W
Wager, A Rash—See [Womanly Wit].
WAIT AND SEE
Be not swift to be afraid;
Many a ghostly thing is laid
In the light from out the shade,
Wait and see.
Do not live your sorrows twice;
Fear is like a touch of ice;
Faith can kill it in a trice,
Wait and see.
Why expect the worst to come?
Pondered cares are troublesome,
Joy makes up a goodly sum,
Wait and see.
Better than your wildest dreams
Is God’s light that for you gleams.
When the morning cloudy seems,
Wait and see.
—Marianne Farningham.
(3415)
WAITING
We often accomplish more by patient waiting than by direct effort.
There was a very balky horse in town which nobody could drive. A kind gentleman undertook to drive him through the White Mountains. His owner laughed, and said: “You can not drive out of town, much less through the mountains.” He said quietly, “I think I will manage him,” and he did, in this way. He filled the carriage-box with books, and when the horse balked he quietly flung the reins on the hook, took out a book and began to read, and waited patiently until the horse saw fit to start. This he did two or three times, and the horse was cured.
(3416)
See [Static Progress].
Waiting for Enlightenment—See [Drink].
Walking—See [Following Inexactly]; [Gait and Character].
WALKING FOR INSPIRATION
Much bending over the folio does not make the better part of poetry or of prose. It inheres as much in the physiological condition that results from the swinging of the legs, which movement quickens heart action and stimulates the brain by supplying it with blood charged with the life-giving principle of the open air.
In spite of his club-foot, Byron, one of the most fecund, if not the most moral, of poets, managed to walk about in the open to an extent that should shame the verse-writer of to-day, clinging to his strap in the trolley-car. Wordsworth walked all over the Cumberland district and the neighboring country. Wherever he happened to be he poked into every secret corner. Shelley, we are told, rambled everywhere. Despite all unseemly cavil as to Tennyson’s drinking habits, I should say that he drew more inspiration from his walks than from his wine. Goethe, who during his lifetime required fifty thousand bottles of the vintner’s best to sweeten his imagination, found his extensive walks about Weimar a source of great inspirational profit. (Text.)—Bailey Millard, The Critic.
(3417)
WALKING WITH GOD
When a boy I remember distinctly seeing my father at a long distance off (almost as far as the eye could reach) on a road on which we were all accustomed to travel, as it was the highway to a big city. The one thing that enabled me to distinguish my father from other fellow travelers on that road was his manly walk. There was the graceful swing of the arm and directness of step, with his toes pointing in the right direction that quickly identified him from other men.
In the moral and spiritual world we are known by how we step, whether we are stepping with God or away from Him.—R. S.
(3418)
Jeanette McMillan writes in this poem of a life’s journey with God:
My plans were made, I thought my path all bright and clear,
My heart with songs o’erflowed, the world seemed full of cheer,
My Lord I wished to serve, to take Him for my Guide,
To keep so close that I could feel Him by my side;
And so I traveled on.
But suddenly, in skies so clear and full of light,
The clouds came thick and fast, the day seemed changed to night.
Instead of paths so clear and full of things so sweet,
Rough things, and thorns, and stones seemed all about my feet,
I scarce could travel on.
I bowed my head and wondered why this change should come,
And murmured, “Lord, is this because of aught I’ve done?
Has not the past been full enough of pain and care?
Why should my path again be changed to dark from fair?”
But still I traveled on.
I listened—quiet and still, there came a voice:
“This path is mine, not thine; I made the choice.
Dear child, this service will be best for thee and me
If thou wilt simply trust and leave the end with me.”
And so we travel on.
(3419)
WANDERER’S RETURN
A widowed lady of mature life mourned a runaway son who was lost to her for years. Her sorrow had silenced her song, for she was a cultured woman and an accomplished vocalist. But during a visit at a distant friend’s home she was induced to sing at a church service, choosing for her solo, “Where is my wandering boy to-night?” and, of course, sang it with much feeling; and after rendering the second stanza:
“Once he was pure as the morning dew,
As he knelt at his mother’s knee,
No face was so bright, no heart more true,
And none were so sweet as he,”
the congregation joined in the refrain:
“O where is my boy to-night?
O where is my boy to-night?
My heart o’erflows, for I love him he knows,
O where is my boy to-night?”
“Mother, I’m here,” responded a young man away back, making his way sobbing up the aisle. Among the converts that night was this returning wanderer. The Rev. Robert Lowry is the author of the hymn and tune.
(3420)
WANT BRINGS PROGRESS
How paltry, worthless, small and scant
A world in which man knew not want,
Where no ungratified desire
Allured or drove him to aspire!
Then welcome world of toil and hope
Where every energy has scope!
Brothers, in God’s great world rejoice,
And harken to His cheering voice
That calls man to the larger task
And gives him more than he could ask.
Let us in the assurance rest
That what God does is always best.
—Charles William Pearson, “A Threefold Cord.”
(3421)
War—See [Armies of the World]; [Militarism]; [Navies of the World]; [Strategy]; [Tension, Moral].
WAR, AFTER EFFECTS OF
The Civil War lasted four years. The number of those enlisted in the Union army was 2,113,000. The number killed in action was 67,000; died of wounds received in action, 43,000; while the total number of deaths from all causes was 359,000. I have no statistics of the Confederate army, but certainly they would largely increase the total casualties of the war. On the other hand, the Spanish War lasted but a few months. The total number of men mustered in was 223,000. The number killed in action was only 218—not as many as have been killed in many a single mining catastrophe; the number of those that died from wounds received in action was 81; the number dying from disease, 3,848. The total casualties during that war were less than the number killed in railroad accidents in this country during a single year. According to the report of the Interstate Commerce Commission, the number killed on our railways during the year ending June 30, 1908, was 3,764; the number injured, 68,989. Other years show a greater fatality. In the Civil War were some of the greatest battles of history and a terrible loss of life on either side. In the Spanish War, outside of two brilliant naval engagements, there were only a few skirmishes. The two wars taken as a whole compare about like a twelve-inch rifled gun with a small pistol; and yet, as we have seen, after the Civil War there was no cry for an increase in armament, no call for a navy to challenge the fleets of the world, a steady payment of the national indebtedness, a devotion to the pursuits of peace, and a magnificent enlargement of our industries and business, while after the Spanish War we increased our army, and we have been steadily building ironclad after ironclad, until now our navy stands second among the navies of the world.—David J. Brewer.
(3422)
WAR AND PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT
In a sermon on the scientific indictment of war, Dr. James H. Ecob says:
Soldiers must be young men; not only that, but young men of the finest possible physical development. The question at once presents itself, What effect must it have upon the physical stamina of a people, if the very flower of its young men are led out and fed to the cannon? What would we say of a farmer who should lead out into the back lots the very flower of his stock and shoot it down, leaving it there as food for crows and foxes? At first we would cry, shameful waste? But a second thought, more fundamental and portentous, is, what effect must such a policy have upon the physical status or grade of the stock that remains. If the best are thrown away and only the second best are retained, progressive degeneration of the stock must result.
(3423)
WAR, COST OF
That we may better appreciate the present problem in its relation to the United States, attention is called to the appropriations made by the United States Government. For the year ending June 30, 1910, the appropriations for the army, fortifications and military academy amount to $111,897,515.67; for the navy, $136,935,199.05; and for pensions, $160,908,000. The total amount to be expended during the current fiscal year on account of wars and preparations for war aggregates $409,740,714.72. Compare these figures with the relatively insignificant sum of $32,007,049, which is the total amount appropriated for the use of the executive, legislative and judicial departments of the Government during the same period.
The total expenditures of the Government of the United States from its beginning in 1789 to 1909 has been as follows: For war, $6,699,583,209; for navy, $2,441,572,934; for pensions, $4,155,267,356. This aggregates the vast sum of $13,296,423,549 expended for war purposes, as against $4,466,068,760 expended for civil and miscellaneous purposes.
The average annual cost of the army and navy of the United States for the eight years preceding the Spanish War was $51,500,000. The average annual cost of the army and navy for the eight years since the Spanish War has been $185,400,000. The average yearly increase in the latter period as compared with the former has been $134,000,000, making a total increase in eight years of $1,072,000,000, or 360 per cent. This increase for eight years exceeds the national debt by $158,000,000. The amount of all gifts to charities, libraries, educational institutions and other public causes in 1909 in this country was $185,000,000, or $400,000 less than the average annual cost for the army and navy for the past eight years. What benefit has the nation derived from all this expenditure?
(3424)
See [Armies of the World]; [Navies of the World]; [Militarism].
WAR DISPLAY
Edmund Vance Cooke writes of the cruise of the American fleet around the globe in the following significant lines:
This is the song of the thousand men who are multiplied by twelve,
Sorted and sifted, tested and tried, and muscled to dig and delve.
They come from the hum of city and shop, they come from the farm and the field.
And they plow the acres of ocean now, but tell me, what is their yield?
This is the song of the sixteen ships to buffet the battle and gale,
And in every one we have thrown away a Harvard or a Yale.
Behold here the powers of Pittsburg, the mills of Lowell and Lynn,
And the furnaces roar and the boilers seethe, but tell me, what do they spin?
This is the song of the long, long miles from Hampton to the Horn,
From the Horn away to the western bay whence our guns are proudly borne.
A flying fleet and a host of hands to carry these rounds of shot!
And behold they have girdled the globe by half, and what is the gain they have brought?
This is the song of the wasters, ay, defenders, if you please,
Defenders against our fellows, with their wasters even as these,
For we stumble still at the lesson taught since ever the years were young,
That the chief defense of a nation is to guard its own hand and tongue.
This is the song of our sinning (for the fault is not theirs, but ours),
That we chain these slaves to our galley-ships as the symbol of our powers;
That we clap applause, that we cry hurrahs, that we vent our unthinking breath,
For oh, we are proud that we flaunt this flesh in the markets of dismal death.
—Christian Work and Evangelist.
(3425)
WAR, RACIAL FERTILITY AND
Comparison of the Annual Cost of the Army and Navy of the United States—1890–98, 1902–10
Overproduction of offspring—“race-suicide” by suffocation instead of by starvation—is responsible, we are now told, for the impulse that is driving the great nations toward war. Germany has outgrown her territory and must seize on some of Great Britain’s colonial overflow territory; Japan is similarly plethoric with population and must disgorge into our Philippines. This is the simple explanation of modern militarism offered by Henry M. Hyde, writing under the title that heads this article, in The Technical World Magazine. His theory has the advantage that most of the great world-movements in recorded history may be traced to this cause, from the Aryan migration to the daily influx of Poles and Hungarians on our own shores. After dwelling on the recent huge increase of armaments, the hasty building of dreadnoughts, the war-scares in England, the eager toasts on German battleships “to the Day”—meaning the day when the Kaiser shall turn loose his dogs of war on Britain—the writer goes on:
What is the matter with the world? What is the disease from which civilization suffers? And where are the physicians who shall prescribe the necessary remedies?
