When a lecturer on electricity wants to show an example of a human body surcharged with his fire, he places a person on a stool with glass legs. The glass serves to isolate him from the earth, because it will not conduct the fire—the electric fluid. Were it not for this, however much might be poured into his frame, it would be carried away by the earth; but, when thus isolated from it, he retains all that enters him. You see no fire, you hear no fire; but you are told that it is pouring into him. Presently, you are challenged to the proof, asked to come near, and hold your hand close to his person; when you do so, a spark of fire shoots out toward you.
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Elements and Structures—See [Destruction, Gradual].
ELEVATION
Many of life’s hidden mysteries would be clear to us, if we could see them as God does—from above.
Many times aeronauts, carried out to sea, have made this curious observation: the higher they are, the more pellucid the water seems, enabling them to see, more and more clearly, the bottom, with its rocks and seaweed. In crossing the English Channel, which is not very deep, especially near Calais, the bottom may be easily seen, and a submarine could be followed there in all its evolutions. (Text.)—Ernest Constet, Revue Scientifique.
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I remember an old woodsman in the Adirondack forest who used to say that he wanted to go to the top of a certain mountain as often as his legs would carry him because it gave him such a feeling of “heaven-up-histedness.” That is an uncouth, humble, eloquent phrase to describe the function of a great literature.
Unless above himself he can Erect himself, how mean a thing is man!