(Volume I, page 300)
To bring out the thought in this selection, study it as follows:
What is the meaning of jocosely? (Flippantly.) What is a court? (A place where disputes between persons are settled by a judge, or by a judge and jury.) What is a jury? (A company of men, usually six or twelve, who hear the evidence and decide on the facts.) What are cases? (The dispute or disagreement is called a case, when it is brought to court to be decided or settled.) What are damsels? (Young girls.) What were the names of the young damsels the young man said he saw? Why do the words “Industry” and “Sloth” begin with capital letters? (Because they are the names of girls.) Were they real girls? What does industry mean? (Work.) What does sloth mean? (Laziness.) Were these real girls? Then what does this mean? (The young man thinks of fondness for work and fondness for idleness as though they were girls.) When we write of qualities, or feelings, as though they were human beings, the words become proper nouns and we begin them with capital letters. Do you know what we call this process of lifting something that is lower to the level of human beings? No? We call it personification. Here industry and sloth are personified and made the equals of human beings. What does entreats mean? What does persuades mean? (That means teases or begs.) Which is the stronger word, entreats or persuades? (Entreats means begs strongly; persuades means begs and makes me believe what is said. I think the latter is really the stronger word.) What does alternately mean? (First one and then the other.) What does impartial mean? (Fair; without any favoritism.) What does detained mean? (Kept.) What does pleadings mean? (Where a case is tried in court the lawyers on each side try to persuade the court or jury to decide in favor of the man [client] who has hired them. The written papers and the speeches the lawyers make are called pleadings.)
Do you think the young man was really serious? Do you think he really tried to decide anything as he lay in bed, or was he just trying to make up an excuse for his laziness? Was there any reason why the young man should lie in bed? Did he think there was? Could you find any better reason than he gave? Do you think he was a bright young man? If you had listened to him would you have taken his excuse? Why? Was it really truthful? Did you ever lie in bed and think, “Well, I must get up; no, I’ll lie a little longer. But I must get up. What’s the use? But I ought to get up. Yes, I really ought to get up,” etc., etc., and finally discover that you had wasted a great deal of time without really intending it? Were Industry and Sloth pleading with you then? Do you think that some people waste much time trying to decide useless questions? Does it sometimes happen that men and women waste so much time in this way that they never accomplish a great deal of anything?
Why the Sea Is Salt
(Volume II, page 484)
In this pleasing fairy story Mary Howitt has told the tale of the curious explanation offered by the peasants of Denmark and Norway for the saltness of the sea. It naturally raises in a child’s mind the question, why is the sea salt? The question can be answered in this manner:
The rain falls down in little drops, some of which soak into the ground, while others make rivulets that run into brooks that in time join the rivers that flow into the sea. Much of the water that soaks into the ground finds its way again to the surface in springs that feed the brooks and keep them alive when no rain is falling. Of course the sun when it shines turns some of the water into vapor that rises again to the sky. Sometimes on a cool morning you can see the mist or vapor too heavy to rise out of sight and too light to fall as rain. Wherever there is water, some of it is rising into the air, especially when the sun shines and it is warm and the wind blows. The sea is so big that great quantities of vapor are rising from it all the time and being blown over the land to be cooled, to gather into rain and to fall again where it will refresh the earth and make the plants grow.
So you see water is traveling through the air all the time, up from the earth, the streams and the seas, through the air, back to the earth and through it into the sea again in a great series of everlasting circuits. We are hardly ever conscious of the moisture except when it falls as rain or snow and spoils our plans.