text.)—San Francisco Chronicle.

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APPETITE

To be slain by appetite is a common fate with men, as it was with this serpent:

A boa-constrictor woke up hungry from a three months’ nap and caught a rabbit, which he bolted whole in the usual way. This did not satisfy the cravings of his capacious stomach, and so he went a-field in search of further victuals, and presently came to a rail fence, which he essayed to get through. But the lump caused by the defunct tho undigested bunny stopt him, like a knot in a rope, when his head and a few feet only of his body had passed between the rails. Lying in this attitude, he caught and swallowed another rabbit which had incautiously ventured within his narrow sphere of action. Now, what was the state of affairs? He could neither go ahead nor astern through the fence, being jammed by his fore-and-aft inside passengers, and in this embarrassing position he was slain with ease.

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APPOINTMENT, GOD’S

Take each disappointment

As thy Lord’s appointment

Sent in love divine;

Check all faithless fretting

God is not forgetting

Any need of thine.

Appraising the Christian Religion—See [Christian Honesty].

Appreciating Patience—See [Good, Seeing the].

APPRECIATION

When Sir Godfrey Kneller had painted for Alexander Pope the statues of Apollo, Venus, and Hercules, the poet paid the painter with these lines:

What god, what genius did the pencil move,

When Kneller painted these!

’Twas friendship, warm as Phœbus, kind as love,

And strong as Hercules.

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The reckless extravagance that has brought Princess Louise, of Belgium, into such trouble with her royal relations is far from being due entirely to selfishness, and Brussels now is discussing, half in admiration, half in despair, the latest story showing the utter inability of the princess to realize the value of money or the things it buys. When in Paris, a few weeks ago, she happened to be in her room in her hotel when a little work-girl from one of the shops in the Rue de la Paix called to deliver a gown. Princess Louise was struck with the girl’s charm of face and manner, and, keeping her for a few minutes in conversation, chanced to admire a small silver medal she was wearing around her neck.

“It is a medal of the virgin of Prague,” said the girl. “Perhaps your Highness will accept it.”

Princess Louise thanked her warmly; but, insisting on giving the girl something to replace the trinket, handed her a rope of pearls. The girl supposed they were only imitations, but the whole story came out in a few days when, on taking them to a jeweler to have the clasp tightened, she was cross-questioned as to how the pearls had come into her possession. They proved to be worth more than $11,000.—New York Press.

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See [Compliment]; [Endeavor]; [Heroism Recognized]; [Kinship].

Appreciation, Belated—See [Irretrievable, The].

APPRECIATION, DELAYED

Mrs. Marion M. Hutson points out the necessity of appreciating the help of others before it is too late.

Somewhere in the future—God knows when—

These tired hands will lie at rest—and then

The friends and loved ones will recall with tears

Some kindly deed they wrought in bygone years.

Will ponder o’er those little acts again,

And register them all on heart and brain.

My precious ones, why wait? Tell me to-day

If ever hands of mine have soothed your way.

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APPRECIATION, LACK OF

The owner of a small country estate decided to sell his property, and consulted an estate agent in the nearest town about the matter. After visiting the place, the agent wrote a description of it, and submitted it to his client for approval.

“Read that again,” said the owner, closing his eyes and leaning back in his chair contentedly.

After the second reading he was silent a few moments, and then said thoughtfully: “I don’t think I’ll sell. I’ve been looking for that kind of a place all my life, but until you read that description I didn’t know I had it! No; I won’t sell now.”

If we could see our own blessings as others see them, would it not add to our contentment with our lot?

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APPRECIATION OF CHARACTER

A shipping merchant said to a boy applying for work, “What can you do?” “I can do my best to do what you are kind enough to let me try,” replied the boy. “What have you done?” “I have sawed and split my mother’s wood for nearly two years.” “What have you not done?” “Well, sir,” the boy replied after a moment’s reflection, “I have not whispered in school for over a year.” “That is enough,” said the merchant. “I will take you aboard my vessel, and I hope some day to see you her captain. A boy who can master a wood-pile and bridle his tongue must have good stuff in him.”—James T. White, “Character Lessons.”

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Appreciation of Poetry—See [Poet Appreciated].

Appreciation of the Gospel Story—See [Father, Our].

APPRECIATION, SPIRITUAL

An infinite joy is lost to the world by the want of culture of the spiritual endowment. Suppose that I were to visit a cottage and to see its walls lined with the choicest pictures of Raffael, and every spare nook filled with statues of the most exquisite workmanship, and that I were to learn that neither man, woman, nor child ever cast an eye at these miracles of art, how should 1 feel their privation; how should I want to open their eyes, and to help them to comprehend and feel the loveliness and grandeur which in vain courted their notice! But every husbandman is living in sight of the works of a diviner Artist; and how much would his existence be elevated could he see the glory which shines forth in their forms, hues, proportions, and moral expression!—William Ellery Channing.

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APPREHENSION, LINCOLN’S

In Carl Schurtz’ war reminiscences, we find the following, showing the apprehension felt by Lincoln at the outbreak of the war:

One afternoon, after he [President Lincoln] had issued his call for troops, he sat alone in his room, and a feeling came over him as if he were utterly deserted and helpless. He thought any moderately strong body of Secessionist troops, if there were any in the neighborhood, might come over the “long bridge” across the Potomac, and just take him and the members of the Cabinet—the whole lot of them. Then he suddenly heard a sound like the boom of a cannon. “There they are!” he said to himself. He expected every moment that somebody would rush in with the report of an attack. But the White House attendants, whom he interrogated, had heard nothing. Nobody came, and all remained still. Then he thought he would look after the thing himself. So he walked out, and walked and walked until he got to the arsenal. There he found the doors all open, and not a soul to guard them. Anybody might have gone in and helped himself to the arms. There was perfect solitude and stillness all around. Then he walked back to the White House without noticing the slightest sign of disturbance. He met a few persons on the way, some of whom he asked whether they had not heard something like the boom of a cannon. Nobody had heard anything, and so he supposed it must have been a freak of his imagination. It is probable that at least a guard was sent to the arsenal that evening. (Text.)

