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SHAME
If our deeds were all to be put on a canvas for men to see, should we be as much ashamed of some as them, as the man in this anecdote?
There was once a rich landlord who cruelly opprest a poor widow. Her son, then a little boy of eight years, witnessed it. He became a great painter, and painted a likeness of the dark scene. Years afterward he placed it where the cruel man saw it. He recognized himself in the shameful picture, turned pale, trembled in every joint, and offered a large sum to purchase it that he might put it out of sight. (Text.)—Louis Albert Banks.
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SHAMS
Christianity, like its Founder, is the enemy of all false pretense. Jesus’s denunciations were severest against hypocrites:
The amount of pain and discomfort which malingerers are willing to endure to obtain their discharge is almost incredible, but the facts are well attested. A limb has been held in a fixt position for many months and not even the application of the actual cautery has sufficed to move it. Many men have chopped off some fingers and have claimed that it was an accident. Mental derangement of one sort or another is a favorite form of malingery, but the results usually resemble the popular or stage idea of insanity rather than the true products of mental alienation.
The threat of the application of the actual cautery has cured paralysis, but cases have been recorded where malingerers have endured the cautery on several occasions. A man who simulated blindness was placed on the edge of a jetty and told to walk straight forward. He stept out and fell into the water, for he knew that those who were testing him dared not let him drown. In another case, however, a man who seemed to have paralysis of an arm allowed the amputating knife to be placed to it without flinching, but when thrown into the river he struck out with both arms and swam. (Text.)
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