Pending an answer to these ancient and disputed questions, it is desired to point out certain facts which may help to explain the present situation and to ask whether, because of these facts, the nations may not, almost in spite of themselves, be driven into war?
In 1800 France had 4,000,000 more population than Germany. At that time both nations occupied approximately the same amount of territory, about 200,000 square miles each. The density of population in France was 134 to the square mile; in Germany it was 113.
Comparative Density of Population
In the last hundred years the fertility of the German nation has been so great that, in spite of the fact that it has sent more than 6,000,000 emigrants to the United States and millions more to other foreign countries, it has increased its home population to 64,000,000, nearly treble the number in 1800. During the same period the population of France, which has sent practically no immigrants abroad, has increased by less than 50 per cent. And, it should be remembered, in spite of Alsace and Lorraine, the territory of the two nations has remained practically the same—approximately 200,000 square miles each.
Comparative Naval Strength of England and Germany in Terms of Dreadnoughts
At the End of Three Years Comparative naval strength of the nations, in dreadnoughts, in 1913; the United States has six dreadnoughts, built and building. Germany England Austria Russia Japan France Italy
At present the density of population in the German Empire is 303 to the square mile. What that means may be grasped by considering that if the United States was as thickly populated as Germany is at the present time we should have 900,000,000 people—ten times our present population. In other words the present density of population in the United States is only 30 to the square mile.
If there were ten men to the present one on every acre in the United States some of us would certainly think of moving. Indeed, there is already complaint that the country is getting overcrowded. This year alone nearly 100,000 farmers from the Western States moved across the line into Canada, where land is still plenty and unsettled. If every man, woman and child in the United States was shut up within the limits of Texas, the Lone Star State would be little more crowded than is Germany at the present time. Put the strongest navy in the world across the Gulf from Texas and line the boundaries of the State with camps of armed men and one may get a fairly good idea of the German situation.
But—granted that Germany now holds all the people it can support—where may the loyal German go and remain under the German flag? The German colonies are small, scattering and not well fitted for the homes of white men. There are hundreds of thousands of Germans in various parts of South America, where the country is still undeveloped. But the United States holds all this continent under the protection of the Monroe Doctrine and forbids the hoisting of a foreign flag. Almost all the rest of the undeveloped world which is counted a white man’s country is part of the Empire of Great Britain.
Where and how shall the immensely virile and fertile Germanic race find a new home and a new empire over seas? Or will it, with the greatest army in the world at its command and a tremendous war fleet in the making, sit tight within its narrow boundaries at home until famine and pestilence sap its vitality and reduce its numbers? It may do that, it may allow millions of its sons to renounce their allegiance to the fatherland, or it may—the last terrible alternative is the one of which the world stands in dread.
(3426)
See [Armies of the World]; [Militarism]; [Navies of the World].
WAR, THE HORRORS OF
After his splendid victory of Austerlitz was won and the iron crown of empire securely fixt on his brow, Napoleon, standing on the high ground, saw a portion of the defeated Russian army making a slow, painful retreat over a frozen lake. They were at his mercy. He rode up to a battery and said, “Men, you are losing time! fire on those masses; they must be swallowed up! fire on that ice!” Shells were thrown, the bridge of ice was broken, and amid awful shrieks hundreds upon hundreds of miserable wretches were buried in the frozen waters.
The crime of war is its wanton waste of human life. And so are the social wrongs that decimate our world. And so is evil in every form. (Text.)
(3427)
WARFARE, ANTIQUATED
The ordinary spear was eighteen feet long, or three times the height of the man, and from one inch to an inch and a half in thickness. The iron jaws of the head were two feet and a half in length.
With such spears the Massachusetts militia was trained for more than forty years, or until the outbreak of Philip’s war. I do not know how long they may have been used in Virginia. Poking Indians armed with muskets out of a swamp with a spear might do for imaginary warfare—but when it came to real fighting it was very ugly business. The desperate character of the conflicts with Philip and the necessity for the exclusive use of gunpowder became apparent, and the edict went forth that the militia, who were trained to the use of the spear, should take up the musket. With this edict the spear disappeared in this country forever. It went out in England about the same time. Thus do we learn the progress of the human mind in arts of destruction.—Edward Eggleston.
(3428)
WARMTH, LOST
A story is told of a certain pastor who mourned over a backslider in his congregation, once a regular attendant at the prayer service, but who had drifted away, and who for many months had not been seen in the “upper room.” Finally, unable to stand it longer, at the close of one of the meetings, in which the voice formerly accustomed to lead in prayer was sorely missed, the minister went straight to the man’s home and found him sitting before the open fire. The absentee, somewhat startled by the intrusion, hastily placed another chair for his visitor and then waited for the expected words of rebuke. Had the rebuke been spoken, no one knows what the reply might have been or what mistaken yet lasting anger might have been kindled. But not a word did the minister say. Taking his seat before the fire, he silently took the tongs and lifting a glowing coal from the midst of its fellows, laid it by itself upon the hearthstone. Remaining painfully silent, he watched the blaze die out and the last warm flush of life fade away. Then it was the truant who opened his lips to say: “You need not say a single word, sir; I’ll be there next Wednesday night.” (Text.)
(3429)
Warmth of Christian Love—See [Doubts, Dissolving].
WARNING
A wasteful loss of fish life occurs by the sacrifice of millions of little fishes that are left to gasp out their lives on the meadows and grain-fields all over the great State of Montana owing to the irrigation ditches. To prevent this waste a paddle-wheel is installed at the head of a ditch to frighten back and prevent the fish from entering the intake. A law requiring this to be done is now in force in that State.
How many silly souls are warned away from danger-points in life by wise devices both divine and human!
(3430)
Julius Cæsar was at one time the idol of the Roman army. The ancient eternal city was at his feet. His foot was on the neck of his enemies and his word was sufficient to hurry his rival, Pompey, to an ignominious grave. The treasures of the world, power, dominion and wealth were at his command. Yet he had not the time as he went forward to the senate chamber on the Ides of March to read the letter handed him that warned him of the plot against his life.
Men are mercifully given time to live. But they are too busy to get ready to live, and too busy to heed the warnings that, if heeded, would save and prolong their lives.
(3431)
On an island off the Connecticut coast there stands, says Harper’s Weekly, a huge revolving platform whereon are placed eight large megaphones, each measuring some seventeen feet and having a mouth seven feet in diameter.
These horns are intended to cry warning to vessels at every point of the compass, the power being furnished by a steam-whistle. Their cry has been heard a distance of twenty miles, and when the wind is favorable it will carry nearly twice as far.
The instruments utter their warnings every fifteen seconds, each megaphone giving out its cry in turn, so that the warning notes make their way out over the water in every direction. There is a combination of short and long blasts for each point of the compass, so that mariners may know exactly whence the sound proceeds.
At Diamond Shoals, off Cape Hatteras, that graveyard of the Atlantic, where, by reason of the shifty character of the soil, it has been found impracticable to erect a lighthouse, the Federal Government has installed a contrivance held down by “mushroom” anchors. This instrument consists of two big megaphones, with a diaphragm vibrated by electricity. The machine is operated by clockwork, and, once wound up, shouts for many months without the necessity of any attention on the part of attendants. In calm weather the shout of this instrument is audible for a distance of twenty-five miles.
To be useful these warning voices must be heeded. So is it with moral warnings, of which the world is full.
(3432)
WARNING, AUTOMATIC
The spirit of God is a signal of warning to the soul when floods of evil are imminent.
Spain is subject to more frequent sudden inundations, perhaps, than any other country in Europe, and the necessity for some device to give warning may be appreciated. Such an alarm, ready night and day to notify the population along a river-bank of the approach of a dangerous flood, has been invented by Ramon Martinez di Campos, an engineer of Murcia. It is described as follows:
“The device uses the electric current; when an abnormal stage of the river is reached the water closes a circuit and thus starts an alarm signal at a great distance down-stream. In the present arrangement the automatic circuit-closer consists of a galvanized iron float which at high water makes contact with a fixt sheet of metal on a pole or a masonry support.”—Cosmos.
(3433)
WARNING MESSAGES
Once when the Persians and the Scythians confronted each other for battle, there appeared at the Persian camp a messenger from the Scythians, who said that he had some presents from the Scythian chief for Darius. The gifts proved to be a bird, a mouse, a frog, and five arrows. No explanation being given as to what the message meant, much curiosity on that point was manifested and many guesses were made. At length it was suggested that it meant threats and defiance. “It may mean,” said one, “that unless you can fly like a bird, into the air, or hide like a mouse in the ground, or bury yourselves like a frog in morasses and fens, you can not escape our arrows.”
The gospel message to us is not so ambiguous as this, but it is equally ominous if it be slighted.
(3434)
WASHINGTON, GEORGE
Perhaps one of the wittiest toasts on record is that of Franklin. After the victories of Washington had made his name well known throughout Europe, Franklin chanced to dine with the French and English ambassadors, when these toasts were drunk. The son of Britain rose and proudly remarked: “England—the sun whose beams enlighten and fructify the remotest corners of the earth.”
The Frenchman, glowing with national pride, drunk: “France—the moon whose mild, steady, cheering rays are the delight of all nations; consoling them in darkness and making their dreariness beautiful.”
This furnished Franklin with a fine opening, and his quaint humor bubbled over in his retort: “George Washington—the Joshua, who commanded the sun and the moon to stand still and they obeyed him.”
(3435)
See [Life, The Simple].
WASHINGTON’S GENIUS
Brilliant I will not call him, if the brightness of the rippling river exceed the solemn glory of old ocean. Brilliant I will not call him, if darkness must be visible in order to display the light; for he had none of that rocket-like brilliancy which flames in instant coruscation across the black brow of night, and then is not. But if a steady, unflickering flame, slow rising to its lofty sphere, dispensing far and wide its rays, revealing all things on which it shines in due proportions and large relations, making right, duty, and destiny so plain that in the vision we are scarce conscious of the light—if this be brilliancy, then the genius of Washington was as full-orbed and luminous as the god of day in his zenith.—John W. Daniel.
(3436)
Washington’s Humility—See [Life, The Simple].
WASTE
Water washes everything, touches everything, impregnates everything. Nothing escapes it. Incessantly, everywhere, whatever it meets, is dissolved and finally deposited in the immense common receptacle of the oceanic basins.
