(1700)
JUDGMENT, GRADUAL
Gibbon wrote and we speak of the “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” and Maspero has written a magnificent volume on “The Passing of the Ancient Empires.” Gradual degeneracy is the cause and precursor of final collapse.
After a violent gale one night a great tree was found lying across the pathway in the park where through long years it had been developing a noble growth. Nothing but a splintered stump remained standing. Examination showed there had been another development besides that of its stately beauty. For it was rotten to the core, because of the secret workings of a multitude of little insects which for generations had lived and multiplied. Judgment was not passed on that tree by the sudden gale, but went forth from the very moment that the first insect nested within its bark.
(1701)
JUDGMENT, LACK OF
“I will never forget my first experience in the hospital work,” said Chief Surgeon Millar, of the Central Emergency Hospital, San Francisco. “There was a green nurse in the detention ward and we had a very violent case in there—a man in the worst stage of delirium tremens. I was awakened in the middle of the night by the head nurse, who requested me to come at once to the patient. When I got there I found him raving and very violent, with the new nurse scared out of her wits. I said:
“‘Why did you let him go so far? I left you some medicine to give him as soon as he got delirious.’
“‘Yes, doctor,’ she replied; ‘but you told me to give that to him if he saw any more snakes, and this time he was seeing blue dogs with pink tails.’”—San Francisco Call.
(1702)