H

HABIT

Says Jeremiah, “Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to evil.” The last chapter in the biography of habits is its enthronement, its tyranny over the will. The tragedy of every habit is that instead of being an aid to the will, it becomes its master. Donald Sage Mackay, in “The Religion of the Threshold,” says:

Henry Drummond once told of a man who had gone to a London physician to consult about his eyes. The physician looked into the man’s eyes with a delicate ophthalmoscope, and then said quietly to the man. “My friend, you are practising a certain sin, and unless you give it up, in six months you will be blind.” For a moment the man stood trembling in the agony of discovery, and then, turning to the sunlit window, he looked out and exclaimed, “Farewell, sweet light, farewell!”

(1329)

A man named Patch, having been charged with murder, his solicitor carefully examined the premises and situation, and came to the conclusion that the murderer must have been a left-handed man. The solicitor informed Sergeant Best, in consultation, that he had noticed Patch, when taking his dinner, using his knife with the left hand. In a conference before the trial, the sergeant prest the prisoner to say whether he was not left-handed, but he protested he was not. When the prisoner was arraigned at the bar on the day of trial, and was called on to plead, he answered, “Not guilty,” and at once, of course unconsciously, held up his left hand.—Croake James, “Curiosities of Law and Lawyers.”

(1330)

Slowly and insidiously do the evil habits grow until they become as gnarled crooked trees which none may straighten; little by little the gossamer thread becomes a cart-rope which none may break; imperceptibly does the film of ice spread over the river, holding the waters before long in a grasp which Niagara could not burst. The character is stereotyped; the life moves in deep downward grooves. Says the modern determinist, “By habit the mind is reduced into servitude.” Says the apostle, “We are sold under sin.”—W. L. Watkinson, “The Transfigured Sackcloth.”

(1331)

See Routine.

HABIT AUTOMATIC

If a sleeping-plant is placed in a dark room after it has gone to sleep at night, it will be found next morning in the light-position, and will again assume the nocturnal position as evening comes. We have, in fact, what seems to be a habit built by the alternation of day and night. The plant normally drops its leaves at the stimulus of darkness and raises them at the stimulus of light. But here we see the leaves rising and falling in the absence of the accustomed stimulation. This is the characteristic par excellence of habit. When a series of actions are compelled to follow each other by applying a series of stimuli they become organically tied together, or associated, and follow each other automatically, even when the whole series of stimuli are not acting.—The Scientific American.

(1332)

HABIT, BREAKING

A story is told of an English minister who offered a prize to the boy who would write the best composition in five minutes on “How to Overcome a Habit.”

At the expiration of five minutes the compositions were read. The prize went to a lad of nine years. The following is his essay:

“Well, sir, habit is hard to overcome. If you take off the first letter, it does not change ‘a bit.’ If you take off another, you still have a ‘bit’ left. If you take off still another the whole of ‘it’ remains. If you take off another, it is wholly used up; all of which goes to show that if you want to get rid of habit you must throw it off altogether.”

(1333)

HABIT IN WORK

All his life Mark Twain was an inveterate smoker, and one of the most leisurely men in the world. An old pressman, who was once printer’s devil in an office where Mark was editorial writer, tells this anecdote of his habits of work. “One of my duties was to sweep the room where editors worked. Every day Mark would give me a nickel to get away from him. He would rather die in the dust than uncross his legs. One day he gave me a nickel to dot an ‘i’ in his copy for him. He certainly did enjoy life, that man did.”—New York Evening Post.

(1334)

HABIT, PHYSIOLOGICAL CONSEQUENCES OF

The following bit of information is from La Nature:

Men of a singular race have been discovered in New Guinea, and the governor, it seems, has promised to send some specimens to London. Living as they do in the marshes, these men have no need to walk. On the other hand, the marshes are covered with a growth that prevents navigation in canoes. The men have built huts in trees, and as organs of prehension alone are useful to them, their lower limbs have almost atrophied. These natives have only feeble and withered legs and feet, while the chest and arms are of normal development. They can scarcely stand upright, and they walk like large apes. They thus give the impression of cripples who have been deprived of the use of their lower extremities.

(1335)

HABIT, THE POWER OF

Samuel Adjai Crowther, an African slave-boy who became a bishop, delighted to tell to his children the story of how he put on his first shoes. In “The Black Bishop” Jesse Page gives the story in the bishop’s own words. Four of the pupils in the missionary’s school had been promoted to the position of monitors. This was at Fourah Bay College, under Rev. Charles Haensel:

To give effect to our position, we were allowed to wear shoes. Strong, stout shoes, with very thick soles, were procured and given to us; they were called “Blucher shoes.”

On a Saturday afternoon we were called, received a pair each, and were told to wear them every Sunday to church at St. George’s Cathedral, a distance of about three miles.

Never having had shoes on before, we began practising in our dormitory that evening. None of us could move a step after lacing up on our feet the unwieldy articles, and consequently we were objects of laughter to our pupils.

An idea struck me which I at once put into execution. Crawling to a corner of the room, I first knelt down, then holding on to the wall for support, I stood up, and still being supported by the wall, I stept round the room many times, the others following my example, till we were able to leave the wall, stand alone, or move about without support.

You can well imagine what a burden this was to us, and after losing sight of the college, we sat on the grass, took off the shoes, walked barefoot, and put them on only at the porch of the church. We did the same on returning to college. After some months’ practise we were able to move better in them, but complained how they hurt our feet, and would rather be without them. But after some months we invested in the purchase of boots ourselves, and were always careful to buy those that made noise and creaked as we walked, to our great delight and the admiration of our pupils.—The Youth’s Companion.

(1336)

Helen M. Winslow declares that it was her intention from childhood to become a writer, and that she early obtained a position on the staff of a city newspaper. During a period covering several years she had charge of twenty-eight columns a week, on three papers, all of which she filled without help from subordinates. She worked eight hours a day in a dark, dingy office, and six more in her “den” at home every night, going to theaters from twice to five times a week, and working all day Sunday to bring up the ends. She edited news-columns, fashion, health, dramatic, hotel, book-review, railroad, bicycle, fancy-work, kitchen, woman’s club, society, palmistry and correspondence departments, and withal kept up an editorial column for eight years. Then she started a journal of her own. She worked like a slave for seven years more, wrote articles, editorials, read manuscripts and books, kept up an enormous correspondence, solicited most of her advertisements, and went to the printing-office every issue to attend personally to the details of “make-up” and proof-reading.

“But you have had your day,” a younger woman said to her, “why grumble now?” “Because it was not the day I wanted, and I only meant to make it the stepping-stone to something better. I did not want to be a newspaper woman and nothing more; and now that I have leisure for something more, I find my mental faculties, instead of being sharpened for further use, dulled. I have done desultory work so long I can not take up anything more thorough. I have been a ‘hack’ too many years. I can not be a race-horse now.” (Text.)

(1337)

Hair-splitting—See Word-juggling.

Hand, Use of Right—See Tradition.

Handicap of Ill Health—See Body, Mastering the.

HANDICAPS, OVERCOMING

Charles A. Spencer was a lens-maker, and devoted years to the perfection of achromatic lenses. He had devised a process so delicate that he could adjust the curve of the lens so as to increase the defining and resolving power of the lens beyond all other opticians. But a fire destroyed his shop and nearly all of his tools, which had taken years of toil and study to construct, together with a large amount of finished and unfinished work. He was badly crippled, and had to begin all over again, and only with the utmost toil and perseverance was he able, little by little, to replace the necessary tools and recover his former position.—James T. White, “Character Lessons.”

(1338)

HANDIWORK OF NATURE

The down upon the peach or plum is so delicate and so thickly set that one can not touch the fruit with a needle’s point without breaking the tender stalk; and yet the dew of the night covers the whole surface of the fruit and disappears in the morning, leaving the gossamer growth more orderly and beautiful than before. The dew covers every leaf of the giant oak, and the mighty tree drinks in the refreshing moisture to its thirsty heart through millions of pores, and the iron trunk which has withstood a thousand storms is made stronger by the gentle strength of the dew. The silent fall of the dew is caused and controlled by agencies of the most tremendous power; the same power that shakes a whole continent with its subterranean thunder is the same as that which encircles the finest filament of thistle-down with a coronet of dewy gems so small that they do not bend the delicate stalks with their weight.—London Globe.

(1339)

HANDS, HELPING

A German legend tells of a poor lad, the only son of his widowed mother, who went out every morning to earn bread for both, when he found a pair of giant hands helping him in every task.

What are the forces of nature when enlisted on one’s side but just such giant hands?

