Current literature is like a garden I once saw. Its proud owner led me through a maze of smooth-trodden paths, and pointed out a vast number of horticultural achievements. There were sixty-seven varieties of dahlias, there were more than a hundred kinds of roses, there were untold wonders which at last my weary brain refused to record. Finally I escaped, exhausted, and sought refuge on a hillside I knew, from which I could look across the billowing green of a great rye-field, and there, given up to the beauty of its manifold simplicity, I invited my soul.
It is even so with our reading. When I go into one of our public reading-rooms, and survey the serried ranks of magazines and the long shelves full of “Recent fiction, not to be taken out for more than five days”—nay, even when I look at the library tables of some of my friends—my brain grows sick and I long for my rye-field.—The Outlook.
(1863)
Literature in Advertising—See [Advertising].
Literature in Prisons—See [Prison Literature].
Literature, Short-lived—See [Evanescent Literature].
Little Deeds of Kindness—See [Cheer, Signals of].
Little Evils—See [Destructiveness].
LITTLE GIFTS
An Australian missionary was addressing a band of children on the needs of the people among whom he was working. A little one slipt a sixpence shyly into his hand with the request that he use it for something special. He bought with it a prayer-book, and gave it to a poor workhouse girl who had been sent from England to go into service on an Australian farm. She promised to read it faithfully. Several weeks later a rough-looking man came and asked him if he were the person who had given his servant a prayer-book. His wife was very ill and wanted to see him. Altho it was twenty miles inland, the clergyman went and ministered to the poor woman. A little while later the man came once more to the minister and said that he and his neighbors had built a little church and paid for it and wanted him to come and conduct services among them. Thus an entirely new work was opened as a result of the little child’s sixpence.