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Aptitude—See [Capacity, Original].

Arch, The—See [Ancient Art].

Architecture Imitating Nature—See [Nature A Model].

ARGUING FOR TRUTH

To illustrate the extraordinary argumentativeness of the Scots there is a story of a Scotchman who lay dying in a London hospital. A woman visitor wanted to sing to him some hymns, but he told her that he had all his life fought against using hymn tunes in the service of God, but he was willing to argue the question with her as long as his senses remained. I say that when a man in the face of death is willing to stand for the truth as it has been taught to him, it is out of such stuff that heroes are made. (Text.)—John Watson.

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Argument, Ineffectual—See [Docility, Spiritual].

ARISTOCRACY, ABSURDITIES OF

It is common to find in American novels such expressions as “great families,” “best society,” “long descended,” and we also hear of the “exclusiveness” of the “fastidious” American aristocracy, who think as much of their positions as the haughtiest vieille noblesse in Europe. “A patrician crush” is, according to one writer, the synonym of what another calls “a tony gathering.” These crushes and gatherings have, however, little of the aristocratic element in their composition. They are, for the most part, but fashionable circles in which prevails “the milliner’s estimate of life.” It is into this society that the young lady makes her “dew-bew,” as debut is startlingly pronounced in America. In no other English-speaking community do the plebeians stickle so for the titles of “gentleman” and “lady.” I was told by an Irish-American laundress that “the lady what did the clear-starching got twelve dollars a week.” And I have heard of a cabman who asked, “Are you the man as wants a gentleman to drive him to the depot?” During an investigation concerning the Cambridge, Mass., workhouse, one of the witnesses spoke of the “ladies’ cell.” And a newspaper reporter writing of a funeral had occasion to say how “the corpse of the dead lady” looked. The plebeian who, by dint of hard work, has accumulated wealth, often aspires to patrician distinction. Tiffany, of New York, is said to have a pattern-book of crests, from which the embryo nobleman may choose an escutcheon emblematic either of his business or of some less worthy characteristic. A shirt-maker of Connecticut, having made a fortune by an improved cutting-machine, announced his intention of getting a coat of arms. An unappreciative commoner asked him if the design would be a shirt rampant. “No,” he gravely replied, “it will be a shirt pendant and washerwoman rampant.”—Harold Brydges, Cosmopolitan.

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ARISTOCRACY, INGRAINED

Tolstoy says:

Speaking of my past I condemn myself unreservedly, for all my faults and errors were the natural result of my aristocratic birth and training, which is the worst thing that can befall a man, as it stifles every human instinct. Turgenef wrote to me: “You have tried for many years to become a peasant in conduct as well as in ideas, but you nevertheless are the same aristocrat. You are good-hearted and have a charming personality, but I have observed that in all your practical dealings with the peasants you remain the patronizing master who likes to be esteemed for his benefactions and to be considered the bounteous patriarch,” in which he was very right.

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Ark, Noah’s Seaworthy—See [Bible Re-enforced].

Armament, Costly—See [War, After Effects of].

ARMIES OF THE WORLD

The comparative exemption of the United States from great military burdens may be inferred from the chart below. The cost proportionately of maintaining the army in this country is far greater than in Europe. The table below shows the cost of maintaining the armies of some of the principal countries.

British Army (1908–09)	$138,800,000
United States Army	103,000,000
German Army	206,000,000
French Army (1907–08)	189,000,000

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See [Militarism].

COMPARATIVE SIZE OF THE ARMIES OF THE WORLD

ARMOR

The king-crab, found in the Indian and American seas, is armed with a sword-like weapon at his tail and his head is protected by a sword-shaped helmet, so he is well armed for the battle of life. Since he and his ancestry have assisted in purifying the sea, we can see the wisdom which preserved them from age to age.

In the age-long battle against spiritual enemies, Paul urges the Ephesian Christians to “take unto them the whole armor of God”; “and having done all to stand.” (Text.)

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See [Resistance].

ARMOR-PROOF

Paul writes of the “whole armor of God,” proof against “the fiery darts of the wicked.”

Mr. W. T. Stead thinks that armor is certainly about to be revived in the military forces of Europe. A bullet-proof substance has been discovered; and if it be used as a breast-plate like a steel cuirass, it will put a different face on modern warfare. The French Government has tested the new armor, and reports that it has four or five times the resistance of chilled steel, and is invulnerable to rifle bullets. The equipment is not heavier than a cuirass and costs half as much. Of his own observation in this matter, Mr. Stead writes as follows in the London Daily Chronicle:

“I have myself witnessed experiments which go to prove that the soldier provided with this new armor can expose himself to the fire of modern rifles, at a distance of one hundred yards, and suffer as little from their fire as if he were being assailed by pea-shooters. The regiment arrayed in this armor of proof, and marching up to within one hundred yards of the enemy, suffers no more damage from a mitraille of steel bullets than if it were marching through an ordinary hailstorm.”

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Army, Tribute to—See [Acknowledgment].

AROUSAL

Sensationalism in the sense of stirring men to greater interest in verities, seems wholly praiseworthy:

Old Peter Cartwright was a famous preacher and circuit-rider many years ago.

