(1275)
Good Shepherd—See [Fold, The, of Christ].
GOOD VICTORIOUS
In all the upward march of matter and force, there has never been one single crisis and conflict where the higher has not been victorious over the lower. Witness the first struggle, between the mineral and the vegetable. The marble is hard, and the moss seeks to spread its robe of olive and velvet thereupon; slowly the marble crumbles, and dies; the moss lives and grows—it could not be otherwise; the moss is the higher and therefore victorious. The husbandman plants his seed of corn. The seed dies, the little plant lives, and becomes a great stalk, with corn in the milk, and then the full corn in the ear—it could not be otherwise; the golden stalk is the higher, and must be victorious. In the forest there grow a hundred kinds of jack-grapes, small, black and aciduous, and a thousand orange-trees are there, bitter, and with acid that sets the teeth on edge. But on the edge of the forest, steeped in sunshine and blest with room, there grows one grape that is purple and one orange that is sweet. And at last all the thousand acid vines and the ten thousand bitter orange-trees perish, while the one purple vine survives, takes feet to itself and journeys to all vineyards, while the orange of the golden heart gets wings for itself and crosses vale and mountain—it could not be otherwise, they are the higher. And never once has the law been reversed.—N. D. HILLIS.
(1276)
GOOD WILL
By a divine birth long ago, peace and good will came between those that had been at enmity. An earthly suggestion of this is that related by Mrs. Pickett, widow of Confederate General George E. Pickett, on the occasion of the birth of a son:
General Grant had been a dear friend of my Soldier’s ever since the Mexican War. At the time our first baby was born, the two armies were encamped facing each other. Bonfires were lighted in celebration all along Pickett’s line. Grant saw them, and sent scouts to learn the cause. When they reported, he said to General Ingalls:
“Haven’t we some kindling on this side of the line? Why don’t we strike a light for the young Pickett?”
In a little while bonfires were flaming from the Federal line. A few days later there was taken through the lines a baby’s silver service, engraved: “To George E. Pickett, Jr., from his father’s friends, U. S. Grant, Rufus Ingalls, George Buckley.” (Text.)