This constant washing continually modifies the chemical composition of the earth’s surface, and it evidently does so to the detriment of the soil’s fertility, since the substances that make a soil fertile are just those that are soluble in water. This general sterilization is masked by local advantages. A valley like that of the Nile, for instance, benefits by the substances brought down from regions nearer its source, but in the long run rivers are always carrying to the sea an enormous quantity of fertilizing material that is lost beyond recall. (Text.)—Paul Combes, Cosmos (Paris).
(3437)
Petroleum and natural gas, which are supplements to coal, are subjected to wanton waste. Natural gas is now being wasted at the rate of a billion cubic feet a day, by being blown into the air. In Louisiana great spouting wells of gas are burning in the open atmosphere, doing no good whatever to anybody. It is estimated that there are thus consumed in that State alone seventy million cubic feet per day, more than enough to supply Boston, Baltimore, Washington, Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee, and Pittsburg.
If the present rate of increase of exploitation of highgrade iron-ore continues, the supply will not last more than fifty years. In the not distant future it is certain that we shall be obliged to turn to the lower grade ores, of which the quantity is vastly greater, but the smelting of these ores will make a much heavier draft upon our coal supply.
Like coal and iron, the output of copper and zinc has more than doubled during recent decades, and the product of the past ten years is greater than the entire previous history of exploitation of these metals in this country.
Each year, not considering loss by fire, we are consuming three and one-half times as much wood as is grown. It is estimated that we allow twenty million acres of forest to be burned over annually. Of the timber we take, from one-fourth to one-half is lost by our wasteful methods of cutting and manufacture. Already within a little more than a century of the life of this nation approximately one-half of our forest products are gone. Our system of taxation of forests encourages rapid cutting rather than conservation. We must reform our tax laws concerning forest products; we must eliminate forest fires; we must use economically the wood cut; we must reduce the total amount used per capita until the growth of one year is equal to the consumption of that year.
Our water resources, including water for domestic purposes, for irrigation, for navigation, for power, are enormous. As yet they have been only very partially utilized. Fortunately, the water continues in undiminished quantities, being ever withdrawn from the ocean through the power of the sun, and ever falling upon the land. It is a perpetual resource.—Collier’s Weekly.
(3438)
WASTE BY DRINK
A man, who had destroyed three happy homes through his drinking habits, was converted, and set to work to lead his friends to Christ. Some time after his conversion one of his mates, seeing how clean and happy he was looking, asked him jocularly if he had any houses to let. He knew the questioner was a heavy drinker, so he decided to give him a practical lesson. “Here, mate,” he said, “just take a look down my throat, will you?” “There’s nothing there,” said the other, after a careful inspection of his throat. “Well, that’s queer, for I’ve put three good homes and a grocer’s shop down that throat, drowning them in drink.” (Text.)
(3439)
See [Drink, Effects of].
WASTE OF LIVES
Of all wastes, the greatest waste that you can commit is the waste of labor. If you went down in the morning into your dairy, and found that your youngest child had got down before you, and that he and the cat were at play together, and that he had poured out all the cream on the floor for the cat to lap up, you would scold the child, and be sorry the cream was wasted. But if, instead of wooden bowls with milk in them, there are golden bowls with human life in them, and instead of the cat to play with—the devil to play with; and you yourself the player; and instead of leaving that golden bowl to be broken by God at the fountain, you break it in the dust yourself, and pour the human life out on the ground for the fiend to lick up—is that not waste?—John Ruskin.
(3440)
WASTE, STOPPING
The Agricultural Department has inaugurated a war on rats, not as a preventive of the plague or on account of health, but because of the great loss produced in the country by rats, and especially to farmers and producers. The department claims that a rat eats sixty cents’ worth of grain a year, and that the actual destruction caused by them amounts to over one hundred millions of dollars a year. The extermination of rats will be a great undertaking. Yet it could be accomplished by national effort were it not for the new supplies brought by ships. It is believed that by proper regulations even this supply might be cut off, or the rats killed before spreading. It would cost only a small part of the one hundred millions of dollars to exterminate the rat. The expenditure of ten millions under national authority would be economy.
There are moral wastes comparatively more destructive than the plague of rats, that all men should join in exterminating—the saloon, for example.
(3441)
WASTE, THE PROBLEM OF
Professor Marshall, the English economist, estimates that the British working classes spend every year not less than $500,000,000 for things that do nothing to make them either happier or nobler. The president of the British Association, in an address before the economic section, confirmed these estimates, and avowed his belief that the sum named above was wasted in food alone. Professor Matthews adds that so large a proportion of our housekeepers are brought up in town life and factory life that they do not know how to buy economically, while the cooking art has necessarily gone into decadence. He estimates the waste in the United States from bad cooking alone to be at least $1,000,000 every year.—Independent.
(3442)
WASTES, MORAL
One day in a public restaurant a gentleman, who owns a large fruit-orchard in one of the Northwestern States, was talking about what wonderful fruit was produced by his trees.
“Why,” said he, “I see in market here in Pittsburg apples selling at a good price that we wouldn’t even use out our way. We’d never think of selling them. Such apples are thrown aside as culls.”
There are a great many human culls, men and boys, who, because of some injurious habit, have lost their full market value. There is the cigaret cull, the boy who is blighting his future and depreciating his value as a member of society because of his nauseous habit. And there is the whisky and beer cull, the man who can not keep out of a saloon; good enough man, many ways, but nobody wants to employ him in any responsible position. Then we have the obscene cull, the individual who has some rancid story to tell to raise a haw-haw among companions as coarse and vulgar as himself. He may be a good workman, but morally he is a cull. Another man I know is the Sabbath cull. This is the man who goes about watering his garden on the Sabbath, or driving out in his automobile for the pleasure of the thing; who is sometimes seen on the train Sabbath morning with his golf-sticks going out to some country club grounds. They may have their thousands and live in the best houses on the avenue, but they are moral culls. These things are blemishes which show the character. (Text.)
(3443)
Watchfulness—See [Asleep]; [Disguised Danger].
WATCHFULNESS AGAINST ENEMIES
The conscience and will ought to guard character against its destructive enemies as the Brazilians guard their houses, according to the following account:
Rats have multiplied to such a degree in Brazil that the inhabitants rear a certain kind of snake for destroying them. The Brazilian domestic serpent is the giboia, a small species of boa about twelve feet in length and of the diameter of a man’s arm. This snake, which is entirely harmless and sluggish in its movements, passes the entire day asleep at the foot of the staircase of the house, scarcely deigning to raise its head at the approach of a visitor, or when a strange noise is heard in the vestibule. At nightfall the giboia begins to hunt, crawling along here and there, and even penetrating the space above the ceiling and beneath the flooring. Springing swiftly forward, it seizes the rat by the nape and crushes its cervical vertebrae. As serpents rarely eat, even when at liberty, the giboia kills only for the pleasure of killing. It becomes so accustomed to its master’s house that if carried to a distance it escapes and finds its way back home. Every house in the warmest provinces where rats abound owns its giboia, a fixture by destination, and the owner of which praises its qualities when he wishes to sell or let his house. (Text.)—Scientific American.
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WATCHING THE KETTLE
There is a bit of proverbial philosophy afloat to the effect that “a watched kettle never boils.” False philosophy this, whether taken literally or figuratively. In the one case it is an idiotic superstition; in the other, a stupid mistake; in either, a humbug and a cheat. Cease to watch your business kettle, and what comes of leaving it to take care of itself? It either becomes stone-cold or blows up. You don’t want your enterprise over-done, and you don’t want it under-done. Your object is to strike the golden mean between lukewarmness and the explosive point, represented, we will say, by 212 of Fahrenheit. How are you to stimulate the contents of your kettle up to the right mark—to make them ebullient without turning them into a dangerous element—unless you regulate the upward tendency judiciously? It is only the neglected business kettle that never boils to a good purpose. Suppose Lord Worcester, Marquis of Somerset, had not watched his kettle, and so had not observed the phenomenon of the flapping lid, forced into motion by the pressure of the escaping steam? If the marquis had not received that hint from his watched kettle as to the latent force of steam, who can tell what deprivation of motive power mankind would have undergone? Your moral kettle must be looked after, too, or it is more likely to freeze than boil. Morality without the warmth of feeling necessary to make it active, is not of much use. In fact, all the figurative kettles, individual and social, included within the range of human hopes and duties, require to be closely watched. The world is paved, as one may say, with the wrecks of kettles which would have been of incalculable utility if they had been properly managed—reformatory kettles, for example, which only require the fire of zeal to keep them going, and the guardianship of practical common sense to regulate them, in order to become valuable utensils in the kitchen of progress. To watch your kettle till it boils, and all the time that it is boiling, is the only sure way to provide against accidents.—New York Ledger.
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Water and Natives—See [Miracles, Evidential Value of].
WATER OF LIFE
The briny waters of Great Salt Lake have been tried by the Southern Pacific Railway for a novel purpose and with remarkable success. Stored in tanks the fluid has been hauled over the line by water-trains and sprinkled upon the right of way. Under this treatment the weeds, the bane of the section-hands, have withered and died. After an experiment of sixteen months the scheme has now been permanently adopted. This briny water is a water which brings death to those things it touches.
There is a water we are told which brings life, higher than any material life, the water of life. It was made known to the world through the divine teacher. At Jacob’s well in the center of Palestine He declared Himself to be the water of life. Those who drink from natural fountains of water will thirst again, and the strength they gain, the refreshing they receive, will only be temporary. Those who come to drink of the true water of life will receive spiritual refreshing. This life-giving water takes away all foulness from the soil of the soul, by purifying it, by sweetening it, by enriching it. The weeds of sin in the soul are best destroyed not by the infusion of something more noxious, but by the infilling of the sweet graces of life.
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One of the most interesting creatures of California’s great desert is the tortoise. Frequently a school of them, that we usually think of only in connection with water, are discovered afar out in the desert where water is scarce and difficult to obtain. Dissection shows that in a convenient place upon their body is located a pair of large water-sacks. These the owner fills with water as needed and in this way it is kept supplied.
The man who has acquired character and experience so that he has moral and spiritual reservoirs within is equipped for every emergency. (Text.)
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At Huntsville, Ala., is a spring that supplies the whole town with an abundance of pure, fresh water. But the wonder of it all is that the flow of it is made to operate a wheel that pumps the water into the homes of the people.
The supply of water is the power of the water supply. God, who is the water of life, also sends all we need for the operation of all activities. (Text.)