The exhorter was holding a camp-meeting in Ohio. There was a great number of campers on the field, and the eccentric speaker addrest vast concourses at every service, but he thought too few were being converted. He felt that something should be done to stir the sinners to repentance, so he prepared a strong sermon on the second coming of Christ. He told how the world would go on in its sin and wickedness, and at last Gabriel would sound his trumpet and time would come to an end. He described the horrors of the lost and the joys of those who were saved. The sermon grew in intensity, and he brought his people up to a grand climax, when suddenly the sound of a trumpet smote the ears of the anxious throng.

There was a great sensation, and many fell upon their knees in terror and began to repent and pray. Women screamed and strong men groaned. Pandemonium was let loose for a few minutes. After the terror had somewhat ceased the preacher called to a man up a tree, and he descended with a long tin horn in his hand. The speaker then turned in fierce wrath and upbraided the people. He cried out in stentorian tones that, if a man with a tin horn up a tree could frighten them so, how would it be in the last great end when Gabriel’s trumpet sounded the knell of the world! The sermon had a great effect upon the vast audience, and many hundreds flocked to the front and were converted.

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AROUSEMENT BY A THOUGHT

It is not infrequent to find a really great mind sunk in apathy for want of a compelling thought, a dominant idea, a commensurate ambition. Then something rouses such a mind, and at the touch of a magic wand its slumber is broken. Some hint drops like a seed into its prepared soil, and the mind becomes so renewed and vitalized that henceforth it scarcely seems the same. This was precisely the history of Gibbon’s intellect. The moment when his imaginative sympathy was touched with the thought of the past glory and present degradation of Rome, was the moment that freed all the latent powers of his genius, as ice is thawed by the sudden burst of summer warmth. And in that moment, also, his years of wide and irregular study bore fruit.—W. J. Dawson, “The Makers of English Prose.”

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Arousing an Undutiful Son—See [Worshiper, A Mother].

Arrested Development—See [Retardation].

Arriving—See [Ambition].

Art—See [Home Values]; [Picture, Record Price for]; [Realism].

Art, Age in—See [Enduring Art].

Art as a Transformer—See [Beautiful, Influence of the].

ART, DECLINE OF

As long as a family thought itself comfortably furnished with a chest or two, a wardrobe, a box-bedstead, a dozen earthenware pots of different sizes, and three or four vessels of pewter or copper, each one of these objects of utility might become a vehicle for a good deal of artistic thought. The piece would be handed down from mother to daughter, from father to son. At all events, it would be made with that possibility in mind. It was made to last, and in an artistic community it would be the object of a good deal of careful consideration as to its form and as to the little adornments that might be added to it. Now, however, when the poorest family requires two hundred utensils of one and another kind, and finds, moreover, that these utensils are furnished at an incredibly low price by great companies which make them by the thousand and force them upon the customer with favorable opportunities for immediate delivery and gradual payment, the possibility of having the common objects of life beautiful has gone.—Russell Sturgis, “Lubke’s History of Art.”

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ART, DEVOTION TO

The secret of success in any calling is an enthusiasm for our work like that of this artist:

The steamer was anchored in Glacier Bay, and he [R. Swain Gifford] was alone on the beach near Muir inlet, sketching. He was making a sketch of the Muir glacier, which was 250 feet above water and two miles wide. Suddenly he noticed an enormous mass of ice breaking away from the glacier. It was several hundred yards long, and Gifford quickly realized that he was witnessing something few men had seen. He saw his danger if he stayed on the beach, but he wanted a picture of that huge detached mass of ice. He had his camera with him; he quickly adjusted it and took a snap-shot. He didn’t lose a minute then in collecting his tools and running as fast as he could to the high ground.

He escaped none too soon. The great mass of ice dropt into the water, and then came a return wave that would have swallowed the artist if he hadn’t been on high ground. (Text.)

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Art Highly Valued—See [Picture, Record Price for].

Art in Weather Changes—See [Ice Beauty].

ART UNAPPRECIATED

The enterprising manager of a Paris theater once called upon Meissonier and asked him to paint a drop-scene for a certain theater and name his own terms. “You have seen my pictures, then?” asked Meissonier. “Oh, yes,” exclaimed the manager; “but it is your name—your name I want; it will draw crowds to my theater.” “And how large is it you wish this curtain to be?” inquired the artist. “Ah, well, we will say fifteen meters by eighteen.” Meissonier took up a pencil and proceeded to make a calculation. At last he looked up and said with imperturbable gravity, “I have calculated and find that my pictures are valued at 80,000 francs per meter. Your curtain, therefore, will cost you just 21,600,000 francs. But that is not all. It takes me twelve months to paint twenty centimeters of canvas. It will, therefore, take me just one hundred and ninety years to finish your curtain. You should have come to me earlier, monsieur; I am too old for the undertaking now. Good-morning.”—Art Amateur.

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See [Age].

ARTICULATION

“Clear articulation, not loudness in speech, is what the deaf desire. Remember this, and not only will the deaf hear, but they will be spared the physical pains and embarrassing discomfort occasioned by shouting,” advised Dr. C. J. Blake in a lecture at the Harvard medical school during which he discust hearing and speech.

“People thoughtlessly shout at those who are afflicted with deafness, little realizing the real pain they are causing,” said Dr. Blake. “If you would be thoughtful and considerate of these unfortunates, put emphasis on the articulation. Again and again have deaf persons said to me, ‘How I wish people would not shout at me so,’ and there is a pathetic note in the voice which long suffering creates.”

It was brought out that the so-called drumhead is tough enough to sustain a column of mercury twelve inches high and of its own diameter; but is, nevertheless, delicate enough to record sound waves vibrating 50,000 times a second.

The ordinary human voice, he explained, is vibrating about 152 times, and should be perfectly understood by an ordinary healthy individual. Consonant sounds, he said, are the retarding factor in speech, hence it is the duty of every person to cultivate the habit of clear articulation.