(1340)

HAPPINESS

The stream is not marred, it is made only more beautiful, when broken by rocks, and sweeping through eddies, than when silently gliding through the sodded canal. And so the happiness which is found in a course passed amid the conditions that invest us in this life, may be only brighter, more full and more animated, for its very interruptions. The pleasure shall be more radiant than ever, when contrasting the darkness of an overpast sorrow.—Richard S. Storrs.

(1341)

Dr. Raffles once said: “I have made it a rule never to be with any one ten minutes without trying to make him happier.” It was a remark of Dr. Dwight that one who makes a little child happier for half an hour is a fellow worker with God.

A little boy said to his mother: “I couldn’t make sister happy nohow I could fix it. But I made myself happy trying to make her happy.” “I make Jim happy,” said another boy, speaking of his invalid brother. “He laughs and that makes me happy, and I laugh.” “To love and to be loved,” said Sydney Smith, “is the greatest happiness of existence.”

(1342)

HAPPINESS AS A GOD

Entomologists tell us that millions of insects, generations whose numbers must be counted by myriads, are born and die within the compass of one summer’s day. Perfected with the morning, they flutter through their sunny life; and the evening, when it turns its shadow upon the earth, becomes to their animated and tuneful being a universal grave. It is impossible to understand for what end this is done, unless we accept the happiness which these share, as a good in itself; a good so great, in the judgment of the Creator, and of those who look with Him on the creation, as to justify the expenditure of such wisdom and force on their delicate, harmonious, but ephemeral structure; and to make this structure illustrative of His glory.—Richard S. Storrs.

(1343)

HAPPINESS COMMUNICATED

In Los Angeles, when the rose festival comes, the child, going through the streets, breathes perfume, and for days the sweetness clings to the garments. And all good men exhale happiness as they pass through life.—N. D. Hillis.

(1344)

HAPPINESS, DEARTH OF

Lord Byron, who drank of every cup that earth could give him, and who had all the ministries of earth around him, with an intellectual and physical nature that could dive down into deepest depths and could soar to the highest heights, whose wings when spread could touch either pole, just before he died, sitting in a gay company, was meditative and moody. They looked at him and said, “Byron, what are you thinking so seriously about?” “Oh,” he said, “I was sitting here counting up the number of happy days I have had in this world. I can count but eleven, and I was wondering if I would ever make up the dozen in this world of tears and pangs and sorrows.” (Text.)—“Famous Stories of Sam P. Jones.”

(1345)

HAPPINESS FROM WITHIN

We think that if a certain event were to come to pass, if some rare good fortune should befall us, our stock of happiness would be permanently increased, but the chances are that it would not; after a time we should settle back to the old every-day level. We should get used to the new conditions, the new prosperity, and find life wearing essentially the same tints as before. Our pond is fed from hidden springs; happiness is from within, and outward circumstances have but little power over it.—John Habberton, The Chautauquan.

(1346)

HAPPINESS, IMPARTING

A poor man went into a wealthy merchant’s counting-house one day and saw piles of bank-notes which the clerks were busy in counting. The poor man thought of his desolate home, and the needs of his family, and, almost without thinking, he said to himself, “Ah! how happy a very little of that money would make me!” The merchant overheard him. “What is that you say, my friend?” The poor man was confused, and begged to be excused, as he did not intend to say anything. But the kind-hearted merchant wouldn’t excuse him, and so the man had to repeat what he had said. “Well,” said the merchant, “how much would it take to make you happy?” “Oh, I don’t know, sir,” said he, “but the weather is very cold, and I have no fuel; my wife and children are thinly clad, sir, for I have been sick. But we don’t want much. I think, sir, about fifteen dollars would get us all we need.” “John,” said the merchant to his clerk, “count this man out fifteen dollars.” The poor man’s heart was made glad, and when he got home, his family were made happy. At the close of the day, the clerk asked his employer how he should enter on his books the money given. He answered: “Say, ‘For making a man happy, fifteen dollars.’” Perhaps that was the happiest fifteen dollars the merchant himself had ever spent. (Text.)

(1347)

HAPPINESS, RULES FOR

Mrs. Alice Freeman Palmer was once talking to a girls’ club, composed of the unkempt and unprivileged daughters of Eve, and gave them three rules for happiness in the promise that they would keep the rules every day for a week. The rules were, for each day:

First—Commit to memory a worthy sentence.

Second—Do something for others.

Third—See something beautiful.

She met a while after one little girl who declared that she had fulfilled her promise every day; but that one day, when mother was sick, she could not go to the park to see something beautiful, and thought she had lost it, but while doing something for others, in the way of caring for the baby, she looked out of the attic window of her squalid home, and saw a common sparrow, and as she looked at the little fellow, the dark feathers around his throat appearing to her like a smart necktie, she found her vision of the beautiful in what many would consider the most ordinary of all God’s feathered songsters. Oh, but she arrived! arrived in spite of the commonplace which seemed to fetter her, and sunshine came of a dreary day into a dreary room, because of the purpose of her soul.—Nehemiah Boynton.

(1348)

HARDNESS OF HEART

The souls of men are not like the “constant” quantities of the mathematician. Divine love softens the hardest human hearts.

A mass of ironstone, dark and adamantine, flies through space and suddenly impinges on our atmosphere. There is a flash in the air and men gaze on the apparition of the blazing meteor. They have seen an aerolite. The soft, invisible, impalpable atmosphere receives the hard, ferruginous aerolite and at once melts it. (Text.)

(1349)

HARDSHIP, MISSIONARY

Egerton Young gives below an experience as missionary to the Indians of British Columbia. He shows the spirit of Him who shared the sorrows of man to save the world:

I have seen Indians eighty years of age who never saw a loaf of bread, or a cake, or a pie. When my wife and I went out there we lived as they did; we lived on fish twenty-one times a week for months together, and for weeks together we did not average two good meals a day. For years we did not begin to live as well as the thieves and murderers in the penitentiaries of Great Britain and America. But it was a blest work, and we were happy in it. (Text.)

(1350)

Hardship Overcome—See College or Experience.

HARDSHIP VICARIOUSLY BORNE

More than eighty years ago a fierce war raged in India between the English and Tipu Sahib. On one occasion several English officers were taken prisoners. Among them was one named Baird. One day the native officer brought in fetters to be put upon each of the prisoners, the wounded not excepted. Baird had been severely wounded and was suffering from pain and weakness.

A gray-haired officer said to the native official, “You do not think of putting chains upon that wounded man?”

“There are just as many pairs of fetters as there are prisoners,” was the answer, “and every pair must be worn.”

“Then,” said the noble officer, “put two pairs on me. I will wear his as well as my own.” This was done. Strange to say. Baird lived to regain his freedom, and lived to take that city; but his noble, unselfish friend died in prison.

Up to his death, he wore two pairs of fetters. But what if he had worn the fetters of all the prisoners? What if, instead of being a captive himself, he had quitted a glorious palace, to live in their loathsome dungeon, to wear their chains, to bear their stripes, to suffer and die for them, that they might go free, and free forever? (Text.)—Sophie Bronson Titterington.

(1351)

Harmony—See Rapport.

HARMONY IS GOD’S WORK

In “Famous Stories of Sam P. Jones” may be found this bit of wisdom:

A well-trained musician sits down to a piano and sweeps his fingers over the keys. A cloud gathers on his face as he recognizes a discord in the instrument. What is the matter? Three of the keys are out of harmony. These three keys that are out of harmony are out of harmony with everything in the universe that is in harmony. I say to that musician, “Close up that piano and let it alone until it puts itself in harmony.” He replies, “It is impossible for the piano to put itself in harmony.” “Who can put it in harmony?” I ask. He replies, “The man who made the instrument. The instrument is put into the hands of the man who made it, and in a few hours every key on the piano is in harmony, and the piano being in harmony with itself is in harmony with everything else in the universe.”

God alone can put discordant souls into harmony.

(1352)

HARMONY, ULTIMATE

The dome of the Baptistry at Pisa has this wonderful quality, that it is so fashioned that no matter how discordant the sounds received may be they are returned softened and harmonized.

So shall it yet be with the discords of earth in the new heaven when all shall have been baptized into the same spirit.