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The sources of the soul’s water of life is in the hill-springs, but one may have to go down into the depths to find it, as these divers bring up fresh water out of the ocean:
The hottest region on earth is on the south western coast of Persia, where Persia borders the gulf of the same name. For forty consecutive days in the months of July and August the thermometer has been known not to fall lower than 100 degrees, night or day, and to often run up as high as 128 degrees in the afternoon. At Bahrin, in the center of the torrid part of the torrid belt, as tho it were nature’s intention to make the region as unbearable as possible, no water can be obtained from digging wells one hundred to two hundred or even five hundred feet deep, yet a comparatively numerous population contrive to live there, thanks to copious springs which break forth from the bottom of the gulf, more than a mile from shore. The water from these springs is obtained by divers, who dive to the bottom and fill goat-skins with the cooling liquid and sell it for a living. The source of these submarine fountains is thought to be in the green hills of Osman, some five or six hundred miles away.—Public Opinion.
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See [Surface Lives]; [Springs of Life].
Waters, Lake—See [Renewal].
Waters, Tempestuous—See [Adversity].
WAY, DIRECTION OF
Years ago a young man in Providence, R. I., took up a loose leaf of a Bible to use for a wrapping. “Don’t use that,” said a friend, “it contains the words of life.” The young man put the leaf in his pocket. Later, taking it out again, he said, “I will see what kind of life it is that that leaf tells about.” The words in Daniel 12:13 caught his eye, and he read, “But go thou thy way till the end be, for thou shalt rest, and stand in thy lot at the end of the days.” “I wonder what my way is and where it will end?” he asked himself, and the reflection at length led him to a new life.
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Way, Knowing The—See [Familiarity].
WAY OF GOD
Could I but know each step that I
Must tread unto the end;
Were I to have life’s devious chart,
Complete, placed in my hand,
With every burden there portrayed,
And every task well planned,
The joys to know, the griefs to bear,
The causes to defend,
How automatic life would be!
Thy way is best, hold thou the chart,
Permit me but to know
Each day, the duties to perform,
Each hour, the way to go;
And I, thy will, shall strive to do,
As faith e’er stronger grows,
And knowledge into wisdom blends,
As stream to river flows,
Until at last I meet with thee.
—Frank L. Connor, The Progress Magazine.
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WAY, THE RIGHT
Wakutemani, a Sioux warrior, was an acknowledged leader among the young Indians of his tribe. He heard a woman missionary tell the gospel story, but tho he felt strangely drawn to Christianity, he threw himself more ardently into the heathen dances and practises. One day he said to the missionary, “I will try your way without leaving the old way for a year, and at the end of that time I will follow the way that has satisfied me.” She taught him to pray and gave him directions for living a clean, straight life. At the end of the year Wakutemani appeared painted and be-feathered to lead the young braves in the old war-dance. The dance was wild and calculated to awaken all the savage instincts; but during a pause in drum-beating, Wakutemani stept into the center of the circle and motioned for silence. “I said I would try both ways. This way does not satisfy me. If any others feel as I do, let them follow me.” Two young warriors, Many Bulls and White Sitting Buffalo, rose silently and followed him out of the ring. They went to the mission house and said to the missionary, “We wish to follow your way. Ours does not satisfy.” All three have now many years of consistent Christian life to their credit, and one has passed to his reward. (Text.)
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Way We Look at Things, The—See [Moods Determining Desires].
Wayfarer, The—See [Pilgrims, The].
Wayside Ministry—See [Control, Divine].
WAYWARD, SEEKING THE
Dr. J. Wilbur Chapman tells this story:
On one of the last Sundays that I spent in Philadelphia an Englishman gave an address to our Sunday-school. He told how a young girl had gone away to live a life of sin. He said, “Her mother came to my minister and asked him to find her daughter. The minister said, ‘Bring me every picture that you have of yourself!’ She brought him every picture and the minister dipt his pen in the red ink and wrote underneath the sweet face these words: ‘Come back.’ These pictures were placed in mission stations and halls. One night the girl, on entering one of these halls, found herself face to face with the picture. As she saw that sweet face that had looked down into hers with love, her eyes were blinded with tears, and when she brushed the tears away she read the two words, ‘Come back.’ She made her way out to the edge of the city, waited till night had fallen and, going up to her old home she put her hand upon the latch of the door and, behold, it yielded! She had no sooner crossed the threshold than she was in her mother’s arms. The first greeting she had from her mother was this: ‘My dear, this door has never been fastened since you went away.’” (Text.)
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Weak Will and Whisky—See [Last Resort].
WEAKNESS AND STRENGTH
Storms may rend the giant oak
Yet may pass the floweret by;
Feeble lives may long be spared,
Strongest men may soonest die.
—Pastor Clark.
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WEAKNESS, CONSIDERATION FOR
The dialog below indicates a good way of practising the Pauline injunction in Phil. 2:4:
“Here, boy, let me have a paper.” “Can’t.” “Why not? I heard you crying them loud enough to be heard at the city hall.” “Yes, but that was down t’other block, ye know, where I hollered.” “What does that matter? Come, now, no fooling; I’m in a hurry.” “Couldn’t sell you a paper on this here block, mister, ’cause it b’longs to Limpy. He’s just up at the furdest end now. You’ll meet him.” “And who is Limpy? And why does he have this block?” “Cos us other kids agreed to let him have it. Ye see, it’s a good run, ’count of the offices all along, and the poor chap is that lame he can’t git around lively like the rest of us, so we agreed that the first one caught sellin’ on his beat should be thrashed. See?” “Yes, I see. You have a sort of brotherhood among yourselves?” “Well, we’re goin’ to look out for a little cove what’s lame, anyhow.” “There comes Limpy now. He’s a fortunate boy to have such friends.” The gentleman bought two papers of him, and went on his way down town, wondering how many men in business would refuse to sell their wares in order to give a weak, halting brother a chance in the field. (Text.)
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WEAKNESS, HIDDEN
A tiny worm may pierce the heart of a young tree, and the bark may hide the secret gash. But as the days go on the rain will cut one fiber and the heat another, and when years have passed, some time when a soft zephyr goes sighing through the forest, the great tree will come crashing down. For at last nature will hunt out every hidden weakness.—Newell Dwight Hillis.
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WEALTH
Harold S. Symmes, in Pearson’s Magazine, writes:
Give of thyself. Man’s wealth depends,
Not on the pence he holds and hoards,
Not on the gift he well affords,
But on the spirit-gold he spends.
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The danger of wealth lies in its tendency to smother sympathy and exalt selfishness.
Dr. W. B. Wright says that Henry Heine, the Jew, one of the most sparkling talkers in Europe, sat silent at a banquet until his Christian hostess asked, with some anxiety, “Why are you so dumb?” He answered, “I am studying a problem which I can not solve. I have been looking at these gold dishes, this fine linen, these splendid waiters, your great diamonds, and wondering what you Christians are going to do with the camel question.” (Text.)
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WEALTH AND WORK
The following account, indicating great motherly wisdom, is from a despatch from Chicago to the daily papers:
If Leonard Loeffler, six years old, has fallen heir to a fortune of $1,000,000 his mother will be sorry. It has been reported among the relatives of the late William Loeffler that his will, which will be probated this week, bequeaths his entire fortune, amounting to $1,000,000, to his grandson, Leonard, who is the son of Mr and Mrs. Frank Loeffler, and this intimation moved Mrs. Loeffler to express the hope that her son might not inherit riches.
“I do not want any son of mine to inherit a million dollars,” declared Mrs. Loeffler.
“Why?” she was asked.
“Because I do not think it does a child any good to have riches which he has not earned. If Leonard can get a fortune by working for it the way his grandfather had to do I shall be the proudest mother in the world, but there is no reason why he should have wealth unless he does earn it. I want my boy to earn what he gets. I don’t want him to get $1,000,000 for nothing. That is how much I think of money. It spoils children and removes the incentive for work, and it is work that shapes a career.”
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WEALTH, COMPARATIVE
A man who gets a million wants another million. If he gets ten millions then he wants to be as rich as Rockefeller. And then he wants the whole world fenced in and fixt up for him. What if a man is as rich as Rockefeller? What is that compared with the State of New York? And suppose a man owned the whole State of New York, what is that compared with the balance of America? And suppose one man owned the whole United States, what is that compared with the balance of the world? And suppose a man owned this whole world? Why, you could put two such worlds in your pocket, and go out to the dog star and stay all night, and you wouldn’t have enough to pay your hotel bill. This whole thing is comparative.—“Popular Lectures of Sam P. Jones.”
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Wealth Diminishing the Smiles—See [Poverty].
WEALTH, RIGHT USE OF
Some years ago an American gentleman was driving past one of the beautiful old homes in rural England, standing in its stately park. He asked the driver who lived there. “Oh,” said the man, “we used to have lots of aristocratic company there. They had plenty of money and they spent it freely. We poor folks were well off then. But now the place belongs to a woman, and she is a Methodist, and everything is going to the bad.” So spoke the countryman, and from his little view this loss of luxury and extravagance was all wrong, even for the poor man. But meanwhile there was another side to the picture. That estate also included a large tenement district in one of the worst portions of London. In wretched hovels, surrounded by saloons and low resorts, the miserable people paid their rents, exorbitant for such quarters, and these rents supplied the funds for the luxury and extravagance of the former owner. But now what has happened? The lady who owns the estate to-day is using her revenues, not for her own luxuries, but in bettering these homes, in driving out these saloons, and in creating a new spirit of love between her and her tenants. A few country yokels get less to spend for drink, but a great city population has more joy in living, and the bitter class distinction between riches and poverty is lessened.—Donald Sage Mackay, “The Threshold of Religion.”
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Wealth Statistics—See [Money-power in Canada]; [Money-power in the United States].
Weapons Displaced—See [Warfare, Antiquated].
Weather Forecast—See [Prognostication of Weather].
Weather Influencing Crime—See [Crime, Epidemics of].
Weather, The, and the Spider—See [Indicator, An Insect].
Weaving—See [Web of Life].
WEB OF LIFE
Sit down by the side of an Old World lace-maker for a few moments. Fifty or a hundred bobbins, or spools, hang around a cushion in which there is a forest of upright pins. Every bobbin hangs by a thread that runs toward and among the pins. The onlooker sees the worker throw one bobbin over another, as tho she were playing with them. But how she knows which bobbin to pick up, and where to toss it, is a mystery. Out of the great complex of pins and threads comes a beautiful lace pattern, regular and beautiful. So the divine Weaver takes one and another of us, ordering us here and there, but keeping us always attached, like the lace-maker’s thread, to a definite purpose. As we look back over the past, we can see the wonderful pattern and perfect work of the weaver. Just what he is working out, for us and with us, now, we can not discern. But the lesson of the past is that the future will be good, and we can trust the Weaver of the indefinite to do all things well.
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WEALTH, INCREASE OF
The great increase of wealth in the United States through a period of eight years (1900–1908) is shown in the tables below. Does it not mean a corresponding increase of national responsibility?
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Copyright, Funk & Wagnalls Company.
Wedding Incident—See [Renunciation].
Wedge, The Entering—See [Sabbath Desecration Gradual].
