SIMPLICITY
Hon. E. B. Washburne says: “When Grant left his headquarters at Smith’s plantation (a short distance above New Carthage, on the Louisiana side) to enter on the greatest campaign in history, he did not take with him the trappings and paraphernalia so common among military men. All depended on the quickness of the movement. It was important that he should be encumbered with as little baggage as possible. He took with him no orderly, nor horse, nor a servant, nor an overcoat, nor a camp-chest, nor even a clean shirt. His entire baggage for the six days—I was with him at that time—was a tooth-brush! He fared like the commonest soldier in his command, partaking of his rations and sleeping on the ground with no covering except the canopy of heaven.”
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See [Life, The Simple]; [Tact].
SIMPLICITY AND TRUTH
The first rule of evidence in courts is that the easiest explanation is the most probable one. The court always rejects the far-fetched as the improbable. If the snow should fall to-night, and to-morrow morning at daylight footprints in the snow should be found, you could explain the footprints in the easiest possible way—namely, a man went down the street. A far-fetched explanation would be that an aeroplane came along, that a man leaned out of the basket, and holding a shoe in either hand carefully made these footprints so as to create the impression that some one had walked down Orange Street. We reject the explanation because it is involved. We choose the easiest explanation and the simplest.—N. D. Hillis.
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SIMULATION
There are many insects, birds and beasts that preserve their being by simulating what they are not, that they may remain undistinguishable and escape the pitfalls that may lie in wait for them; also to catch the unobservant and destroy them. Among these are the “specter insect,” the “walking-stick insect,” and the “praying insect” (Mantis religiosa), which is so constructed, with its fore-legs stiff and thrust into the air to resemble a withered twig, that it may escape foes from this very resemblance, also that it may catch any unwary insect that ventures near for its own subsistence, thus simulating an attitude of patient endurance quite like those scavengers of the human race—pious beggars who simulate faith and patient endurance, but are really burglars and robbers. The sphinx caterpillar also simulates what it is not, and escapes its enemies by putting on a false appearance, and also attracts its food in a like manner.—Mrs. M. J. Gorton, Popular Science News.
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