(1353)

HARP, THE, AS A SACRED INSTRUMENT

The harp is by common consent supposed to be the musical instrument of the angels, and many a clerical metaphor has been made regarding “the celestial harps,” “the golden harps,” etc. The metaphor is probably taken by very few as a fixt truth, but is nevertheless to the musician an interesting and also a reverential one. At the time that the Scriptures were written the harp was the finest instrument possest by man, and in ascribing it to the angels an effort was made to represent the music of heaven by the noblest tones of earth. Were we to imagine celestial music to-day it would be the roll of heavenly orchestras, and some of the old Italian painters scarcely made a musical error in depicting their angels as playing on violins. The violin is the noblest earthly instrument, and is far beyond the harp in its representation of bliss. Meanwhile, Schumann and Berlioz (in Faust) have used the harp to picture celestial joys, while Wagner has used the violins in a soft tremolo in highest positions, combined in sweet tones of wood wind. Nevertheless, association of ideas is much in music, and the harp must always call up the idea of heaven in the minds of many. (Text.)—Boston Musical Herald.

(1354)

HARSHNESS, FAILURE OF

What harshness in fathers, who fear to praise their children! What severity in some teachers! What bitterness in our muck-rakers and reformers! How seldom do we find a man who can speak the truth, and speak it in love. Yet there are some things that harshness can not do. In February the clods are hard, the seeds dead, the roots inert, the boughs leafless. Now let nature speak in terms of power. She lets loose the north wind, to smite the branches; she beats the bare clods with hail and snow. In a tempest of fury she commands the earth to awaken. But power is impotent; not a root stirs, not a seed moves. Then, when the storms and winds have published their weakness, the south wind comes softly wooing. Summer speaks in love. The mother heart caresses each sleeping seed, and wakens it with bosom pressure. And every root and bough answers with beauty and radiant loveliness. Amid this is the parable of influence, that rebukes man’s harshness, and smites those who turn justice into cruelty and cause their good to be evil spoken of.—N. D. Hillis.

(1355)

Harvest—See Fertility.

Harvest Failures—See Choked.

HARVEST FROM EARLY SOWING

A little girl had been promised a handsome Bible for her birthday. On hearing a missionary tell of the need of Bibles in India, the child asked if she might not have two Bibles, each half as handsome as the one her mother was planning to give her. Her mother consented and the little girl wrote her name in one of them and gave it to the missionary to send to India. Years afterward a lady missionary was telling the story of the love of Jesus to a few women, when one of them exclaimed: “Oh, I know all about that. I have a book which tells me these things.” She brought the book to the missionary, who, on opening it, saw with astonishment her own name on the fly-leaf! It was the very birthday Bible she had sent out years before as a little girl and it had led to the conversion of its reader. (Text.)

(1356)

Harvest-raising—See Cooperation with God.

Haste—See Painstaking.

HASTE WITHOUT SELF-CONTROL

Emerson, in his acute observations on manners, declares that there is nothing “so inelegant as haste,” meaning by this the haste which is a hurry. Haste which the occasion demands is never undignified. A fireman running to a fire is a rather inspiriting sight. We would despise him if he walked. It is rushing in the ordinary affairs of life, which demand deliberation, steadiness, control, that destroys dignity and so destroys good manners. The man in a hurry, we feel at once, is so because he is not master of the situation. He would not be compelled to gorge his breakfast, to walk so fast that he looks like an animated wagon-wheel, or to slight his work, if he had his affairs in control.—Chautauquan.

(1357)

Hasty Action—See Retaliation.

HAVOC THAT SPREADS

Vernon L. Kellogg points out how the evil of the great grasshopper plague that visited some Western States about forty years ago, entailed disaster on the whole country:

Over thousands and thousands of square miles of the great granary of the land were spread the hordes of hoppers. Farmers and stockmen were being ruined. Then the storekeepers and bankers that sell things and lend money to the farmers. Then the lawyers and doctors that depend on the farmers’ troubles to earn a living. Then the millers and stock-brokers and capitalists of the great cities that make their fortunes out of handling and buying and selling the grains the farmers send in long trains to the centers of population. Everybody, the whole country, was aghast and appalled at the havoc of the hopper. (Text.)—“Insect Stories.”

(1358)

Head-hunters—See Barbarism.

Headlight Requirements—See Illumination.

HEADS, LOSING

I was preaching for a single Sabbath in Brooklyn. In the course of my discourse I lost my head; in fact, I lost all of them. Three were on paper, and one on my shoulders; and they all went at once.

I tried to remember what I had had in my head, but, like the old king’s dream, the matter had gone from me.

I tried to decipher what I had put upon paper, but the writing had faded out.

Everything was gone except the audience, and I could have wished that they were gone, too.

I pounded the desk; I pawed the floor; I clawed the air. I poured whole broadsides of big dictionary into those long-suffering people, but without a single scintilla of sense.

At last I struck a line of thought, and clutched it with the grip of despair, and pulled myself out of the hole in which I had been floundering, and then limped along to a “lame conclusion.”

And then so mortified was I that I would have sunk through the floor, could I have found a vacant nail-hole. As that was out of the question, I would fain have sneaked away without speaking to a human being; but, as bad luck would have it, I had promised to go home to dinner with the Hon. William Richardson, one of the most cultured members of the congregation.

We walked some distance before either spoke a word. Finally, I broke silence—I felt like breaking everything in sight—and I said, “Richardson, was not that the very worst you ever heard?”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Mean?” I replied, catching savagely at the word. “‘Mean’ is no name for it. You must have noticed how under the third head of my discourse I lost my head, and ripped and raved and tore around like a lunatic. What did the people think of it?”

“Think of it? Think of it?” he repeated with sincere surprize. “Why, they thought it was the best part of the whole sermon.”

And then I said to myself, and I said to him, “What is the use of talking sense to the people when they like the other so much better?” Possibly this may serve to account for the fact that these same people subsequently called me to become their pastor.—P. S. Henson, Christian Endeavor World.

(1359)

Headstrong—See Wilfulness.

HEAD-WORK

“He puzzled me at first,” said a physician who had engaged a young college student to take some care of his office. “He put actual head-work into his sweeping and dusting, and he showed remarkable carefulness and dexterity in handling articles, never disarranging or misplacing them. I found that he is studying music as well as Latin, and aims to be a pianist one of these days. Do you see, he simply applied the skill he had attained in a finer art to the rougher work he did for me? It speaks well for his future that he did it.”

This ennobling and harmonizing of the coarser task by means of the skill acquired at a finer one, marks the difference between cheap work and expert work. The careless man never sees the connection between two varieties of labor, but the man who does not mean to waste the least of his talents puts his whole mind, all his manual skill, into whatever necessary task is set before him. And this application of skill to diverse ends heightens in itself that very force of skill, so that the man who uses the best he has for each new need becomes a stronger and more able man. (Text.)—Young People.

(1360)

Head-work Unremunerative—See Ill-paid Work.

Healing—See Christ, A Therapeutic.

Healing Spells—See Remedies, Strange.

Healing, The Gift of—See God Sends Gifts.

HEALING WATERS

Traversing Thrace is a wonderful river flowing west and south toward the Egean Sea, named the Tearus. It is said to come from thirty-eight springs, all issuing from the same rock, some hot and some cold. The waters so mingling are pure, limpid and delicious, and are possest of remarkable medicinal properties, being efficacious for the cure of various diseases. Darius was so much pleased with this river that his army halted on its march to refresh itself with its waters. And a monument was erected at the spot as a memorial of the march, and also as a tribute to the salubrity of the waters of this magical stream. (Text.)

(1361)

HEALTH AND SCIENCE

If duties are to be measured by what things cost and the havoc they work, then diseases like consumption and typhoid fever should certainly find more people who would be willing to devote more of their time, energy and means to eradicate at least some of the conditions presented in the following statement:

Every day in the year there are two million people seriously sick in the United States. Some of this can never be prevented, but it is conservatively estimated that our annual loss from preventable diseases alone is $2,000,000,000 per year. Consumption alone formerly cost the United States over $1,000,000,000 a year. Since the discovery of the germ by Dr. Koch and of the improved methods of prevention and cure it has been shown that where this knowledge is applied seventy-five per cent of the loss from consumption can be prevented. Typhoid fever costs the country $350,000,000 a year. The city of Pittsburg alone has, by careful investigation, been shown to have lost $3,142,000 from typhoid fever in one year. The discovery that typhoid is produced by a special germ, which is usually gotten from the water or milk supply or from flies, has made it possible to control this expensive disease. As soon as all our citizens have good sanitary training, this $350,000,000 expense for typhoid can be completely eliminated. It has been shown that in the numerous cities in which the water supply alone has been made sanitary, typhoid has been reduced on the average seventy-one per cent.—New York, Evening Post.

(1362)

Health by Singing—See Singing Conducive to Health.

HEALTH, CARE OF

Spare diet and constant exercise in the keen morning air helped to endow Wesley with that amazing physical toughness which enabled him, when eighty-five years old, to walk six miles to a preaching appointment, and declare that the only sign of old age he felt was that “he could not walk nor run quite so fast as he once did.”—W. H. Fitchett, “Wesley and His Century.”