WEED DESTROYER
Man’s enemies are not by any means confined to those he meets in his daily work. He has soul enemies which he has to reckon with constantly. Just as sure as the farmer can depend on a certain preparation to kill weeds, so can man depend upon a higher power to keep down and destroy our open and secret sins.
There is no dispute that we must meet the weed question with a certainty of success and at the same time it must be done in a very economical manner. In addition to what we may do with our cultivators and weeders and the growing of such crops as rye and winter wheat, by which we can destroy a certain class of weeds before they mature seed, we can also add that there is a system of weed destruction which is found in spraying. This is a matter which has come to the knowledge of men during the past few years. I learn from my reading that the first step in this direction was taken by a party in France. From that beginning it was taken up by men here in America, and it has now assumed a very practical form. The first spray was copper sulfate, or blue-stone, but this would be somewhat difficult to obtain. The present material which is largely used is a by-product turned out by the steel-mills. This is called sulfate of iron. This by product has been thrown away, but now it can be used for the destruction of weeds by making a solution of it and spraying fields that are infested with a certain class of weeds.—O. C. Gregg, The Northwestern Agriculturist.
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WEEDS, WARFARE AGAINST
Charles H. Spurgeon once said:
An old wall is so interpenetrated—every nook, crack and crevice—by the notorious ivy that, tho you may cut the vine at the roots, you can never thoroughly destroy it, till the wall itself is leveled.
Most weeds spread chiefly from their seeds, hence care should be taken to prevent the formation of weed-seeds. The more thorough we are in keeping out weeds, the easier our work. While we may not hope to get rid of all weeds, we may greatly lessen their numbers by keeping up a continual warfare against them.
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Weighing Effects—See [Probation].
WEIGHT DIMINISHED BY ASCENT
A writer, speaking of variation to be seen in the column of mercury in a barometer, says:
If you prop up the tube, and watch it carefully from day to day, you will find that the height of the column of mercury will continually vary. If you live at the sea-level, or thereabouts, it will sometimes rise more than thirty inches above the level of the mercury in the cup, and frequently fall below that height. If you live on the top of a high mountain, or on any high ground, it will never reach thirty inches, will still be variable, its average height less than if you lived on lower ground; and the higher you get the less will be this average height of the mercury.
The reason of this is easily understood. When we ascend a mountain we leave some portion of the atmosphere below us, and of course less remains above; this smaller quantity must have less weight and press the mercury less forcibly. If the barometer tells the truth, it must show this difference; and it does so with such accuracy that by means of a barometer, or rather of two barometers—one at the foot of the mountain and one on its summit—we may, by their difference, measure the height of the mountain provided we know the rules for making the requisite calculations.
The higher one ascends, the less weight oppresses the climber. This is a truth also of the moral life. The higher one ascends, the less obstacles and weights he encounters. In the valley the demoniac writhes; on the mountain top Christ appears in His glory.
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Weight Yielding to Persistency—See [Perseverance].
Welcome Home—See [Song as a Welcome Home].
Well-digging—See [Miracles, Evidential Value of].
Well Done—See [Early Religion].
Well Known, The, Unknown—See [Local Pride].
White Plague—See [Tuberculosis].
White Robes—See [Bible Customs To-day].
“White Slaves”—See [Girls, Traffic in].
WHOLE, SEEING THINGS
Our lives should be so organized and ordered as to move on at God’s pace so that they will produce a whole effect, a unitary total. Some men live by jerks, showing no conviction between to-day and yesterday.
If a spark or point of flame be rapidly swung around in a circular path it is no longer seen as a spark or point, but as a continuous circle. Drops of falling rain appear to the eye as continuous slanted lines or streams. This is due to the fact that the motion is too rapid to enable the eye to compass the diameter of the rain-drop, or the spark, before it has moved the distance of its diameter to a new position.
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WHOLENESS
A Chicago tailor displays a sign which announces that he makes trousers at “$1.75 per leg.” Inquiry reveals the fact that altho he uses a goose he is not foolish enough to furnish trousers with only one leg. One can not get trousers at his shop except their two legs be properly sewed together and one pays $3.50 for them. But the tailor compels editors to read his sign.
This fable teaches that two things even apparently complete when separate ought to be brought together if they are to be made practical.
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WHOLENESS OF CHARACTER
Foster, the distinguished essayist, said to a friend one day, “There is a want of continuity in your social character. You seem broken into fragments.” To this plain dealing the gentleman replied good-naturedly, “Well, I sparkle in fragments.” “But,” rejoined Foster, “how much better to shine whole, like a mirror.”
As the glory of gems is realized best when shown in a splendid necklace, so virtues impress most when many are combined in unity in the one character.
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WILFULNESS
Young America in feathers is almost as bumptious and self-assertive and needs almost as much guidance as Young America in flannels and lawns. Tho the parents may be as wise as Solomon, the youngster will be foolish and headstrong; he will call and shout when enemies are near; he will leave the nest before his wings are ready for service, and so place himself at the mercy of cats and other prowlers. As soon as he has even partial use of his wings he will wander into a thousand dangers and draw his devoted parents after him, for they can not desert him, and he will not heed their coaxing. In such cases the distracted parents have been known to attack and beat off their great enemy, the cat, and even to fly at man himself, sometimes with success.—Olive Thorne Miller, “The Bird Our Brother.”
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Will, Doing God’s—See [Temperature].
WILL OF GOD
The following verses are by John Hay:
Not in dumb resignation, we lift our hands on high;
Not like the nerveless fatalist, content to do and die.
Our faith springs like the eagle’s, who soars to meet the sun,
And cries exulting unto thee, “O Lord, Thy will be done.”
When tyrant feet are trampling upon the common weal,
Thou dost not bid us bend and writhe beneath the iron heel.
In thy name we assert our right by sword or tongue or pen,
And even the headsman’s ax may flash thy message unto men.
Thy will! It bids the weak be strong; it bids the strong be just;
No lips to fawn, no hand to beg, no brow to seek the dust.
Whenever man oppresses men beneath the liberal sun
O Lord, be there! Thine arm made bare, thy righteous will be done. (Text.)
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Will, Our, and God’s—See [Temperature].
WILL POWER
In “Louis Lambert” Balzac describes certain forces, when they take possession of strong personalities, as “rivers of will.” There is an impetus in these potential men which sweeps away all obstacles and rolls on with the momentum of a great stream. In men of genius the same tireless activity, the same forceful habit, are often found; nothing daunts them; nothing subdues them.—Christian Union.
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The late Lord Beaconsfield, in an address before the Literary and Scientific Institute of London, in 1844, on his early life, gave utterance to these impressive words:
“Man can be what he pleases. Every one of you can be exactly what he designs to be. I have resolved to hold a certain position, and if I live, I will.”
We do not know what that position was that Disraeli refers to, but we do know that he attained to the highest position possible to any man in England. He had much to contend with. He was of a Jewish family, but by the remarkable power of his will he ejected the Jew blood from his veins and pumped the blue blood of England in. He climbed into the seat next to the throne of the queen herself.
In contrast what a small conception some men have of their opportunities and privileges.
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People will insist on living, sometimes, tho manifestly moribund. In Dr. Elder’s life of Kane, you will find a case of this sort, told by Dr. Kane himself. The captain of a ship was dying of scurvy, but the crew mutinied, and he gave up dying for the present to take care of them. An old lady in this city, near her end, got a little vexed about a proposed change in her will; made up her mind not to die just then; ordered a coach; was driven twenty miles to the house of a relative, and lived four years longer.—Oliver Wendell Holmes.
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See [Greatness]; [Mind, the Human].
WILL, THE
God will not force the door of the human heart. The faculty of volition is a divinely-given prerogative, and our free will is not violated by any forcible means.
While the painting by William Holman-Hunt, known as “The Light of the World,” was yet in the studio of the painter a visitor stood admiring it. Suddenly he asked the artist, “Where is the key? I do not see one in the door.” Said Mr. Holman-Hunt, “Ah, no; the key is inside, and the door is locked not from without but from within. It can only be opened to admit the Savior who stands there and knocks if the tenant within chooses to turn the key.” The visitor understood the parable. (Text.)
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See [Mastery].
Winds as Benefactors—See [Nature’s Recuperative Powers].
WINNING
Young man,
What is your plan
Of progress? Are you
Going to pull through?
Or will you lie down in the road
And let your load
Sink you out of sight in the mud?
Have you white blood and pale,
That curdles at the hard word “Fail,”
And dares not face
The chances of the race?
Or, have you red, clear red,
The good strong color
All the great have shed
In deed or thought,
For every triumph wrought
Out of what seemed full
Of the impossible?
Have you the nerve
To serve
Until you can master? To wait
And work outside the gate
Until you win
The strength to open it and enter in?
Have you the heart to meet
Defeat
Day after day,
And yet hold to the way
That upward leads,
And must needs
Be hard and rough
To make man tough
Of sinew and of soul,
Before he sees the goal?
Young man,
Think on these things,
What each one brings
Is as you choose it;
You make take
The stake,
Or you may lose it.
Start in
To win
And keep straight in the way
Unflagging to the end;
Whatever it may be
Is victory.
—William J. Lampton, Success.
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WISDOM OF THE IGNORANT
It is related of the celebrated astronomer, Tycho Brahe, that one night, on leaving his observatory, he suddenly found himself surrounded by a tumultuous crowd which filled the public square. Upon inquiring the cause of so great a concourse, they pointed out to him, in the constellation of Cygnus, a brilliant star, which he, aided by the best telescopes, had never perceived. (Text.)
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Wisdom Rejected—See [Intolerance].
Wish, A Boy’s—See [Retrieved Situation, A].
Wishes—See [Retrieved Situation, A].
Wishes Fulfilled—See [Early Religion].
Wit and Business—See [Abbreviation].
Wit, Ready—See [Eccentricity].
WITCHCRAFT
In two hundred years thirty thousand witches are said to have been destroyed in England; and as recently as 1716, when the town was enjoying the wit and satire of the “Queen Anne men,” a woman and her child nine years of age were hanged at Huntingdon. Addison, with a mind that wavered between superstition and good sense, said he could not forbear believing “in such a commerce with evil spirits as that which we express by the name of witchcraft,” while, at the same time, he could “give no credit to any particular modern instance of it.” Scotland, which is regarded as an enlightened part of the empire, held with the utmost tenacity its faith in witchcraft. The Scotch, a vigorous people, put their hands to the work heartily. It was easy to find victims, since, as we have said already, they tortured until they confest. It is calculated that two thousand persons were burned in Scotland in the last forty years of the sixteenth century. A century later a witch epidemic broke out in the village of Mohra, in Sweden. A number of children were said to be bewitched, and familiar with the devil, who was described as wearing a gray coat, red and blue stockings, a red beard, and a high-crowned hat. The witches kept this exacting person supplied with children, and if they did not procure him a good many, “they had no peace or quiet for him.” The poor wretches were doomed to have no more peace or quiet in this world. Seventy were condemned to death, and twenty-three were burnt in a single fire at Mohra. It is noteworthy that a belief in this frightful superstition which destroyed more innocent persons than the so-called holy office was held by men of great intellectual power—by Erasmus, Bacon, and the judicious Hooker; by Sir Edward Coke, Sir Thomas Browne, Baxter, and Sir Matthew Hale. And the old belief is not yet extinct in country districts. Only recently a man at Totnes accused his father of bewitching, or, as a “white witch” called it, “overlooking” his daughter, so that she suffered for months from a disease in the arms; and the people who live in remote villages may often hear of similar cases.—London Illustrated News.