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ARTIFICE

I once discovered a mother cuckoo in charge of an infant, evidently on his first outing. Drawn by his insistent demand for food, I came unexpectedly upon the pair in a retired spot in the woods. At sight of me the mother instantly left her clamorous offspring and flew to the lowest limb of a tree near by, where she treated me to a series of theatrical postures, bows, feathered displays, and acrobatic performances wonderful to see, keeping up at the same time a low cry which had instantly silenced the baby cries I had heard. Never for an instant taking her eyes off me, nor interrupting her remarkable demonstrations, the anxious mother very gradually, almost imperceptibly, moved away, a twig at a time, while I followed, fascinated and far more interested in her dramatic efforts than in finding her youngling. When she had thus drawn me several feet away from the dangerous spot, presto! she took to her wings and was gone.—Olive Thorne Miller, “The Bird Our Brother.”

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There is a pleasant story of a lawyer, who, being refused entrance into heaven by St. Peter, contrived to throw his hat inside the door; and then, being permitted by the kind saint to go in and fetch it, took advantage of his being fixt to his post as doorkeeper to refuse to come back again. (Text.)—Croake James, “Curiosities of Law and Lawyers.”

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A congregation in Connecticut had lost their pastor, and were desirous of filling his place. But their last minister had been self-taught, and the aristocracy—to wit, the deacons, etc.—stipulated that the new minister should have a classical education. In order to be sure of their man, the deacons agreed to let applicants preach a sermon on trial. At last a Welshman heard of the vacancy, but he was less learned than the one who had left; still, he determined to try. The day was arranged, the appointed minute arrived, and the candidate mounted into the pulpit. He got well on in his sermon, when he suddenly recollected that he was expected to show his learning.

“My friends” he said, “I will now quote you a passage in Greek.”

With a solemn look he repeated a verse in his native tongue. The effect was marvelous; approving nods and smiles were exchanged among the deacons. Thus encouraged, he followed up his advantage by saying:

“Perhaps you would also like to hear it in Latin?”

He then repeated another passage in Welsh; this was even more successful than before. The preacher cast his eye over his flock, and saw that he was regarded with looks of increasing respect. Unfortunately, there was also a Welshman in the congregation; he was sitting at the back, almost choked in his efforts to stifle his laughter. The minister’s eye fell on him, and took in the whole situation at a glance. Preserving his countenance, he continued:

“I will also repeat it in Hebrew.”

He then sang out in his broadest Welsh: “My dear fellow, stop laughing, or they will find it out.”

The other understood, stifled his laughter, and afterward dined with his successful countryman.—Tit-Bits.

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See [Foolishness Sometimes is Wisdom]; [Preferred Creditor].

Artifice in Insects—See [Simulation].

Ascent of Man—See [Blessing the Ropes].

ASCETICISM

The black shadow of asceticism spread over the sky of the Puritan Fathers. Given two coats, they chose the ugliest one. Given two colors for the woman’s garb, they chose the saddest and somberest. Given two roads, they chose the one that held the most thorns and cutting rocks. Given two forms of fear and self-denial, they took both. The favorite text of asceticism is “deny yourself.” The favorite color of asceticism is black; its favorite music, a dirge; its favorite hour is midnight; its favorite theme is a tombstone. The mistake of asceticism is in thinking that pain by itself considered has a moral value.—N. D. Hillis.

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Macaulay said that “the Puritans hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.” I once knew a man of this type who rooted up his wife’s flower-bed on the ground that attention to flowers was a wicked waste of time that ought to be given to the study of the Bible.—W. C. S.

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ASKING AMISS

We ask for so many foolish things. If we should get them we would not know what to do with the answers. “Sophie,” the scrub-woman, of Brooklyn, in her quaint, half-broken English, once said this:

“I heard about a countryman who was in the city for the first time. He went into a restaurant and made up his mind to have something fine, whatever the cost. He saw a man at the next table put a little mustard on his plate, and he said ‘that must be fine and expensive, he has so little, but no matter what it costs, I will haf some.’ So he told the waiter to bring him a dollar’s worth of that stuff. A plate was brought. He took a big spoonful: it bit him; he spit it out and did not want any more. So, we ask for things that if our Father should give them to us we would only be bitten by them and be glad to get rid of them.” (Text.)

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Asking and Receiving—See [Faith and Prayer].

ASKING, BOLDNESS IN

The story is told in the Springfield Republican that Andrew Carnegie asked a young man who was about to become a student at Jena to get for him an autograph of Professor Haeckel. When it arrived it read thus: “Ernst Haeckel gratefully acknowledges the receipt from Andrew Carnegie of a Zumpt microscope for the biological laboratory of the Jena University.” Mr. Carnegie made good, admiring the scientist more than ever. (Text.)

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ASLEEP

Tsavo is 133 miles from Mombasa, and during the construction of the line no less than twenty-nine Indians were eaten there by lions. The work was threatened, and a party of three young men—Hubner, Parenti and Ryal—took a car and lay in wait at night for a bold man-eater, who had stalked up and picked up a man on an open railway truck as the train slowed down into the station. Parenti lay on the floor, Hubner was in an upper berth, and Ryal was on the seat of the carriage, with his rifle. Ryal was on guard, but unfortunately he fell asleep. At 2 o’clock in the morning the man-eater they were hunting entered the carriage, picked up Ryal, jumped through the window, and fled to the forest, where the unfortunate man’s whitened bones were long afterward found.—Peter MacQueen, Leslie’s Weekly.

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ASPIRATION

Does not every man at times feel the aspiration to realize the man he “might have been”:

Across the fields of long ago

He sometimes comes to me,

A little lad with face aglow—

The lad I used to be.

And yet he smiles so wistfully,

Once he has crept within—

I think that he still hopes to see

The man I might have been!

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Climb on! Climb ever! Ne’er despond,

Tho from each summit gained

There stretch forth ever heights beyond—

Ideals to be attained!