(1363)

HEALTH, ECONOMICS OF

Samuel Hopkins Adams writes of the economic value of pure food as follows:

Sterilization was tried in Rochester. It did not work well. The milk was not nutritious. Then Dr. Goler hit upon what seems to me the centrally important truth in the milk problem; that not the milk itself, but everything with which it comes in contact, should be made germ-proof. And as the basis upon which it all rests, stands the vital lesson of hygienic economics which this country is learning with appreciably growing enlightenment; that bad air, bad water, bad housing, bad sewering, dirty streets, and poor or impure food of whatever sort, cheaper tho they may be in the immediate expense, come back upon a community or a nation, in the long run, with a bill of arrears upon which the not-to-be-avoided percentage is appallingly exorbitant. (Text.)—McClure’s Magazine.

(1364)

Health in Large Cities—See Improved Conditions.

HEALTH, REGAINING AND MAINTAINING

That is a remarkable record Colonel Roosevelt made in going through equatorial Africa for so many months in the jungle and in the swamp and yet never suffering any kind of ill-health for an hour of the whole time.

It would be a remarkable record for any white man, and is particularly so in the case of Mr. Roosevelt. As a youngster it was a question in his own family whether he would ever arrive at maturity. He was a sickly child.

The family, instead of coddling the youth, sent him out to the plains in the great Northwest to rough it on a cattle ranch. There he lived on plain fare, in poorly constructed houses, and rode a bronco from sunrise until dark, often before the sun rose and often after darkness set in. He returned to the house tired and slept soundly until the morning call came again. This was just what made the robust man of Mr. Roosevelt that he is.

Plain fare, plenty of outdoor life, with exercise, is the natural condition for man to pass his life in. Civilization, unless guarded against, levies a terrible tax upon human life. Fine houses, too comfortable clothing, a table too liberally supplied, make direct attacks upon man’s physical health. Late hours, irregular hours, overpacked rooms, with their fetid atmosphere, levy a still heavier tax.

(1365)

Hearers—See Sympathy, Lack of.

HEART-HUNGER, SATISFYING

The successful treatment of tuberculosis is psychic, as well as physiologic. So, too, must the treatment of juvenile delinquency be considered. The physician impresses the patient with faith in his recovery. So, too, must the teacher impress the child. She must have faith in him, a faith so wholesome that he will learn to have faith in himself. She must encourage so that her encouragement will spur the weakest to effort. Oh, the effect of a tender word on a parched and starving little heart! Cases of individual rescues effected by a kind word crowd upon me.

Dominick, the little Italian, the terror of three successive schools, who to-day is not only a fine lad, but who has reformed several other boys, changed from a lawless, defiant misdemeanant to the pride of the class—how? By a teacher who said to him, “I think you are trying to-day, dear.” Poor little chap! He told his teacher frankly that it was her calling him “dear” which developed in him a determination to please her.

The insolent, defiant Irish boy, driven from room to room, who to-day is working steadily—respectful, law-abiding, ambitious—what worked his reform? A teacher, who in reply to the principal’s question, “Well, how is Tom doing in here?” looked at the class in line and noticing that Tom was standing up straight, said: “Oh, he’s going to be all right. He’s the best stander in the class.” And Tom, poor Tom, the first time he had ever been the best anything, took heart, and worked for further commendation.

Ikey, the little Russian boy, in rags which almost fell from his poor, thin, little legs, what changed him from an ugly little outcast to a boy who tried, really tried, to do what was right? A clean suit of clothes, a warm bath, and a daily glass of milk, given by a teacher who sensed the boy’s needs.

Have you read Owen Kildare’s account of the effect upon him of the first gentle touch he had ever felt?

Seldom in his life as a child had any one said a kind word to him. One day when a strange woman patted him on the cheek he almost cried with the joy of it.

“With a light pat on my cheek and one of the sunniest smiles ever shed on me.” he says of the incident, “she put a penny in my hand. She was gone before I realized what had happened. Somehow, I felt that were she to come back I could have said to her, ‘Say, lady, I haven’t got much to give, but I’ll give you all me poipers, me pennies, and me knife if you’ll do that agen.’”

Go back to your schools. Pick out the so-called worst boys. Find out whether heart-hunger as well as stomach-hunger may not be one of the symptoms of the disease. There is not a teacher in all our broad land who would knowingly let a child’s body starve to death for want of physical food. Why should any child’s heart or soul be allowed to starve to death for want of a little sympathy and affection? Bodily starvation, at its worst, can only end in death; soul starvation, at its worst, ends in a hateful, ugly, defiant, lawless attitude toward authority, which not only ruins the starved one but brings disaster to the social order. Does not some blame belong to the school if its teachers fail to feed these starving souls?—Julia Richman, “Proceedings of the National Education Association,” 1909.

(1366)

HEART-INTEREST

When the old lady was training her son for the trapeze, the boy made three or four rather ineffectual efforts to get over the bar. Then she was heard to suggest: “John Henry Hobbs, if you will just throw your heart over the bars, your body will follow.” (Text.)—James G. Blaine.

(1367)

HEART, REGENERATION OF

A fable among the Turks says that Mohammed, when a child, had his heart laid open, and a black grain, called the devil’s portion, taken out of its center; and in this heroic way the prophet’s preeminent virtue and sanctity are accounted for.

A new heart entire, through the regeneration of the Holy Ghost, far surpasses the Moslem’s fabled operation.

(1368)

Heart, Summer in the—See Summer in the Heart.

HEART, THE

The word “heart” is used figuratively and metaphysically, but with vivid impressiveness in Scripture, to indicate the capacity of feeling after God without which faith is impossible. Men of mathematical and philosophic training have in many cases lamentably exemplified the atrophy of the finer feelings. Here is the great fault in the glittering and brilliant writings of John Stuart Mill. From early infancy he, a most precocious boy, was taught to crush the heart, to repress all sentiments of affection. The moral nature of the lad was shockingly distorted, and as he grew up he judged of everything by the cold light of intellect only. He wrote his autobiography, and in that book is not a word about his mother. So the book absolutely lacks heart, and it is devoid of all fascination. (Text.)

(1369)

HEART, THE HUMAN

An American naturalist tells us that the human brain is full of birds. The song-birds might all have been hatched in the human heart, so well do they express the whole gamut of human passion and emotion in their varied songs. The plaintive singers, the soaring ecstatic singers, the gushing singers, the inarticulate singers—robin, dove, lark, mocking-bird, nightingale—all are expressive of human emotion, desire, love, sadness, aspiration, glee. Christ gives a sadder view of our heart, showing it to be “the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.” Fierce hawk, croaking raven, ravenous vulture, obscene birds, birds of discord, birds of darkness, birds of tempest, birds of blood and death—these are all typical of the heart’s base passions; these all brood and nestle within, and fly forth to darken, pollute, and destroy. And the Master is not here speaking of some hearts, but of the human heart generally. In the woods we find occasionally a bird with a false note, in the fields a misshapen flower, yet beauty and music are the prevailing characteristics of the landscape; but stepping into society, the universal discord and misery declare the common radical defect of our nature.—W. L. Watkinson, “The Transfigured Sackcloth.”

(1370)

HEART, THE SINGING

Frank L. Stanton writes of the man who has a song in the heart thus:

(1371)

Heart versus Head—See Death Compelling Sincerity; Experience the Best Argument.

Heartless Custom—See Barbarism.

HEARTLESS PAGANS

There is an essential difference between the attitude of heathenism and of Christianity toward human suffering. Sir Frederick Lely said:

The ordinary native of India who has been untouched by the Light is utterly devoid of pity. In West India a man will be taxed for killing a dog, but not for killing a man. During famine times it is an every-day sight to see men feeding monkeys with unleavened cakes and refusing to give a crust to their fellow men who are lying within a few yards of them dying with hunger. The great merchants and moneyed men of India spent thousands upon food for decrepid and worthless animals, but left it to the British Government to feed the men and women. In a famine hospital, Sir Frederick saw a little lad whose flesh was torn in many places. That morning an agent of one of the merchant gilds had visited his village with a supply of food for the village pariah dogs. The poor boy asked for some for himself but was refused, and in desperation he ran in among the dogs to try and get a piece, and they turned upon him and bit him. A Bunnia Hindu, in Ankleshwer, has recently given 15,000 rupees to found an animal hospital. The enclosure is to be in the midst of the town—a commodious structure, where worn-out cattle and worthless animals will be brought as a matter of religion. Around the outside of these same walls will walk crippled, diseased, poor and hungry men and women and children, but their pleading voices will fall on deaf ears.

