DUTIES, CATCHING ONE’S
“Caleb Cobweb,” of the Christian Endeavor World, gives the following quaint advice:
Some workmen were repairing the Boston Elevated Railway. One of them took a red-hot bolt in his pincers and threw it up to another workman, who was to place it in the hole drilled for it. The second workman failed to catch it, and it fell to the street below. There it struck a truck-load of twenty bales of cotton, a thousand dollars’ worth, that was passing at the moment. The cotton instantly took fire, but the driver knew nothing of it. The flames had made considerable headway when the cries of the onlookers informed the driver of what was going on. He had only enough time to leap out of the way of the flames and save his horse. The Boston Fire Department was summoned and put out the fire.
This is a fair sample of what happens every time one of us workmen on the great edifice of human society misses a bolt that is thrown to him. They are many—these bolts—and they come thick and fast. They are red-hot, too, for they are duties that are in imperative need of getting done. If they are not at once stuck into the proper hole, and the top at once flattened out by sturdy blows, they grow cool and useless. They can not be put into the structure; or, if we go ahead and hammer them in, they are not tight and they may bring about disaster.
No, there is nothing for it but to catch the bolts on the fly. Let one fall, and some one gets hurt—or some thing, which in the end, means some one. No one knows what will be hit when a worker misses a red-hot duty that comes flying at him.
There is only one safety for the workman or for the rest of us: Catch them!
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DUTIES DISTRIBUTED
Here is a short sermon by a woman, tho not preached from a pulpit. It is a good one, and is pretty sure to hit your own case somewhere, whatever may be your age and circumstances:
The best thing to give your enemy is forgiveness; to an opponent, tolerance; to a friend, your heart; to your child, a good example; to your father, deference; to your mother, conduct that will make her proud of you; to yourself, respect; to all men, charity.—The Interior.