Life’s rescript simply is to climb,

Unheeding toil and tire;

Failure hath no attaint of crime,

If we but still aspire.

—James T. White, “Character Lessons.”

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The spirit of man is not intended to grovel on low levels or to gravitate downward under carnal influences. Man is the only creature on earth so constructed physically as to be able to gaze upward.

“He died climbing” is the simple inscription on a monument to an Alpine guide, who perished when attempting the ascent of a peak. That record is a noble tribute to a hero. His attitude should be ours—looking upward and pressing forward. He was pressing on in the pathway of duty. Many a splendid career, intercepted at the critical juncture, might be described by the same sententious record. “He died climbing” may be said of many a young and ardent enthusiast—of Mackay, soon cut off in Uganda; of Bishop Hannington, reaching the border of the same land and martyred there; of Patteson, soon slain in Melanesia by islanders who mistook him for a slave-catching captain; of Henry Martyn, who did not live to see any of the results of his mission; of Wyclif, who sent forth the Bible in English but was not permitted to see the beginning of the Reformation. All these “died climbing.” (Text.)

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Theodosia Garrison points out in these verses that aspiration, even when it fails of realization, is good for the soul:

Let me remember that I failed,

So I may not forget

How dear that goal the distance veiled

Toward which my feet were set.

Let me forget, if so Thy will,

How fair the joy desired,

Dear God, so I remember still

That one day I aspired. (Text.)

—Ainslee’s Magazine.

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W. H. T. Squires expresses the normal law of the soul—that its desires are to rise and climb—in these verses:

Up from the mists of marsh and fen,

Up from the gloom of the glen,

The mountains rise to kiss the skies,

They spurn the plain that lowly lies—

Up from the forest’s fitful shade,

Up to the heights that God hath made.

Up from the stains of sordid strife,

Up to a loftier life

My spirit cries, “Aspire! aspire!”

Climb we the heights from high to higher

Up, lest the fleeting daylight fade,

“Up!” is the law God hath laid.

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See [Discontent, Divine]; [Focusing the Eye].

ASSIMILATION

The alfalfa plant is a rank species of grass that grows in the western sections of our country. It is valuable for horses and also for enriching waste land. It thrives in a soil where other plants would fail because of its power to find water. Roots in search of moisture have been found that were eighteen inches in length. The stalk makes heavy drafts on the surrounding air for nitrogen. Its powers of assimilation are remarkable. Its rapid and sturdy growth is a result of its habit of drawing upon all the surrounding air and the soil to build itself up.

If we wish to grow we must avail ourselves of every possible means. Soul culture depends not only upon hearing the truth, but upon assimilating the truth. (Text.)

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Are there not moral and religious “bolters and chewers.” Some men try to get their religious pabulum by “bolting” all their experience in a revival; others, with a more quiet deliberation, are intent upon growing in grace through the years.

In an address at the Royal Dental Hospital, London, Dr. Osler, as reported in The Hospital (London), asserted that the public may be divided into two great groups, the bolters and chewers. Says this paper: “He maintains that it is the business of dental students to endeavor to convert the overwhelming percentage of bolters into a select group of chewers. This is their mission of utility; but Professor Osler also affirms that they have a mission to beautify the race. He holds that if there is one thing more beautiful than another under heaven it is a beautiful set of teeth. To promote these missions he would have attached to every elementary school a dental surgeon to inspect the mouths of the children; and total abstainers will learn with a shock, that he considers the question of teeth more a national problem than that of alcohol. If people generally had good teeth instead of bad, the chewers would be many and the bolters few, and a potent cause of human suffering and physical deterioration would be arrested.”

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Assistance—See [Helpfulness].

ASSOCIATION

There are localities in Switzerland where the canary is caged with a nightingale so that it may catch the sweetness and breathe into its notes that harmonious melody that delights all tourists in Europe. It is a demonstration of the power of association. This canary-bird had been trained by a nightingale.

So men may make their lives strong, pure, sweet and holy in thought, word and deed by unbroken association with those who live on a higher plane. (Text.)

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Association, Christian—See [Warmth, Lost].

ASSOCIATION, LAW OF

My father remembered the last clergyman in New England who still continued to wear the wig. At first it became a singularity and at last a monstrosity, and the good doctor concluded to leave it off. But there was one poor woman among his parishioners who lamented this sadly; and waylaying the clergyman as he came out of church, she said, “Oh, dear doctor, I have always listened to your sermon with the greatest edification and comfort, but now that the wig is gone all is gone.”—James Russell Lowell.

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ASSOCIATION, LEARNING BY

A gentleman had in his bird-room a deformed blue jay, who was reared from the nest and never associated with his kind. In the room was also a cardinal grosbeak, one of the finest singers of his family. The young blue jay learned the song of the cardinal so perfectly that the gentleman could not tell it from the cardinal’s own. “Even when hearing the two performers almost together, I could distinguish only a slight difference, which was not in the cardinal’s favor.”—Olive Thorne Miller, “The Bird Our Brother.”

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ASSOCIATIONS MOLD MEN

Among the doctrines of Belial is the theory that we must familiarize ourselves with evil if we would have power to resist it.

Jean François Millet in the middle of the last century was engaged on his early pictures. As they appeared one after another they astonished and delighted all lovers of art throughout the world. What were the subjects of these wonderful paintings? They were all deeply religious—the “Angelus,” the “Sower,” the “Man with the Hoe,” the “Winnower,” the “Gleaners.” These masterpieces were not only spiritual, but were replete with beauty, pathos, power, and with all the works of the highest genius. Now, the theory had been popular that an artist must revel in fleshly and voluptuous presentations of life. But Millet hated the salaciousness of Greece, and Rome was abhorrent to him. He was a lifelong lover of his Bible, and his life was one of devotion and purity. (Text.)