(1372)

Heat—See Enthusiasm.

Heathen at Home and Abroad—See Missions Approved.

HEATHEN RECEPTIVENESS

The heathen seldom express a longing for the gospel as clearly as in the following petition to the missionaries of the Swedish Missionary Society in the Kongo State from a number of black heathen chiefs in 1887. They said:

We, Makayi, Nsinki, Kibundu, and Mukayi Makuta Ntoko, chiefs in Kibunzi, and our people, desire that the missionaries of the Swedish Missionary Society come and make their home with us, and teach us and our people. We gladly give them the right to erect their buildings upon the high hill southeast from the village of Kibunzi in any convenient spot. We transfer to them all our claims to that hill. Of course, they have the right to use the forests, the rivers, the roads, and the fields for plantations within our boundaries in the same manner as ourselves. We have invited them to come, and we are glad to see them with us, and our one desire is that they remain with us and erect buildings.

(1373)

HEATHENDOM

An experience of my own in connection with the Kiang-peh famine in China illustrates the situation on most mission fields to-day. Tarrying in Chinkiang for a few days before proceeding up the canal, I saw considerable of the refugee camp outside the city wall. Altho one of the smaller camps, this one held perhaps forty thousand refugees from up country, all living on the bare and frozen ground, and the most comfortable of them having only an improvised hut of straw matting to shelter them. The tide of relief had not yet begun to flow from America and Europe. Moved by compassion for the suffering ones, Mrs. John W. Paxton made daily rounds to administer what medical relief was possible. One day I accompanied her, and she translated the words of the people. The commonest complaint we heard that morning from these starving Chinese was that they had lost their appetites! On their faces was the unmistakable famine pallor; hunger had driven them hither from their homes—yet they had no taste for food! The tragedy of it was overwhelming. They had no appetite, because they had reached the last stages of starvation, and were dying. They did not want food, for the very reason that they needed it so badly. Heathendom does not want the gospel, because it needs it. Starving for the bread of life, it yet protests no desire for this supreme boon. Heathendom does not desire Christianity for the very reason that it is heathendom.—William T. Ellis, “Men and Missions.”

(1374)

Heathenism Shattered—See Miracles, Evidential Value of.

HEAVEN

A schoolboy had a blind father; the boy was very keen on games, and his father was in the habit of being present at all the school cricket matches, altho he had to look on at the prowess of his son through other eyes. Then the father died. The day after the funeral there was an important cricket match on, and, to the surprize of his fellows, the lad exprest a strong wish to play. He played, and played well, making a fine score, and carrying out his bat. His friends gathered round him in the pavilion, shaking him by the hand and patting him on the back.

“Did I do well?” he asked.

“Well!” was the reply, “you did splendidly; never better.”

“I am so glad,” the boy said; “it is the first time he ever saw me bat.”

For him, heaven was the place which gave his blind father sight.

(1375)

Elizabeth Stuart Phelps points out the fact that each one’s idea of heaven is some place or state where our most earnest longings and desires are met and fulfilled:

“If I could be out of physical pain,” said a lifelong invalid, “I would ask no other heaven.” “If I could be in a place where I might know that my husband never could be killed on the train!” cried one of the gentle worriers, whose capacity for suffering is neither understood nor respected by the sanguine. “If I could take my children to a world where every time I hear a croupy cough my heart did not stand still with terror,” urged another, “that would be heaven for me.” The mulatto girl who burst into joyful tears at first sight of a marble bust of herself, “because it was white,” caught a glimpse of her heaven before its time.

“Heaven must be like any other form of happiness, only ‘more so,’” said a thoughtful man. “And the conditions of happiness are three—a clear conscience, something to do, and some one to love.”

(1376)

See Country, A New; Light Immortal.

HEAVEN, CONCEPTIONS OF

(1377)

Heaven, Disbelief in—See Answer, A Soft.

HEAVEN, FRIENDS IN

Rev. John White Chadwick, who has now joined “the choir invisible,” wrote of the friends who had gone before in this poem:

(1378)

Heaven, Getting to—See Obligation to the Church.

Heaven Open—See Looking Up.

HEAVEN OUR HOME

When King Khama came from Bechuanaland to England he was constantly asking “Where is Africa?” No matter how fascinating were the sights, his heart turned always homeward. So the Christian in the midst of all life’s distractions may remember that here he has no continuing city—heaven is his home. (Text.)

(1379)

Heavenly Mail Facilities—See Children’s Religious Ideas.

Heavenly Treasures—See Treasures Laid Up.

HEAVENLY VISITORS

Observations of falling stars have been used to determine roughly the average number of meteorites which attempt to pierce the earth’s atmosphere during each twenty-four hours. Dr. Schmidt, of Athens, from observations made during seventeen years, found that the mean hourly number of luminous meteors visible on a clear, moonless night by one observer was fourteen, taking the time of observation from midnight to 1 A.M. It has been further experimentally shown that a large group of observers who might include the whole horizon in their observations would see about six times as many as are visible to one eye. Prof. H. A. Newton and others have calculated that, making all proper corrections, the number which might be visible over the whole earth would be a little greater than 10,000 times as many as could be seen at one place. From this we gather that not less than 20,000,000 luminous meteors fall upon our planet daily, each of which in a dark clear night would present us with the well-known phenomenon of a shooting-star. This number, however, by no means represents the total number of minute meteorites that enter our atmosphere, because many entirely invisible to the naked eye are often seen in telescopes. It has been calculated that the number of meteorites, if these were included, would be increased at least twentyfold; this would give us 400,000,000 of meteorites falling in the earth’s atmosphere daily.—J. Norman Lockyer, Harper’s Magazine.

(1380)

Heavens, The—See Privilege.

Height—See Giants and Dwarfs; Upward Look.

Height Abolishing Burdens—See Weight Diminished by Ascent.

HEIGHTS

The mind of Christ places and keeps us on the heights, lifting our consciousness from the seen to the unseen, and opening all our little restricted nature to the joyous rhythm of the universal life. What cowards we are when dominated by the seen. We dare not affirm anything beyond the reach of the eye, the sound of the ear, the touch of the finger-tips. But the beauties we see are only the reflection of the beauties that are, like Pluto’s artizans in the cave, catching only the reflected light from the realm above, the music we hear, the merest jingle of the melodies divine, the things we touch, the superficial, mechanical, material side of reality. Why can’t we believe that the unseen things which can be detected from the heights are those that are worth while, because the abiding, the eternal? Only on the heights can we dominate bodily conditions.—Robert MacDonald.

(1381)

Heights, In the—See Confidence.

HEIGHTS, LIVING ON

On the heights above the vega of Granada there rises the great palace of the Alhambra. In the lower stories there are the menial offices of domestic use. Above them are the living rooms, the guest chambers, the halls of the Moorish kings; and far above them all rises the great red tower into which the Moslem kings could ascend to look upward to the stars and downward on the valley, green with trees and beautiful with cities.

So God has made our lives. The lower stories serving the needs of our material life, the higher ones of intellect and affection, where we live in the joys of thought and friendship; but high above them all rises the great watch-tower of the soul in which the noise and toils of earth are lost in the great stillness of the heights, and earth’s mysteries and sorrows are interpreted by the higher providence of God.—F. F. Shannon.

(1382)

HEIGHTS, PRESSING TOWARD

The peaks of some mountains are always enveloped in morning mists. They shut down on the climber like a sky of lead beyond which neither rift in the clouds or ray of sunlight is visible. The expansive view is excluded and self is left, humanly speaking, alone in the gloom. But if he presses forward, keeping onward and upward, the light of the eastern sun will soon flood him with light.

In the world we are often confused by the mountain mists. Then is the time to press forward, in the faith that we shall see the rays of the rising Son of righteousness dispel the clouds and light breaking forth. (Text.)

(1383)

Heights, Striving for the—See Gain Through Loss.

Hell, Threatened—See Sinners and God.

HELP FOR THE HELPLESS

During the South African war a manager of a mine on the lonely veldt did his best to discover and help the wounded British soldiers in the neighborhood of his home. When night came on the manager had to give up his weary search. But he determined to let the soldiers know of the refuge which his house was ready to afford. So he sat down to his little piano and played incessantly, “God Save the Queen.” Through the night, while his fingers were numbed with the cold, he played the British national anthem, risking death at the hands of the enemies if they had heard him. And one by one the wounded soldiers struggled toward the friendly roof and lay down in the safe refuge of his home. It was a beautiful version of the Savior’s call to tired and tempted men and women: “Come unto me, and rest.” (Text.)

