When he was thirty feet down the earth became damp. That evening he said to the old chief with earnest solemnity, “I think that Jehovah God will give us water to-morrow from that hole.”
“No, Missi,” the faithful old fellow sighed. “You will never get rain coming up from the earth in Aniwa. We expect daily, if you reach water, to see you drop into the sea where the sharks will eat you!”
At daybreak. Dr. Paton went down and made a little hole in the center of the bottom of his well. He says: “I trembled in every limb when the water rushed up and began to fill the hole. Muddy tho it was, I eagerly tasted it, and the little cup almost dropt from my hand in sheer joy, and I fell upon my knees in that muddy bottom to praise the Lord. It was water! It was living water from Jehovah’s well!”
With superstitious fear the people gazed upon the jugful their Missi carried up. The old chief shook it, touched it, tasted it. “Rain! rain. Yes, it is rain!”
The back of heathenism was broken. A new order of things began in Aniwa. Family prayers and reverence for the Sabbath spontaneously grew up. The wonderful transformation which was wrought in the Aniwans became household talk all over the world. All this was hastened because the ambassador of Jehovah God had done what none of the gods of the islanders could have done—brought up rain from the ground! (Text.)
(2034)
Mirror, The, as a Revealer—See [Self-inspection].
MISCALCULATION
What is said to be the largest plow in the world was made some years ago at Bakersfield, Cal. This plow was the result of the ingenuity of a ranch superintendent, who had authority to make improvements, but not to introduce steam-plows. The superintendent had grown very tired of preparing three thousand acres of land for wheat with ordinary nine- or twelve-inch plows drawn by two horses.
He argued that if two horses could pull a twelve-inch plow, six horses could pull a plow thirty-six inches wide, and that eight horses could pull a plow forty-eight inches wide. He made the calculations carefully, and, being clever with his pencil, made drawings also, and sent for blacksmiths and machinists to construct a plow on his principle.