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ASSURANCE

Among the Hebrews is preserved a legend of two sisters, who on the night of the Exodus, when the destroying angel passed through the land of Egypt, remained indoors with the family.

One was ready for the departure, and filled with assurance and peace, so partaking of the paschal lamb. The other was restless and fearful lest the death angel would not pass them by. “Is the blood sprinkled?” she kept asking anxiously, reproaching her confident sister for being so unconcerned. “Oh, is it sprinkled?” “Why, yes,” said the sister, “the blood has been sprinkled, and we have God’s word that when He sees the blood He will pass over.”

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Assurance from Doing God’s Will—See [Temperature].

Astrology—See [Birth Ceremonies].

ASYMMETRY

Men are one-sided in their views and opinions as truly as in the use of their hands. There was never but one character that was perfectly symmetrical:

Why shouldn’t we work with two hands just as we walk with two feet? It seems ridiculous that the human family should have been using but one hand, either left or right, when nature provided two good hands with no apparent reason why they should not both be used. This oversight, or neglect, is being remedied at a school in Philadelphia, where the pupils are learning to use either hand with equal facility. The boys and girls are taught to draw with the right and left hand at once, and it is marvelous with what ease, after a little practise, the pupils can draw a design on the blackboard, using the right hand for the right side of the picture and the left hand for the left side, completing the entire design in a few minutes, the two hands working with perfect coordination. Compared with the old method of drawing laboriously and slowly with one hand, the ambidextrous system is infinitely superior.

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ATHEIST’S GIFT TO MISSIONS

In the year 1877, Col. Robert G. Ingersoll made an extended tour of the Pacific coast. He spoke in several of the larger cities, and at length arrived at Portland. There was in the city a certain missionary to the Chinooks. He could not afford a ticket to the lecture, and was greatly disturbed at what he read concerning it. Yet he felt a strong desire to meet Colonel Ingersoll, and a common friend procured a meeting between them.

There was a moment of restraint, relieved by the greater ease of Colonel Ingersoll, who began the conversation by inquiring concerning the work of the missionary. A little mirthfully he questioned him about the advisability of exporting religion, of which there might not be any surplus at home, and inquired, somewhat doubtfully, about the wisdom of a man giving his life to a hopeless task in attempting to teach a small and vanishing tribe things of which we ourselves have perhaps less knowledge than we suppose.

The answers of the missionary, however, interested Colonel Ingersoll. He inquired about the “Chinook jargon,” that mongrel speech, made of English, Canadian French, Chinook and other Indian words, picked up from several tribes, and all softened and modified to suit deficiencies of pronunciation; the r changed into l, after the Chinese manner, and the grammar “made by chopping up words with a tomahawk.”

How could a man preach in a language where one word had to serve as noun, verb and adjective? How could a man of education make himself understood in a language with only four parts of speech and some fragments? How could he tell the story of Peter’s denial in a language which, having only one word for all manner of feathered things, and no verb for the act of crowing, made it necessary for the speaker to imitate the act and sound? How could he tell that Peter swore, in a language that had no verb “to curse,” but had plenty of oaths inherited from traders in various tongues? How could he impart any idea of sacred things in a polyglot of slang?

The missionary told him the story of his work—how he preached as best he could in the poor, meager speech of the people, meantime teaching the children English, encouraging them in useful arts, fighting the vices of civilization as they made inroads among the people, and doing what he could for them as adviser and friend. It was hard work, and not very encouraging, but it was worth doing, and he was happy in it.

In telling his story thus, encouraged and led on by a man trained and skilful in cross-examination, the missionary unconsciously disclosed many of the hardships and privations which his work entailed upon him. Possibly, and indeed probably, he had not thought of them seriously as hardships, and therefore he related with telling simplicity the stories of long journeys by canoe and on horseback, of nights in the open, of poor and sometimes revolting food eaten in savage company. There was no word of complaint, nor even the least expression of regret, except for books and papers and magazines missed.

When the missionary rose to go, Colonel Ingersoll took his hand warmly, and said, “I thank you for coming to see me. This interests me very much. It’s good work you are doing, it’s good work. And here, take this. I am not a frequent contributor to missionary work, but I like this.”

Into the missionary’s hand he dropt a bright twenty-dollar gold piece.—Youth’s Companion.

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Atmosphere—See [Impurities].

Atmosphere, City—See [Tests].

Atmosphere, The, and Light—See [Light-bearers].

Atmosphere, The Christian—See [Hospitality in Church].

ATOM, THE, A WITNESS TO GOD

Not only “day unto day, uttereth speech,” but, according to science, there are innumerable voices in the world that also speak of God. A writer finds such in the atom of matter:

How then came they to be what they are? These “myriad types of the same letter”; these unhewn blocks from an unknown quarry; more indestructible than adamant; the substratum of all the phenomena of the universe; and yet, amid the wreck of all things else, this infinitude of discrete atoms alone is found incapable of change or of decay. Who preserves to them their absolute identity, notwithstanding their infinite variety? Who endowed them with their inalienable properties? Who imprest upon them the ineffaceable characters which they are found to bear? At what mint were they struck, on what anvil were they forged, in what loom were they woven, so as to possess, as Huxley declares, “all the characteristics of manufactured articles”?

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ATONEMENT

All the theological interpretations of atonement look back to the Old Testament Hebrew terms kaphar and kasah “to cover.” We are saved by an atoning sacrifice; that is, by a sacrifice which covers us.

A fire on a gentleman’s estate in England destroyed his mansion. It spread to a plantation near by, and trees and bushes were burned and charred. The gentleman next day heard the chirping of little birds in a blackened thicket close by him. He searched among the charred branches and discovered a nest, on which was lying, with outstretched wings, a dead robin. Under her were three fledglings, safe and sound. The mother bird had covered her young, saving them at the cost of her own life. (Text.)