(1384)

HELP ONE ANOTHER

(1385)

HELP, TIMELY APPEAL FOR

In the days of the United States Christian Commission, at a time when help was needed, a dinner was being served at Saratoga. Mr. George H. Stuart, of Philadelphia, a leader in the work, rose at table and announced, “I have news from Charleston!” Instantly all was silent. Then he added, “I have a dispatch from the commanding officer at Hilton Head, saying, ‘For God’s sake, send us ice for our wounded soldiers! Will the boarders at Saratoga respond?’” “We will! We will! We will!” rang out in chorus. Soon a purse of $3,200 was raised and forwarded to the seat of war.

Help can always be secured if we know the time and place and way of asking.

(1386)

HELP, UNEXPECTED

Two men walking across a little park in Washington (says Ida N. Tarbell) saw Mr. Lincoln just ahead of them meet a crippled soldier who was in a towering rage, cursing the Government from the President down. Mr. Lincoln asked what was the matter. “Matter,” snapt the soldier; “I’m just out of a rebel prison. I’ve been discharged and I can’t get my money.” Mr. Lincoln asked for the soldier’s papers, saying that he had been a lawyer and perhaps could help him. The two gentlemen stept behind some shrubbery and waited. The President took the papers from the soldier, examined them, wrote a line on the back, and told him to carry them to the chief clerk at the War Department. After Mr. Lincoln had passed on, the gentlemen asked the soldier if he knew who had been talking to him. “Some ugly old fellow who pretends to be a lawyer,” was the answer. On looking at the note written on the back of the papers, the soldier discovered that he had been cursing “Abe” Lincoln to his face. He found a request to the chief clerk to examine the papers and, if correct, to see that the soldier was given his pay, signed A. Lincoln.

(1387)

HELP UNRECOGNIZED

A night of terror and danger, because of their ignorance, was spent by the crew of a vessel off the coast of New Jersey.

Just before dark a bark was discovered drifting helplessly, and soon struck her bows so that she was made fast on a bar, and in momentary danger of going down.

A line was shot over the rigging of the wreck by a life-saving crew, but the sailors did not understand that it was a line connecting them with the shore, that they might seize and escape. All signs failed to make them understand this. So all night the bark lay with the big waves dashing over it, while the crew, drenched and shivering and terrified, shouted for help.

In the morning they discovered how unnecessarily they had suffered, and how all night there was a line right within reach by which they might have been saved.—Evangelical Messenger.

(1388)

Helpers, Humble—See Supplies, Bringing Up.

HELPERS, UNSEEN

Wireless ships suggest the value of our unseen helpers. Life is a sea, and men are mariners. As long as the sea is smooth we do not give much thought to our helpers in the unseen. But smooth sea, rough sea, or no sea, the helpers are there, waiting to be called. And behind them all stands the eternal Christ, dispatching his cosmic soldiers, even as the Roman centurion commanded his legions.—F. F. Shannon.

(1389)

HELPFULNESS

Susan Coolidge puts into verse some suggestive questions upon opportunities to be helpful:

(1390)

(1391)

The Koran tells of an angel who was sent from heaven to earth to do two things. One was to save King Solomon from doing some wrong thing to which he was inclined; and the other was to help a tiny yellow ant carry its load. (Text.)

(1392)

See Individual Influence; Labor, Opportunity for.

HELPFULNESS AMONG BIRDS

Mr. John Lewis Childs tells in the Auk an instance of a shrike he shot in Florida. The bird flew and tried to alight in a tree, but was unable to do so and fell to the ground. As Mr. Childs approached to capture him, the bird struggled up and fluttered away with difficulty, uttering a cry of distress. Immediately another of his kind darted out of a tree, flew to his wounded companion, and circled about him and underneath him, buoying him up as he was about to sink to the ground. These tactics were repeated continually, the birds rising higher and flying farther away till they had gone nearly out of sight and safely lodged in the top of a tall pine-tree.—Olive Thorne Miller, “The Bird Our Brother.”

(1393)

Helpfulness as Testimony—See Witness of Service.

HELPFULNESS, HAPPINESS IN

“Guess who was the happiest child I saw to-day,” said father, taking his two little boys on his knees.

“Well,” said Jim slowly, “it was a very rich little boy, with lots and lots of sweets and cakes.” “No,” said father. “He wasn’t rich; he had no sweets and no cakes. What do you guess, Joe?” “He was a pretty big boy,” said Joe, “and he was riding a big, high bicycle.” “No,” said father. “He wasn’t big, and he wasn’t riding a bicycle. You have lost your guesses, so I’ll have to tell you. There was a flock of sheep crossing the city to-day; and they must have come a long way, so dusty and tired and thirsty were they. The drover took them up, bleating and lolling out their tongues, to a great pump, to water them. But one poor old ewe was too tired to get to the trough, and fell down on the hot, dusty stones. Then I saw my little man, ragged and dirty and tousled, spring out from the crowd of urchins who were watching the drove, fill his hat and carry it—one, two three—oh, as many as six times! to the poor, suffering animal, until the creature was able to get up and go on with the rest.”

“Did the sheep say, ‘Thank you,’ father?” asked Jim gravely. “I didn’t hear it,” answered father. “But the little boy’s face was shining like the sun, and I’m sure he knows what a blest thing it is to help what needs helping.”

(1394)

HELPS THAT HINDER

Richard I, third Duke of Normandy, became involved in long and arduous wars with the King of France, which compelled him to call in the aid of more Northmen from the Baltic. His new allies, in the end, gave him as much trouble as the old enemy, with whom they came to help William I, his predecessor, contend; and he found it very hard to get them away. He wanted at length to make peace with the French king, and to have them leave his dominions; but they said: “That was not what we came for.”

There are helps that become hindrances, and aids that are embarrassing in the end.

(1395)

Hereafter and Here—See Exclusion from Heaven.

HEREDITY

With regard to the inheritance of handwriting there can be no doubt. Instances of close resemblances between the writings of the members of one and the same family will readily occur to every one. A particular slope in the writing or a mode of looping the letters, or of forming certain words may be passed on for several generations, especially when they originate from a man or woman of pronounced individuality. (Text.)—C. Ainsworth Mitchell, Knowledge and Scientific News.

(1396)

See Transmission.

HEREDITY, CONQUERING

How many people are kept back because of an unfortunate family history! The son of the notorious bandit, Jesse James, some time ago carried off the highest honor, summa cum laude, in the Kansas City Law School. Judge Silas Porter, of the Supreme Court of Kansas, delivered the address on the occasion.

For years young James has been the only support of his widowed mother. He has worked in a packing-house, attended a cigar-stand, and has done all sorts of things to secure an education and make his way in the world; and at last he has succeeded in overcoming the handicap of his fearful inheritance.

His success ought to be a great encouragement to the unfortunate boys and girls whose fathers or mothers have disgraced them and placed them at cruel odds with the world.—Success.

(1397)

Heredity of Drink—See Drink, Heritage of.

Heroes, Missionary—See Missions.

HEROISM

The newspapers tell us that the colored regiments continue to come in for praises for their good work at Santiago, and they seem to have as good a sense of humor as an Irishman:

The Rough Riders were in a bad position on San Juan Hill at one time, and it is generally admitted that they could not have held their position but for the splendid charge of the Ninth Cavalry to their support. After the worst of the fighting was over a rough rider, finding himself near one of the colored troopers, walked up and grasped his hand, saying: “We’ve got you fellows to thank for getting us out of a bad hole.” “Dat’s all right, boss,” said the negro, with a broad grin. “Dat’s all right. It’s all in de fam’ly. We call ouahselves de colored rough riders!” (Text.)

(1398)

In the long watch before Santiago the terror of our great battleships was the two Spanish torpedo-boat destroyers, those swift, fiendish sharks of the sea, engines of death and destruction, and yet, when the great battle came, it was the unprotected Gloucester, a converted yacht, the former plaything and pleasure-boat of a summer vacation, which, without hesitation or turning, attacked these demons of the sea and sunk them both. I have always thought it the most heroic and gallant individual instance of fighting daring in the war. It was as if some light-clad youth, with no defense but his sword, threw himself into the arena with armored gladiators and by his dash and spirit laid them low. And yet who has given a sword or spread a feast to that purest flame of chivalrous heroism, Richard Wainwright?—Hon. John D. Long.

(1399)

William H. Edwards, a ‘longshoreman, twenty-five years old, who forgot race prejudice in his anxiety to be of service to his fellow men, was awarded a silver medal by the Carnegie Hero Fund Commission and also $1,000 to be applied to the purchase of a home.