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WITCHES, BELIEF IN
Dr. James B. McCord writes in Medical Missions:
The Zulu baby is born into the fear of witchcraft; in the fear of witchcraft he grows up, and when he sickens and is about to die, his one thought is that a spell has been cast upon him for which the charm can not be discovered. All his life long he dreads in lonely places to meet the inswelabova—an inhuman man, lacking only hair or fur to make him altogether a beast—a sort of beast in human form who rides backward on a baboon, ready to pounce upon and make medicine of the unwary traveler. In mature manhood he suspects his neighbor, his friend, his brother, and even his wife of having dealings with makers of charms and poisons. He walks with an uneasy feeling that an enemy may have put medicine in his path to harm him. From every possible source, from earth and from sky, from river and from forest, from friend and from foe, he is continually apprehensive of evil influence coming upon him and searching for a talisman to wear against it.
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WITNESS OF SERVICE
On one of the battle-fields of South Africa a young chaplain found a Highlander sorely wounded and with life ebbing quickly away. He asked him to allow him to pray, but the soldier said gruffly, “No, I don’t want prayers. I want water.” The chaplain secured, with great difficulty, some water, and then asked the refreshed man if he might read a psalm. “No,” said the soldier again. “I am too cold to listen to a psalm.” The chaplain instantly stript off his coat and wrapt it tenderly round the wounded soldier. And then, touched by the chaplain’s sympathy, the man turned and said, “Chaplain, if religion makes men like you, let’s have that psalm.” When Christians prove themselves loving and considerate for the sick and suffering, even the hardest heart melts.
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WIVES OF GREAT MEN
It is an oft-quoted saying of Dr. Johnson that “a man in general is better pleased when he has a good dinner on the table than when his wife talks Greek.” Racine had an illiterate wife and was accustomed to boastfully declare that she could not read any of his tragedies. Dufresny married his washerwoman. Goethe’s wife was a woman of mediocre capacity. Heine said of the woman he loved, “She has never read a line of my writings and does not even know what a poet is.” Therese Lavasseur, the last flame of Rousseau, could not tell the time of day. “How many of the wise and learned,” says Thackeray, “have married their cooks! Did not Lord Eldon, himself the most prudent of men, make a runaway match? Were not Achilles and Ajax both in love with their servant-maids?” Seven hundred people sat up all night to see the beautiful Duchess of Hamilton get in her carriage, but would one in a thousand lose a wink of sleep to get a glimpse of the learned wife of the pundit Yainavalka, who discoursed with the Indian in Sanskrit on the vexed problems of life?—The Interior.
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Woman Suffrage—See [Retort, a].
WOMANLY WIT
Foster, the State news paragrapher of the Cleveland Press, published a paragraph to this effect: “A Marion girl started her graduating essay as follows: ‘I am fairly worried out with the incessant pratings of the lords of creation on the duties and sphere of woman.’” The paragraph closed with the somewhat dangerous assertion that the editor would bet a new spring hat that the author of that discourse on woman’s sphere could not bake a loaf of bread. Two days later Mr. Foster received from Marion a large box. It contained sundry light loaves of bread and cake marvelously toothsome. An accompanying affidavit bore the solemn oath of the sweet girl graduate (who possesses the pretty name of May Williams) that she had, unaided, made the wheat-bread marked “Exhibit A,” the two specimens of cornbread marked “Exhibit B,” and the chocolate, “Exhibit C.” The notary’s seal of office was affixt to the affidavit, and it was settled beyond a doubt in Mr. Foster’s mind that his wager had been accepted. He therefore went out and lavished his week’s salary on a new spring hat.
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WOMAN’S SPHERE
She’s a woman with a mission; ’tis her heaven-born ambition to reform the world’s condition, you will please to understand. She’s a model of propriety, a leader in society, and has a great variety of remedies at hand. Each a sovereign specific, with a title scientific, for the cure of things morbific that vex the people sore; For the swift alleviation of the evils of the nation is her foreordained vocation on this sublunary shore. And while thus she’s up and coming, always hurrying and humming, and occasionally slumming, this reformer of renown, Her neglected little Dicky, ragged, dirty, tough, and tricky, with his fingers soiled and sticky, is the terror of the town. (Text.)—Tit-Bits.
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WOMAN’S STRENGTH
There is no physical reason why a woman should be more feeble or diseased than a man. Stanley was furnished with two hundred negro women to carry his stuff into the interior of Africa, and he found them the best porters he had employed, altho he felt very doubtful about accepting their services when first proposed. The Mexican Indian woman is able to carry her household goods on her back with two or three babies on top when a change of location is desirable. Meanwhile her husband trudges bravely along carrying his gun. On the continent of Europe most of the heavy work is done by women. In Vienna women and dogs are frequently hitched together, and sometimes a woman is yoked with a cow to draw a load of produce to the city. Many of these peasant women will carry upon their heads a load of vegetables that few American men could easily lift. These women have the muscles of the waist and trunk thoroughly developed. Despite their hardships, they do not suffer from the backache or displacements, or other ailments which the women who dress fashionably are constantly afflicted with.—Phrenological Journal.
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Women, Courage of—See [Bravery of Women].
Women Fighting Disease—See [Tuberculosis].
Women Graduates—See [Alumnæ Occupations].
WOMEN IN BONDAGE
In Korea woman is a useful member of society, for material interests hang on her hand. Once, on a walk by the city wall, we saw a man sitting on a stone weeping. His was a full-mouthed, heart-broken cry, as tho the world had given way under him. “Why,” we asked—“why all this fuss?” He looked vacantly at us for a moment, and then resumed where he had left off. We found that the trouble was about a woman, his wife; she had left him. “How he must have loved her to cry like that,” remarked a lady in the party. It was translated, but he resented it. “Loved her? I never loved her, but she made my clothes and cooked my food; what shall I do? boo-hoo-oo,” louder and more impressively than ever.—James S. Gale, “Korea in Transition.”
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Women in Finance—See [Business, Religion in].
Women in Persia—See [Persia, Moslem Situation in].
WOMEN, INJUSTICE TO
She was a woman, worn and thin, whom the world condemned for a single sin; they cast her out of the king’s highway and passed her by as they went to pray. He was a man, and more to blame, but the world spared him a breath of shame; beneath his feet he saw her lie, but he raised his head and passed her by. They were the people who went to pray at the temple of God on the holy day. They scorned the woman, forgave the man. It was ever thus since the world began. Time passed on, and the woman died, on the cross of shame was crucified; but the world was stern and would not yield, and they buried her in the potter’s field. The man died, too; and they buried him in a casket of cloth with a silver rim, and said, as they turned from his grave away: “We’ve buried an honest man to-day.” Two mortals knocked at heaven’s gate and stood face to face to inquire their fate. He carried a passport with earthly sign, and she a pardon from Love divine. O, we who judge ’twixt virtue and vice, which think ye entered paradise? Not he whom the world had said would win, for the woman alone was ushered in.
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WOMEN JUDGING WOMEN
At a large dinner party in Washington, a lady sitting next to William M. Evarts, then Secretary of State, said to him: “Mr. Evarts, don’t you think that a woman is the best judge of other women?” “Ah, madam,” said Mr. Evarts, “she is not only the best judge, but the best executioner.”
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WOMEN, WARLIKE
In warlike times, when battle was the business of life and victory over a foe the highest honor that could be had, when home in the true sense there was none, and when castles were less houses for pleasant living than strongholds to shelter raiders and resist assault, women were as heroic as their age. If they were not so accurate in their aim as the archers, of whom it was said every English bowman “bore under his girdle twenty-four Scots,” they knew how to man the ramparts and defend the bridges as well as their lords themselves. Womanliness in the bower, dignity in the hall, courage in the castle—that was the whole duty of these noble women of a rude but manly age, and to their example, their influence and their shaping power as mothers England owes much of her greatness and half of her strength. Letting Boadicea pass as an example of the feminine fighting blood, we find in Dame Nicola de Camville an early specimen of the warlike political woman. She took the royal side in the famous war with the barons, and held Lincoln Castle against Gilbert de Gaunt, first for King John and afterward for Henry III, till the battle called Lincoln Fair broke her power. The beautiful Countess of Salisbury, she who was so ardently beloved by the third Edward, was another instance of feminine daring, in her case coupled with the loveliest and most graceful sweetness. Black Agnes was again a heroine of the virago type, and Queen Philippa, Queen Margaret, and others of the same kind honored their adopted nationality by their courage and devotion. Meaner women were as brave. In a skirmish at Naworth (1570) Leonard Dacres had in his army “many desperate women, who there gave the adventure of their lives and fought right stoutly.”—The Fortnightly Review.
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WOMEN’S FRIVOLITY
What most women want to-day is a donkey-load of Paris dresses for their bodies, an automobile to pull them around, an army of servants to hook them up and then to unhook them. The mammonism of men to-day is the outer and physical embodiment of the inner and essential vulgarity of the whole pleasure-loving mob of women on the avenues, with their sipping of cocktails at the beginning of the meal in great restaurants, their flashing of jewels, their parade of gowns, their killing of time through bridge and games of chance. Killing time! When these golden hours are more precious than the purple drops of paradise itself. Oh, these superficial, frivolous, vapid women, who have turned their beautiful bodies into something scarcely better than the wire stands that exhibit gowns in merchants’ windows. And they use their very beauty as exemption from duty!—N. D. Hillis.
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Wonders of Nature—See [Insects of Remote Times].
WONDERS UNSEEN BY MAN
The insect must see a whole world of wonders of which we know little or nothing. True, we have microscopes, with which we can see one thing at a time if carefully laid upon the stage; but what is the finest instrument that can be produced compared to that with twenty-five thousand object-glasses, all of them probably achromatic, and each one a living instrument, with its own nerve-branch supplying a separate sensation. To creatures thus endowed with microscopic vision, a cloud of sandy dust must appear like an avalanche of massive rock fragments, and everything else proportionally monstrous.—W. Mattieu Williams, “Science in Short Chapters.”