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ATONEMENT COMPELLED

There is a Spanish story of a village where the devil, having made the people excessively wicked, was punished by being compelled to assume the appearance and habit of a friar, and to preach so eloquently, in spite of his internal repugnance and rage, that the inhabitants were completely reformed. (Text.)

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See [Sin Without Atonement].

ATROPHY

Professor Dawson, in his book “The Child and His Religion,” says:

I once saw a little girl of three years who was unable to walk, or even stand alone. She would make no attempt to do either, and seemed to have absolutely no interest in getting up on her feet or walking. The child seemed perfectly well, and her parents had become very anxious about her. Inquiry revealed the fact that when she was nine months old the little girl had been injured by a fall, and had been kept very closely confined for six months; at first in her crib, and later in a high chair, never being allowed to stand on her feet. When she was at last put upon the floor, she began her creeping just as she had been in the habit of doing six months before. Nor did she show any disposition to do otherwise than creep, even after her strength had been fully recovered. It required several months of careful attention on the part of the parents, in exercising her in standing and walking, to awaken any interest whatsoever in these activities. This law of atrophy through disuse undoubtedly operates throughout the entire range of human interests, not only in those interests more closely related to organic life, but also in the intellectual, moral, and religious interests. It is manifestly of great concern to parents and others who have the care of children that all normal interests be given a chance to function at the right time and in the right way. (Text.)

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ATTACHMENT REWARDED

In order to secure some token by which to remember a great-aunt to whom she had been much attached, Mlle. Bertha Chevanne, a young French woman, of Paris, attended a sale of the old lady’s effects. The girl was poor and most of the articles were beyond her purse. A shabby old book—a book of devotions—was, however, put up. Nobody bid for it except Mademoiselle Chevanne, and she bought it for next to nothing. In turning over the leaves she came across a folded paper. It was a will bequeathing her the whole of her great-aunt’s estate, valued at $80,000.

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ATTACK, DISCRETION IN

As with a fortress, so with many fortified evils. It is often better to flank them than to exhaust strength by direct attack.

To let a fortress go, so far from being disgraceful, is often one of the best things a general can do. If MacMahon had let Metz go, the Germans could not have got round Paris without tremendous losses and months of fighting. If Lee had abandoned Richmond in 1862 the war might have been protracted indefinitely. The greatest mistake Osman Pasha made in 1877 was holding on to Plevna too long. Napoleon let Genoa go in spite of the fine defense of Massena, but he soon recovered it after he had defeated the Austrians in the field. In the American civil war Burnside was compelled by the press to advance, with the result of the failure at Fredericksburg and the loss of 12,000 men. A field army should never be risked for a fortress.—Dr. Miller Maguire, London News.

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See [Aggression]; [Saloon, Fighting the].

Attainment by Abandonment—See [Higher, The].

ATTAINMENT, SUPERFICIAL

There are men who attempt to rise in the social scale without any apparent fitness for the larger place aspired to. Many start off on a course, but lack ability, patience and pluck to persevere and so fail of their goal, as the following somewhat humorous illustration suggests:

Attorney William S. Barnes, of San Francisco, has a new office boy. The last boy with whom he was associated resigned a few days ago because the law business did not suit his peculiar temperament.

“How long have you been here?” asked Barnes, when the small boy made known his intention to engage in a different vocation.

“Six months,” replied the boy.

“And you don’t like the law business?”

“Naw. It’s no good, and I tell you straight, I’m mighty sorry I learned it.”

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Audience Attracted—See [Providential Interposition].

AUDIENCE, INSPIRATION FROM

“When a singer is up before an audience, he or she can tell whether the effect of the voice is pleasing or not by watching the countenances of the listeners,” says Thomas A. Edison in Popular Mechanics. “When, however, one sings into a dead instrument like the phonograph, without the slightest recognition as to whether the voice is properly tuned and pitched, the singer becomes rather nervous. I know some very capable singers who can sing splendidly before an audience, but when it comes to getting their voice into the phonograph, they are dumb. I have brought people of great note out to the works, and paid them handsomely for their vocal efforts, only to find, when I came to reproduce these attempts on the phonograph, that the records were utterly worthless. One must have, indeed, a regular phonograph voice in order to make a good record. Some people can sing well into a phonograph who could not get up before an audience to save their lives; and again, as I have said, some people can sing before persons, but they can not perform before a phonograph.”

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Audiences—See [Fitness]; [Opportunities Improved].

AUGURY

The apostle who said “I know in whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able, &c.,” had a far better assurance than the philosopher who trusted in a meaningless omen.

Rousseau, in his celebrated “Confessions,” records that he was one day sitting in a grove, meditating whether his soul would probably be saved or lost. How could he settle the question? A supernatural voice seemed to suggest an appeal to a singular kind of augury. “I will,” said he, “throw this stone at that tree. If I hit the tree, it shall be a sign that my soul is to be saved. If I miss it, it shall indicate that I am to be lost.” Selecting a large tree, he took the precaution of standing near to it, and threw his stone plump against the trunk. “After that,” naively says the philosopher, “I never again had a doubt respecting my salvation.”

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Author Encouraged—See [Good, Seeing the].

AUTHORITY UNCONSCIOUSLY SOUGHT

The child finds the world so complex and varied with so many unpleasant and pleasant experiences that he soon discovers the usefulness of his elders in providing him with pleasant experiences or in warning or guarding him against the unpleasant whenever he feels uncertain in a new situation. That is, the child tends to fall back on the authority of the older person and automatically to accept, up to a certain point, the dogmatic verdict of his elders as to the desirability or undesirability of a course of action. Neither the child nor the grown person is, as a rule, conscious of his acceptance of the thought of another as his own, but examples of it are evident enough in the spheres of religion, politics, precedent (in law), fashion, and, in fact, all of life’s activities.—Stuart H. Rowe, “Proceedings of the Religious Education Association,” 1907.

