DEPORTMENT

One effect of the high standard of deportment enforced by the railroads is seen in the extent to which women and children travel alone, without fear. An illustration of this is the experience of a Western woman who was coming to New York for the first time. With her husband, she left Buffalo for New York on the Lehigh Valley Railroad. When they reached Mauch Chunk, Pa., the husband got out to walk up and down the platform, and somehow the train pulled out without him. The woman, left alone, never having been east of Chicago before, was on the verge of panic. Her husband had all the money; the train was to reach New York in the night; she didn’t know what hotel to go to, and, if she had known, couldn’t have found her way there. So the conductor took her in charge, had her carried to a good hotel, and arranged to have the bill guaranteed. The husband, when he arrived, was so grateful that he hunted up the conductor and presented to him a handsome ring.—Buffalo Evening News.

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DEPRAVITY

That sin so easily besets and so dangerously deceives its subjects is accounted for by the declaration that “the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.”

The anemone, or “windflower,” as its Greek name means, is fascinating to botanists and to all lovers of flowers because of two highly contrasted characteristics. One of these is what gardeners call its “sporting” tendency in color. The other is a constant quantity, which never varies. As for the former, all who know the anemone are well aware that this flower is so variable that the cultivator never knows what will be the tint of the blossoms on any plant. But the constant quantity is the great black spot in the heart of the flower. No matter what may happen to be the color of the petals, the dense dark center is always there. So it is with this our human nature. Education, culture, refinement, high accomplishments, hereditary advantages, natural amiability, may and do contribute toward the charm of many a personality; but the black spot of the depravity which is innate is not expunged by any of these expedients. (Text.)

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See [Bible and Human Nature].

Depravity a Disease—See [Character Conditioned by the Physical].

DEPRIVATION