Protective Coloration—See [Nature’s Protection].
Protective Occupations—See [Disease, Exemption from].
PROVIDENTIAL INTERPOSITION
I had an experience a while ago on a Chautauqua platform that I never shall forget.
It was a very large assembly, and it was held in a place where I had never been before, and where I had no old friends on hand to serve as “claqueurs.” I discovered very soon after beginning my lecture that for some unaccountable reason I was not en rapport with my audience, who listened to me, as it were, out of the corners of their eyes and with half-averted faces.
I felt instinctively that that lecture was foredoomed to failure unless in some way Providence interposed for my deliverance.
Well, Providence did; for presently a big dog entered the auditorium, and gazed wistfully about him. Then, facing the platform and seeing me hard at work, he compassionately concluded to come up and help me. And on he came, straight up the aisle, and climbed the platform steps, while everybody watched him.
He walked around me, sized me up, and then deliberately planted himself in front of me, sat down, and pricked up his ears like a pulpit committee listening to a candidate.
I ceased addressing the audience, and, turning to the dog, I said: “I am delighted to welcome you to this platform. I have been anxiously waiting for you, and had begun to fear that you would not be here. You have come to the kingdom for just this time, and I am happy to discover that in this large and evidently critical audience I have at last found one hearer who has sense enough to appreciate a good thing when he hears it.”
The dog seemed to understand that he was addrest; and so he howled, and then the people howled, and I went on howling. The dog went his way without ever knowing that he saved my life that day.—P. S. Henson, Christian Endeavor World.