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PAIN, LEARNING BY
The gipsies of Transylvania, according to a writer in Blackwood’s Magazine, teach young bears to dance by placing the animal on a sheet of heated iron, while the trainer plays on his fiddle a strongly accentuated piece of dance-music. The bear, lifting up its legs alternately to escape the heat, involuntarily observes the time marked by the violin. Later on the heated iron is supprest, when the animal has learned its lesson, and whenever the gipsy begins to play on the fiddle the young bear lifts its legs in regular time to the music.—Public Opinion.
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Pain Relieved—See [Patience].
PAIN STRENGTHENS
When the little girl told her music-teacher that it hurt her fingers to practise on the piano, the teacher answered: “I know it hurts them, but it strengthens them, too.” Then the child packed the philosophy of the ages into her reply: “Teacher, it seems that everything which strengthens hurts.”—F. F. Shannon.
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PAIN, THE ANGEL OF
When Theodosius was put upon the rack he suffered very great torture at the first. Somebody asked him how he endured all that pain on the rack. He replied: “When I was first put upon the rack I suffered a great deal; but very soon a young man in white stood by my side, and with a soft and comfortable handkerchief he wiped the sweat from my brow, and my pains were relieved. It was a punishment for me to get from the rack, because when the pain was all gone the angel was gone.” (Text.)