While the Arcadia, a freight steamer, plying between Hamburg and Philadelphia, was being unloaded in June, 1908, an explosion in the cargo occurred. Most of the stevedores working below decks were knocked down and bruised, some being burned. Many of the workers deserted the ship. Smoke and flames came from the hatches. Cries of the injured below decks came to the party of men waiting on deck.

Edwards volunteered to attempt the rescue of the imprisoned men. Tying a rope to a lighter, he slid into the burning hold, but could find nothing. Hearing groans he deserted his guide-rope and bending low searched in the direction of the cries of pain. After a long search he located Lucius Hubbard, a negro. Bearing the unconscious and injured workman to the open hatch, he had him hoisted to the deck and safety, following himself when assured there was no other person in the burning vessel.

(1400)

The following dispatch from Mankato, Minn., is given by the Baltimore Sun:

With one foot cut off and his legs mangled, Rudolph Elmquist, an eighteen-year-old railroad operator, crawled a mile to his operating station and sounded a warning to Mankato, which saved probably one hundred lives.

Elmquist tried Friday night to get on the evening freight-train caboose for Mankato, where he boarded. He slipt and fell beneath the wheels. The freight crew saw him fall and feared he had been hurt. The train stopt about a mile away and began to back up to investigate.

The St. Paul passenger train was nearly due and the track was supposed to be clear for it. As one side of the curved track is along a high embankment and river, a disastrous crash was imminent.

Elmquist saw the train backing up the track and tried, waving his arms, to stop it. Failing to find him in the night, the freight crew prepared to go forward again.

Elmquist again tried to attract attention, but in vain. He then began dragging himself over the grass along the track to his station and reached his key about half an hour later, suffering torture.

He wired the Great Western operator at Mankato: “My foot is cut off and No. 271 is coming back to pick me up. She will have to have help against No. 142, which is due at Mankato in a few minutes.”

Then he fainted and fell across his desk. He was hurried to a hospital, where it was said both legs would have to be amputated.

(1401)

See Gratitude; Lost, Cry of the; Rescue.

Heroism, Domestic—See Domestic Heroism.

Heroism in Disaster—See Compensations of Providence.

HEROISM IN FICTION

There is not a mine, not a railroad, not a steamship line, not a life-saving station in America or Europe, not a city in America or Europe, that has not illustrated in its history the capacity of human nature promptly to do and dare and die. And these deeds are done as modestly, as instinctively, as frequently as they were in the days of the Civil War when thousands on both sides faced each other in a battle whose issue, whether victory or defeat, put not a cent into any soldier’s pocket; when victory stood for no more booty or beauty than defeat. And since this is so; since our plain American common people are easily capable of heroic action and chivalric conduct, why do writers like Howells persist in picturing us a people whose average life and soul are represented by dudes and dolls, by selfish or silly men and women; by knaves with a vast retinue of fools and tools? The everyday heroism of the plain common people of America is a rebuke to Howells for his low figures, and a justification of the school of fiction that fills its pages with men and women that stand for noble aspirations and inspiration. The story of high endeavor is all that keeps the world’s eye on the stars.—Portland Oregonian.

(1402)

Heroism, Missionary—See Missionary Call.

HEROISM, MODEST

Bicycle Policeman Ajax Whitman, the strong man of the department, did a stunt on the new Queensboro Bridge, New York, that those who saw will never forget, and the feat is vouched for by a large crowd who witnessed the bike cop’s job.

Thomas Jones, of No. 102 Fourth Avenue, and Charles Schoener went over to the bridge to string lines of flags from the various towers. Both men are steeplejacks.

Jones went up the north tower of the bridge and Schoener the south. The men used their little steeplejack seats and pulled themselves up. They had rigged their ropes and pulleys and were preparing to pass a line from one to the other to string the flags across to their respective towers when Schoener saw Jones suddenly go limp in his seat at the top of the tower flagpole, fall forward against it and hang there.

“What’s wrong?” called Schoener.

“I’m gradually going,” was all Jones could call back.

Schoener slid down his flagpole as fast as he could, all the time calling for help.

Down on the roadway below the towers Whitman was walking along with his wheel. He looked up when he heard Schoener yelling and then he spotted Jones, who sagged forward in his seat like a lifeless man. Whitman dropt the bicycle and ran to the little spiral stairway that leads from the roadway to the top of the tower. Meantime, a large crowd had been attracted by the flagman’s peril. All vehicles at work on the bridge were stopt and people were running in all directions trying to devise some means of being of use. Whitman suddenly came out at the top of the tower.

Just as Whitman appeared in sight the seat in which Jones was sitting became loosened and as the seat started to go downward the decorator lost his balance and shot out of the seat head downward. Whitman braced himself against the foot of the flagpole and held out his arms. Jones’ limp body shot down and the big policeman acted as a net. The body fell just across Ajax’s big arms, and then both men went over in a heap as Jones’ weight carried the policeman from his stand against the foot of the pole.

Jones was unconscious and when the two men fell to the narrow flooring at the top of the tower he slipt from Whitman’s grasp and rolled toward the edge, over the river. Whitman made a desperate grab, got hold of Jones’ coat and held fast. Others below then regained their wits and ran up with Schoener and pulled the unconscious man back on the tower platform.

As for Whitman, if it hadn’t been that everybody stopt work to watch the accident and so blocked the bridge no report would have been made, but Whitman had to account for the block of vehicles on the roadway and he did so by stating that “an accident to a decorator caused a ten minutes’ block of traffic on the Queensboro Bridge.”

(1403)

HEROISM RECOGNIZED

Pausing for a moment in its legislative activities, January, 1909, the House of Representatives listened to a eulogy of John R. Binns, the Marconi operator aboard the steamship Republic, who remained at his post following her collision with the Florida.

Binns sat in his darkened cabin on the Republic as long as there was power to be had from the generators.

Mr. Boutell, of Illinois, amid loud applause, said that throughout the whole critical period, “there was one silent actor in the tragedy whose name should be immortalized.” He specifically mentioned Binns by name, and in conclusion said:

“Binns has given the world a splendid illustration of the heroism that dwells in many who are doing the quiet, unnoticed tasks of life. Is it not an inspiration for all of us to feel that there are heroes for every emergency and that in human life no danger is so great that some ‘Jack’ Binns is not ready to face it?”

(1404)

HEROISM, VOLUNTARY

S. D. Gordon, in “The Sychar Revival,” gives an incident several times paralleled in the histories of warfare:

There is a simple story told about the time when the British were putting down a rebellion among the Ashanti tribes on the west coast of Africa. One morning the officer in command came to speak to the soldiers as they were drilling on the level stretch of land. He said, “Soldiers, I have a dangerous enterprise to-day. I need so many men. Every man that goes may lose his life. It is as serious as that. I am telling you frankly. I could draft you, but I don’t want to. I would like to ask for volunteers. I want those who will volunteer for Her Majesty’s sake to advance a pace.” They were drawn up in a straight line, and thinking the men might be influenced by his look he swung on his heel, and off, then back again and looked. The line stood as straight as before. His eye flashed fire. “What, not a single man to volunteer?” Then a fellow standing at the end of the line next to him saluted and said, modestly, “If you please, sir, every man has advanced one pace.”

(1405)

HIDDEN DANGERS

There is a little instrument used in war called a caltrop, named from a kind of thistle. It consists of a small bar of iron, with several sharp points projecting from it one or two inches each way. If these instruments are thrown upon the ground at random, one of the points must necessarily be upward, and the horses that tread upon them are lamed and disabled at once. History tells that Darius caused caltrops to be scattered in the grass and along the roads, wherever the army of Alexander would be likely to approach his troops on the field of battle.

(1406)

Hidden, The, Exposed—See Detection.

HIDDEN VALUES

In an effort to locate a diamond ring valued at $450, which an elephant had swallowed while being fed peanuts, three expert X-ray operators and four elephant-trainers worked a whole day photographing by the X-ray process the entire interior of the elephant. In making the pictures, the largest X-ray machine ever made was used.

There were made eighteen plates in all to get a complete diagram of the elephant’s interior. The ring was found in the beast’s stomach.—The Electrician and Mechanic.

(1407)

High Prices Responsible—See Detection.