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Word, Effect of a Tender—See [Heart-hunger, Satisfying].
WORD IN SEASON
Buckingham, the war governor of Connecticut, one day met a young man named Simmons as both were walking along the street, and putting both hands on the young man’s shoulders, the governor said solemnly: “Simmons, we are none of us living as well as we ought to,” and passed on. Simmons, as an old man, declared that that act had a most powerful and permanent influence on his life. (Text.)
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WORD JUGGLING
There are three hundred and sixty-five prohibitions in the law, said the Rabbins, just as many as there are days in the year, and two hundred and forty-eight positive commands, corresponding to the number of members of the body, according to their anatomy; the whole number making six hundred and thirteen precepts. “There can be no more precepts or any less,” reasoned the wise Pharisees, “because there are just six hundred and thirteen letters in the decalog.” Or if one had not liked this interpretation, they would have given him another equally satisfactory reason why there should be just six hundred and thirteen precepts. In Numbers 15:38, the Jews are commanded to wear fringes, called in the Hebrew tsitsith, upon the border of their garments. Now, as there are eight threads and five knots in each fringe, making the number thirteen, and as the letters of the word tsitsith stand in Hebrew for the number six hundred, therefore, as was proved before, there must be just six hundred and thirteen precepts in the Mosaic law. To such silly word jugglery had the Pharisees recourse in placing upon men’s shoulders burdens too grievous to be borne.—The Golden Rule.
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WORD OF GOD FREED
When Elizabeth of England succeeded to the throne she was petitioned to release, according to custom, four or five principal prisoners. “Who shall they be?” she asked. The reply was: “The four evangelists and the apostle Paul.” (Text.)
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WORD OF GOD UNIVERSAL
The following is by Frank Dempster Sherman:
Not only in the Book
Is found God’s word,
But in the song of every brook
And every bird.
In sun and moon and star
His message shines!
The flowers that fleck the green fields are
His fragrant lines.
His whisper in the breeze,
And His the voice
That bids the leaves upon the trees
Sing and rejoice.
Go forth, O soul! nor fear
Nor doubt, for He
Shall make the ears of faith to hear—
The eyes to see.
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WORD, THE, A HAMMER
Thor was the god of thunder. The most prized of all his possessions was his magic hammer. This was red hot, and always returned to his hand ready to be thrown again. He used it to drive boundary stakes, and also to punish his enemies. The ancient Northern peoples made the sign of the hammer, as later Christians did the cross, to ward off evils and to secure blessings.
What an allegory, all this, of the Word of God! (Text.)
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Words—See [Glitter versus Depth].
WORK
It was while Moses was at his common task that the call came to him. This wilderness training was simply a third school which he entered to fit him for the great work of his life. When God wants a man he usually calls one who is busy among the commonplace things of life. Commonplace duties are always glorified in God’s sight. When God wanted a prophet he selected Amos from among the farmer-shepherds. When He wanted a poet He called a lad from keeping sheep. When He wanted an apostle He called a swearing tar from mending his net on the beach of Galilee. When He wanted a missionary He selected a Paul from among the tent-makers. When He wanted a deliverer of Israel He called a man from the commonplace duties of the desert. When God wanted to show man how much He loved him and honored toil, He chose to incarnate Himself in the carpenter of Nazareth.
“This is the gospel of labor,
Ring it ye bells of the kirk;
The Lord of Love, came down from above,
To live with the men who work;
This is the rose He planted,
Here is the thorn-curst soil,
Heaven is blest, with perfect rest,
But the blessing of earth is toil.” (Text.)
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Paul was not ashamed to work with his hands, altho he had been brought up at the feet of Gamaliel and taught according to the perfect manner of the law. He had not forgotten the custom of the Jews, who always taught their sons in early youth to work at some trade or handicraft. A true saying is that “an idle brain is the devil’s workshop.” Miss Dryer, a Chicago missionary, in addressing the ministers’ meeting of that city in behalf of girls’ sewing-schools, made the significant statement that in all her experience of many years she had never known of a fallen woman who knew how to sew. (Text.)
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Man’s work is to labor and leaven
As best he may—earth here with heaven,
’Tis work for work’s sake that he’s needing;
Let him work on and on as speeding
Work’s end, but not dream of succeeding!
Because if success were intended,
Why, heaven would begin ere earth ended.
—Browning.
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See [Genius and Work].
Work a Necessity—See [Industry and Longevity].
WORK AND ART
Between digging a ditch to drain a meadow and composing a sonnet, what is there in common? Nevertheless, if we look closely into the matter, the ditch and the sonnet are much the same thing. We might even fairly challenge that category of “useful” and “fine.” The useful are surely fine, for nothing is finer than use; and the fine, if they be not in a high sense useful, are not fine after all. The ditch is dug to increase the serviceableness to man of nature; the sonnet is composed to enable man to discern in nature a beauty (or serviceableness) to which he had heretofore been blind. From a broad standpoint, there is little to choose between them. The ditch is nothing in itself, but neither, strictly speaking, is the sonnet. They are both means to ends. The ditch is, perhaps, more distant from its end than the sonnet, but it is a link in the same chain. Moreover, the ditch will always be an honest ditch, but the sonnet may be false or artificial, and in that case counts for nothing, or less. The real difference resides in the person doing much more than in the thing done. A workman, building a wall, may have a perception of the value of the use he is performing, or he may not; only in the former case, of course, does he deserve the name of artist. The seamstress who plies her needle in our attic, or the poor man’s wife who must needs wash and scrub and darn and work all day long, and from year’s end to year’s end, if she realize the universal bearings of her industry, is an artist, and a nobler and more adorable one than she who sings for $5,000 a night.—America.
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Work and Long Life—See [Industry and Longevity].
Work as Witness—See [Testimony of Work].
WORK ATTITUDE, THE
What is work—work not as mere external performance, but as attitude of mind? It signifies that the person is not content longer to accept and to act upon the meanings that things suggest, but demands congruity of meaning with the things themselves. In the natural course of growth, children come to find irresponsible make-believe plays inadequate. A fiction is too easy a way out to afford content. There is not enough stimulus to call forth satisfactory mental response. When this point is reached, the ideas that things suggest must be applied to the things with some regard to fitness. A small cart, resembling a “real” cart, with “real” wheels, tongue and body, meets the mental demand better than merely making believe that anything which comes to hand is a cart. Occasionally to take part in setting a “real” table with “real” dishes brings more reward than forever to make believe a flat stone is a table and that leaves are dishes. The interest may still center in the meanings, the things may be of importance only as amplifying a certain meaning. So far the attitude is one of play. But the meaning is now of such a character that it must find appropriate embodiment in actual things.
The dictionary does not permit us to call such activities work. Nevertheless, they represent a genuine passage of play into work. For work (as a mental attitude, not as mere external performance) means interest in the adequate embodiment of a meaning (a suggestion, purpose, aim) in objective form through the use of appropriate materials and appliances. Such an attitude takes advantage of the meanings aroused and built up in free play, but controls their development by seeing to it that they are applied to things in ways consistent with the observable structure of the things themselves.
The point of this distinction between play and work may be cleared up by comparing it with a more usual way of stating the difference. In play activity, it is said, the interest is in the activity for its own sake; in work, it is in the product or result in which the activity terminates. Hence the former is purely free, while the latter is tied down by the end to be achieved.—John Dewey, “How We Think.”
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WORK, CHRISTIAN
The verses below are true of every soul who really desires to do God’s work.
If we can not be the watchman
Standing high on Zion’s wall,
Pointing out the path to heaven,
Offering life and peace to all;
With our prayers, and with our bounties
We can do what heaven demands;
We can be, like helpful Aaron,
Holding up the prophet’s hands.
Do not, then, stand idly waiting,
For some greater work to do,
For time is a lazy goddess—
She will never come to you.
Go and toil in any vineyard,
Do not fear to do or dare;
If you want a field of labor
You can find it anywhere.
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Work, Daily—See [Melody from Drudgery].
WORK DESPISED
A king desired a fine mosaic picture. The master-artist divided the stones from which it was to be constructed among his workmen, giving to each his own design. One artist considered his fragment too small to notice, and threw away the stone intrusted to him, saying, “It is of no worth.” When all the work was brought together, his stone was found to be the most important of all, the very centerpiece. He lost his place, and was branded upon the forehead with the words, “Of no worth,” as a penalty for his neglect.
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WORK DIVINELY INTENDED
As the clear and sensitive organ of the eye, which holds upon its tiny lens the masses of far stars and the mazes of their movement, was evidently made for this marvelous function; as the nerve of the ear, which takes eloquence, poetry, wit, applause, the tone of affection, the crash of the thunder-burst, the lively laugh of childish glee, and communicates each with instant fidelity to the spirit behind, was manifestly formed for exactly this office; so, just as clearly, the personal soul, with its judgment and its will, with its deep-seated instincts and its eager desires, with its unrest in indolence, and its thought that outruns attainment every instant, was made to realize its good by working. The date-tree in the desert is not more precisely preadjusted to its office!—Richard S. Storrs.
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Work in Miniature—See [Miniature Work].
WORK PROVING RELIGION
There is a story of a young minister who had just come to be pastor in a town, and he called on Hiram Golf, the shoemaker.
“Well, Hiram,” said the minister, “I have come to talk with you about the things of God, and I am very glad a man can be in a humble occupation and yet be a godly man.” The shoemaker said, “Don’t call this occupation humble.” The minister thought he had made a mistake, and he said, “Excuse me, I didn’t mean to reflect on what you do for a living.” The man replied, “You didn’t hurt me, but I was afraid you might have hurt the Lord Jesus Christ. I believe the making of that shoe is just as holy a thing as your making a sermon. I believe that when I come to stand before the throne of God, He is going to say, ‘What kind of shoes did you make down on earth?’ And He might pick out this very pair, in order to let me look at them in the blazing light of the great white throne; and He is going to say to you, ‘What kind of sermons did you make?’ and you will have to show Him one of your sermons. Now, if I made better shoes than you made sermons, I will have a better place in the kingdom of God.” (Text.)
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Work, Quiet, Successful—See [Value of One Man].
WORK, THE TRUE WISDOM
When Frederick Temple, the late Archbishop of Canterbury, was a poor boy, wearing patched clothes and patched shoes, he had the good fortune to have a wise mother who stimulated and encouraged the right kind of ambition, and directed his zeal. One day the boy waxed critical over the inconsistency of English spelling, when his mother chided him gently: “Freddie, don’t argue; do your work.” The lesson was not lost on his open mind. He followed the sage advice. And long years after, when as primate of all England he had arisen to a position scarcely second to any in dignity and influence in the land, he acted on his mother’s counsel: “Don’t argue, do your work.”