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Authority—See [Risk Shifted].

AUTHORS, WORK OF

George Eliot is said to have worked harder on “Romola” than on any of her other books. In her own words: “I began it a young woman—I finished it an old woman.” And yet but about seventeen months were consumed in the work. Some authors have lived long. Alexander von Humboldt lived to be over eighty. Goethe was over eighty-one when he died. Kant lived his quiet life for just eighty years, the quietest and most uneventful life known to a man of genius. Titian died at the age of ninety-nine. Michelangelo lived to be more than eighty. Among the royal persons who have become known as authors are Queen Victoria, King Oscar II, of Sweden; Dom Louis, of Portugal; the Shar Nasr-ed Deen, of Persia; Queen Elizabeth, of Rumania; Prince Nicholas, of Montenegro; Dom Pedro II, of Brazil; King Louis II, of Bavaria, and several others. The novelists are at present dominant among us, so far as popular acceptation and remuneration go. It has been lately ascertained that Mr. Tennyson made four thousand pounds a year by his poetry. Walter Besant, who was seduced from the career of a college don by the fascinations of the novelist’s art, earns more for any one of his romances than Carlyle earned in the first ten years of his literary career. Charles Reade averaged, we believe, five pounds per page for his writings. Herbert Spencer’s remuneration scarcely exceeded five shillings per page. Matthew Arnold’s imaginative powers earned him an income at least four times smaller than Wilkie Collins’ imagination could command. A shoemaker’s son, a few years ago, wrote a short comic story which tickled the public taste; his success was so immediate that the public—represented by the publishers—afterward paid him one thousand pounds a year for whatever he chose to write.—Christian At Work.

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Autograph Diplomacy—See [Asking, Boldness in].

AUTOMATIC EXPERIENCES

Man early acquires automatic tendencies and abilities quite beyond the compass of his natural equipment. Man is gifted natively with a brief and fleeting form of attention, but by exercise and wise guidance its effectiveness may be greatly increased both as to direction and span. Imagination and memory may be natively vigorous in a desultory and disorganized sort of a way and yet be comparatively helpless when confronted with a situation requiring the organization of details into a system or unit. For example, children may get a great deal of pleasure out of fairy stories long before they understand much from the various disconnected and often incorrect interpretations they make of the words they have heard. This tendency is shown also in childish explanations of things. One young man notices that leaves, sticks, and stones left standing some time on the pond where he skated gradually sink into the ice. He notices, also, that slight scratches and flakes of snow gradually disappear. Such data led him to explain to himself the phenomenon as due to the fact that the water worked through the pores of the ice and froze on the top. It is evident that he had not heard of radiation from dark as compared with light surfaces, but it illustrated an automatic tendency to explain things fairly well developed which was quite beyond the power of man naturally.—Stuart H. Rowe, “Proceedings of the Religious Education Association,” 1907.

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AUTOMATIC LEARNING

Nature has provided plants, animals, and man with many ways of adjusting themselves to their environment, but only animals and man organize their experiences so as to make them of use to them in future situations. Some kinds of mice can learn to go to a little house with a blue-colored front because it suggests food to them as they have always found it there, and not in a similar one with a red front. Another kind of mouse (the Japanese dancing mouse) does not learn this difference, either because it is color-blind or, much more likely, because it has not sufficient intelligence to organize its experiences of blueness by making it suggest food to him. It has been said bees can distinguish colors and associate them with sweetened water. These animals, and, in fact, animals in general, have the ability, as we say, naturally to do thousands of appropriate things whenever the appropriate stimulus presents itself. Given the newly hatched chicken and the attractive piece of corn within easy range, and with a quick dive of the head the corn has been snapt up by a series of muscular movements quite complicated in their totality but all coordinated or organized from the first. The chicken does not have to learn this accomplishment. A young child also can perform many kinds of action without learning, as, for example, movements of head, limbs, and other parts of the body.

Compare the difficulty a year-old child able to walk has in picking up something with his hands. He makes many motions, sometimes overreaching, sometimes falling short, in the end probably falls flat. The child has to learn both to walk and to pick things up, but he learns both without realizing that he is learning them. It is done spontaneously.

There are, then, some things that man and animals can do without learning, and some things they have to learn, but that they learn automatically. Beside these easier tasks there are many others that man may learn, but only through definite thinking or direction with a distinct aim in view, rather than automatically without any consciousness of his learning. The child may recognize his father’s authority instinctively even without learning. He may by imitation think of some things as right or wrong without being taught. There are others he must be taught and learn with a definite purpose and effort or he will not make the distinction.—Stuart H. Rowe, “Proceedings of Religious Education Association,” 1907.

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Auxiliary Strength—See [Reenforcement from Without].

Auxiliary Workers—See [Supplies, Bringing Up].

AVARICE

When you can put out a fire by throwing oil on it, then, and not till then, can you extinguish avarice by feeding it with millions.—N. D. Hillis.

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See [Greed]; [Money, Greed for].

AVERAGE LIFE

Many an enthusiastic tourist has sacrificed morning sleep to witness a sunrise from some summit, and suffered disappointment. The splendor extended over too wide an area; it lacked concentration—accentuation. The sunrise of the short horizon, seen from the average altitude, appears brighter as well as narrower. It requires no wide ranging of the eye, no shifting of the point of attention. It is not weakened by its own diffusion. You may carry this principle over into the philosophy of life. The short horizon—which is, for the most part, the average—has its distinct advantage. You will doubtless get more out of life at the average altitude than if you live always in some extraordinary height.

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