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WORK TRANSFORMED
As the water drops of the storm-clouds are transfigured by the sunlight into rainbows, so the lowliest work is transfigured by thoughts of God shining through it. So it was with the old negro washerwoman who sang, as she climbed the stairs wearily at night after her hardest day, “One more day’s work for Jesus.” So it was with the Christian child in the mission Sunday-school, who was asked, “What are you doing for Jesus?” and replied, “I scrubs.”
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WORK VERSUS WORKER
James Buckham is the author of this poem:
“What hast thou wrought?” is the world’s demand.
Where is thy product of brain or hand?
That presented, the wise world says,
“Take this place!” and the man obeys.
Somewhat otherwise measures God,
Searches the soul with love’s testing-rod;
Gets its innermost depth and plan;
Ignores the product, exalts the man!
Whittier, in a similar vein, wrote:
Not by the page word-painted,
My life is banned or sainted.
Deeper than written scroll,
The colors of the soul,
Nobler than any fact,
My wish that failed of act. (Text.)
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Work, Unrecompensed—See [Ill-paid Work].
Working Hard—See [Encouragement].
Working Men and Church—See [Christ Approved].
WORKING TOGETHER
Faraday, the distinguished chemist, says:
The change produced by respiration so injurious to us (for we can not breathe the air twice over) is the very life and support of plants and vegetables growing on the surface of the ground. These latter absorb carbon—the leaves taking up the carbon of the air to which we have given it in the form of carbonic acid, and grow and prosper. Give them a fine air like ours, and they could not live in it, but carbon and other matters make them grow. All trees and plants get their carbon from the air, which carries off what is bad for us and at the same time good for them—disease to the one is health to the other. So we are made dependents not only on our fellow creatures but on our fellow existers as well, all nature being tied together by the law that makes one part conduce to the good of another. (Text.)
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WORKING WITH GOD
It may not be our lot to wield
The sickle in the ripened field;
Nor ours to hear, on summer eves,
The reaper’s song among the sheaves.
Yet where our duty’s task is wrought
In unison with God’s great thought,
The near and future blend in one,
And whatso’er is willed is done. (Text.)
—John G. Whittier.
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Workmanship—See [Beauty from Fragments].
WORKS DESTROYED
When Thomas Carlyle was writing his famous history of the French Revolution, and when he had the first volume ready for the printer’s hands, he one day loaned the manuscript to John Stuart Mill, his intimate and admiring friend. This friend’s servant girl, seeing the pile on the library floor one day, and wanting some kindling, unceremoniously put the whole of it into the stove and kindled the fire with it. Thus the priceless labor of many years was in a few moments swept away.
Mill came himself, pale and trembling, to break the news to the author. When he heard it, his spirit fairly broke down under the terrible disaster.
If the loss of a book is such a calamity, how unspeakably terrible will it be to have the works of one’s lifetime burned? There are men of whom the divine word says, “They shall be saved, but their works shall be burned.”
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Works, Immortality in One’s—See [Immortality of Influence].
WORLD IMPROVING
In the old days the bee-master to reach the honey killed the bees, but now he contrives to spare the bees, who continue to live on and share their own sweetness. A similar transformation is being effected in the hives of human industry. There is an attempt to get more justice, fairness, and even mercy, into commercial rivalries; to substitute some plan of cooperation for the existing competition, if that is possible. That glove-fights are being substituted for prize-fights is indeed a slow approach to civilization, yet the thinnest gloves are a concession to the rising sentiment of humanity; so in business, modern society is getting rid of certain naked brutalities of antagonism, and giving to reason and compassion a larger place. With aching head and aching heart, thousands to-day feel that the struggle for gold and bread is bitter enough; yet a better spirit slowly emerges, tempering the fiery law.—W. L. Watkinson, “The Transfigured Sackcloth.”
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World, Need of the—See [You].
WORLD NOT INDISPENSABLE
During the latter portion of his life, declares a writer in Everybody’s Magazine, Emerson seemed to live much in the world of souls, and came back with difficulty to take cognizance of physical affairs.
At the time of the Millerite excitement, he was walking one day down Bromfield Street, Boston, when he met one of his friends, who remarked: “This is the day when the world is to come to an end, according to the Millerities.” The Sage of Concord looked reflectively at his friend for a moment, and replied: “Ah, well, we can do without it.”
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WORLD, THE, IN THE CHRISTIAN
A ship in the water is good, but water in the ship is bad. A transatlantic liner, years ago, owing to some defect in one of its pumps, began to pump water into the ship instead of pumping it out. As they thought the ship had sprung a leak, they pumped all the harder, with the result that the ship only filled the faster. Presently the water rose so that their fires were extinguished. Then, thinking that they were going to the bottom, they abandoned the ship. Later on, some Englishmen found her tossing in mid-ocean, water-logged. Going on board, they ascertained the trouble, pumped her out, brought her in and secured $300,000 salvage money.
Just so the Christian in the world is good, but the world in the Christian is bad. The believer who allows the evil practises of the sinful world to dominate his heart can not possibly succeed; and yet there are men who, like those in the ship above mentioned, seem to pump the world into themselves as fast as they can.—A. F. Schauffler, The Christian Herald.
(3513)
Worldliness—See [Amusements].
Worldliness, Vanity of—See [Church Indispensable].
Worldly Life—See [Pleasure, Mockery of].
Worry—See [Things].
WORRY, DON’T
Do not hurry,
Do not worry,
As this world you travel through,
No regretting,
Fuming, fretting,
Ever can advantage you.
Be content with what you’ve won,
What on earth you leave undone,
There are plenty left to do.
(3514)
WORSHIP, ENFORCED
Some ministers would welcome the method described below for our churches at home:
Some interesting new methods and agencies are noticed in the Baptist Missionary Magazine as having been introduced into the missionary church at Sinwaugan, Philippine Islands. A band of policemen has been instituted to see that all the members of the church attend the services on time. These policemen hunt up delinquents, and if they can not give good reasons for their absence, bring them to church. In the church they keep order among the throngs of children who attend.
(3515)
WORSHIPER, A MOTHER
One of the first Christian novels of Japan tells of a widow, whose only son was a careless, aimless boy. His mother tried to inspire him with the lofty purpose of reestablishing their house, then in danger of becoming extinct. Her efforts were all in vain, until one day she took him to his father’s grave and kneeling there with him, sternly rebuked him in the face of the dead for his thoughtless life. Then drawing a dirk she handed it to him with this startling order: “Die, coward! Die with this dirk here and now! Then I will follow you!” In this way this Spartan-like mother aroused her boy so that he became a great and successful man. He never could cease to love and reverence her. He said: “The fire of my mother’s face burned into my soul and gave me the supreme decision of my life. Therefore, I am a worshiper of my mother.” This represents some of the best traditions of Japanese family life, and with such a basis, it is easy to see how welcome with many is the Christian truth, which emphasizes the duties of parents and recognizes the rights even of children.—John H. De Forest, “Sunrise in the Sunrise Kingdom.”
(3516)
Worshiping Idols—See [Fetishism].
WORTH, ESTIMATING
The difference between a good job and a bad one is nothing—unless the man with a good one is a good man.
A certain office in Chicago had this fact demonstrated. There were two men on the pay-roll who had an equal opportunity for a new place, a place much in advance of that held by either. One of the men had a good job, the place of assistant to the head of a department. The other was only a clerk. The first man got $30 a week, the second was paid only $18. When the time came for the head to look around and select the man for the new position his eyes fell on the two under consideration, and he began to sum up their merits.
“My idea of a man for this new place,” he said, “is one who has proved by his steadiness, industry, and economy that he is ambitious, that he wants to and means to do well, and who, generally speaking, has shown that he’s a strong character. Now, while Johnson, at $30 a week, is obviously first choice for the place, I won’t give it to him until I’ve compared him with Nagle, who’s only getting $18. I’m going to look them over first and find out who really is the bigger man of the two.”
A week later the office was surprized and shocked to see Nagle, the clerk, get the coveted place.
“Why in the world did you do it?” a friend asked the boss.
The answer was short and to the point. “I looked ’em up, and found that Nagle was a better man than Johnson, in spite of the fact that the latter had the bigger job. Johnson has been getting $30 a week for two years. He’s single, but he hasn’t got a cent of savings in the bank. Nagle has been getting $18 for the same length of time. But Nagle has been taking care of his money, and now he has $300 to his credit in his savings account. Johnson goes out and blows in his money and doesn’t give a single thought to the future. Nagle plants a few dollars every week. Do you suppose there can be any question as to the ability of these two men?”
And when you think it over this is about as good a test of worth as any that could be made.—Chicago Tribune.
(3517)
WOUNDS, CURIOUS
Simon Stone was shot in nine places, and as he lay for dead the Indians made two hacks with a hatchet to cut his head off. He got well, however, and was a lusty fellow in Cotton Mather’s time. Jabez Musgrove was shot with a bullet that went in at his ear and came out at his eye on the other side. A couple of bullets went through his body also. Jabez got well, however, and lived many years. Per contra, Colonel Rossiter, cracking a plum-stone with his teeth, broke a tooth and lost his life. We have seen physicians dying, like Spigelius, from a scratch; and a man who had had a crowbar shot through his head alive and well. These extreme cases are warnings. But you can never be too cautious in your prognosis, in view of the great uncertainty of the course of any disease not long watched, and the many unexpected turns it may take.—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
(3518)
Wounds of Christ—See [Stigmata].
WOUNDS THAT SPEAK
The advocates in ancient Rome gave effect to their appeals by producing on fit occasions the living image of the client’s misery, and his claims on the compassion of the courts. Thus, when Antony was defending against the charge of pecuniary corruption, Aquilius, who had successfully conducted the campaign in Sicily against the fugitive slaves, and was unable to disprove or refute the charge, in the midst of his harangue, after appealing in impassioned tones to the services rendered to his country by the brave soldier who stood by his side—he suddenly unloosed the folds of his client’s robe, and showed to his fellow citizens who sat upon his trial the scars of the wounds which had been received in their behalf. They could not resist the effect of such a sight, and Aquilius was acquitted. (Text.)—Croake James, “Curiosities of Law and Lawyers.”
Many a heart, like that of Thomas, has been softened and convinced by the sight of the marks of Christ’s passion.
(3519)
Writing Life Records—See [Records, Living].
WRONG RETROACTIVE
For he that wrongs his friend
Wrongs himself more, and ever bears about
A silent court of justice in his breast,
Himself the judge and jury, and himself
The prisoner at the bar, ever condemned. (Text.)
—Tennyson.
(3520)
Wrongs, Little—See [Little Sins].
X-Ray as Detective—See [Detection]; [Exposure].