HIGHER CRITICISM

What if Moses did not write the Pentateuch? What if it were written by another man named Moses? When a child is hungry, it is not interested in a dispute whether John Smith or James Smith planted the apple-tree. What it wants is the apple, because it is hungry. The patient has suffered a grievous accident, and the surgeon must operate. In that hour ether must be used, or the heart will not survive the agony. In such a critical moment, who cares whether Dr. Morton or Dr. Simpson discovered the saving remedy? It is ease from pain that the feeble heart demands. Your friend is in trouble in Europe, and you must send him a cable of relief. The English people claim that two Englishmen laid the Atlantic cable, and that Cyrus Field was only their American agent, occupying a very subordinate place, while Americans say that Mr. Field was the father of the Atlantic cable. When an emergency comes, and the child is in trouble in a foreign land, the father does not care to dispute over the precedency of inventors. What he wants to do is to send a message under the sea. Don’t dispute over the Bible, therefore, but use the Bible. He who analyzes a flower must lose the sweet rose. When a pilgrim is crossing the desert, one handful of wheat for hunger is worth a bushel of diamonds. Remember the use and purpose for which the Bible was written. It is a guide to right living, it shows the path to God’s throne.—N. D. Hillis.

(1408)

HIGHER LAW, THE

It is told of the Grand Duke Alexis of Russia, that soon after he was assigned to duty as midshipman, his vessel was wrecked off the coast of Denmark. The Admiral commanding resolved to save the young man, and ordered him to take charge of the first boat which put off from the doomed ship. The Grand Duke disdained safety thus bought and declined. “My duty is here,” he said to the admiral, “and I must be the last to leave the ship.” “Do you not understand, sir,” exclaimed the admiral, “that you are under my command? And do you dare refuse obedience to my orders?” “I know my duty,” answered the midshipman, “and I will obey any orders you may see fit to give me, except an order to leave the ship, where my duty now commands me to remain.” The admiral gave up his point and Alexis was the last man to leave the ship, and after landing, was promptly ordered under arrest for disobedience of orders. He submitted without a murmur. The admiral sent dispatches to the Emperor detailing the affair, and the Emperor wrote: “I approve your having placed the midshipman under arrest for disobedience, and I bless my boy for having disobeyed.” (Text.)

(1409)

See Deception Justified.

HIGHER LIFE

Verestchagin, the famous Russian artist, once painted a picture above the clouds. He climbed to the top of one of the Himalaya Mountains, and lived amid the snow and ice, where the colorings were gorgeous in beauty. There he portrayed the mighty peaks and the beauty of the morning clouds as no other artist has ever done.

Elevation of life has much to do with vision of soul.

(1410)

Higher, Survival of the—See Good Victorious.

HIGHER, THE

There is an old Dutch picture of a little child who is dropping from his hands a beautiful toy. Looking at the painting, one is surprized to see the plaything so carelessly abandoned; until, following the child’s eye to the corner of the picture, one sees a lovely white dove flying down into the child’s outstretched hands.

That is the way it will be with all of us as soon as we actually begin to see the pure beauties and joys of the higher life. All our silly playthings will be allowed to fall out of our hands. We shall let go of fashion and luxury, and idle dissipation, and proud ambition, and greed for gain, and desire for men’s applause and for advancement in the world, and we shall stretch out our hands for the things that are best worth having. Those are the things which will stay with us. They will give something of their nature to our lives, and will ennoble everything they touch. (Text.)

(1411)

Highways—See Paths, Keeping One’s Own.

HISTORY AND MUSIC CORRELATED

How closely our own history and our songs are connected! One can not properly teach our “Star-spangled Banner” without going quite into detail and telling the thrilling incidents surrounding its creation. No wedding of poetry and music has ever been made under more inspiring circumstances. It was caught up in the camps, sung around the bivouac-fires, and whistled in the streets. When peace was declared and the soldiers went back to their homes, they carried this song in their hearts, as the most precious souvenir of the War of 1812. Then there are other patriotic songs, all one with our history. Boys, as a rule, prefer these songs, and will sing them with a hearty zest. I think they must appreciate the feeling of the young major in a Confederate uniform, who said: “Boys, if we’d had your songs, we’d have licked you out of your boots! Who couldn’t have marched and fought with such songs?”—Elizabeth Casterton, “Journal of the National Educational Association,” 1905.

(1412)

HOLDING THEIR OWN

Two tired tourists were tramping in Switzerland. They were on the way to Interlaken, where they proposed to dine and pass the night. Late in the afternoon, when hunger and fatigue began to make walking unpleasant, they accosted a farmer.

“How far is it,” they asked, “to Interlaken?”

“Two miles,” was the reply.

They walked hopefully on. A half hour passed. Interlaken was not yet in sight. So, seeing another farmer in a field, they shouted to him:

“Are we near Interlaken?”

“Keep straight forward,” the farmer shouted back; “it’s just two miles.”

The tired, hungry tourists trudged on again. Another half-hour passed, and still no sign of Interlaken.

“Is Interlaken very far from here?” they asked a third farmer.

“No, gentlemen,” said the farmer, “it is only two miles.”

Then the tourists looked at one another, and the younger sighed and exclaimed:

“Well, thank goodness, we’re holding our own, anyhow.”—Cleveland Leader.

(1413)

Holystoning—See Drudgery.

HOMAGE

When Rollo, the Dane, made his treaty with Charles the Simple, of France, by which he became a Christian and won Giselle, a daughter of Charles, for his wife, one of the ceremonies to be performed was to do homage. This was to kneel, clasp hands with the king, and kiss his foot, which was covered with an elegantly-fashioned slipper on such occasions—all in token of submission. But the proud Rollo did all save kissing the foot. No remonstrance, urgency or persuasion could induce him to consent to it.

On the slipper which the pope of Rome for hundreds of years has worn on certain state occasions, and which the kneeling suppliant kisses, is embroidered a cross, the sacred symbol of the divine Redeemer’s sufferings and death. (Text.)

But true homage is not ceremony, it is the attitude of the soul toward one who is greater.

(1414)

HOMAGE TO CHRIST

The following story is told of England’s Queen:

When Queen Victoria was but a girl they went to instruct her in matters of court etiquette. “You are to go to hear ‘the Messiah’ to-morrow night, and when they sing through the oratorio and come to the hallelujah chorus, we will all rise, but you are the Queen; sit still.” So when they came to the hallelujah chorus the Englishmen sprang to their feet and cheered, while the Queen sat; but when they came to the place where they sang, “And King of kings and Lord of lords,” she rose and bowed her head. That was at the beginning of her reign.

But when she came almost to the end of her reign, and Canon Farrar was preaching on the second coming of Christ, she sent for him to enter the Queen’s box, and when he came in, Her Majesty said:

“Dr. Farrar, I wish that the Savior might come while I am still upon the throne, because,” she said, “I should like to take the crown of England and lay it at His feet.” (Text.)

(1415)

HOME

Lamar Fontaine describes graphically the effect upon contending armies of the strains of “Home, Sweet Home”:

Just before “taps” every band, on both sides, sent the strains of that immortal song, “Home, Sweet Home,” in soul-stirring notes out on the wings of the night, quivering and reverberating, with endless echoes from hill, dale, and valley—and answered by a thousand brass instruments, bass and kettledrums, and more than a hundred thousand living throats. It was a time and scene never to be forgotten, for in that hour Yank and Reb were kin, and the horrors of war, the groans of the dead and dying upon the bleak, wind-swept field of death at our very feet were forgotten, and the whole armies of the gray and blue were wafted back to the quiet fireside of mother and father, wife and babes, far, far from the bloody, corpse-strewn plain beneath us.—“My Life and My Lectures.”

(1416)

How few people go into raptures over home. Helen T. Churchill did at least in this poem:

(1417)

See Heaven Our Home.

HOME ATMOSPHERE

The atmosphere of a home expresses a clearly defined reality. The atmosphere is the spirit of the house, emanating from the deep well of the subconscious mind of the homekeeper. God has created no more gracious figure in His great world than that of the wife and mother, who gives to the very place of her abode her own quiet, buoyant, soothing spirit. What she is in the unsounded deeps of her being will appear in time in the house where she dwells and in the faces of the little children that look up to her. On the other hand, the home of the card-club woman and the home of the gad-about! Who does not know them and shudder at the thought? Their atmosphere is that of restlessness and spiritual poverty. Wo betide her children and her husband; for she can not give them, after their day of temptations and vexation, that by which they are renewed, the spirit of peace and quiet confidence in good.—Robert MacDonald.

(1418)

HOME, CHOICE OF A

An English swallow once selected a strange resting-place. At Corton, Lowestoft, England, a naturalist discovered a swallow’s nest with young birds in it on the revolving part of the machinery of a common windmill.

The particular spot chosen was the “wallomer,” the outer edge of one of the wheels. The revolutions averaged thirty a minute, and the naturalist estimated that in that time the nest traveled about one hundred and eighty feet. The young birds would certainly be experienced travelers before they left such a nest.

The mother bird, when sitting, usually traveled tail foremost, and when she entered or left the mill she had to make use of the hole through which the laying shaft projected. To do this it was necessary for her to dodge the sails, which were, of course, hung close to the wall of the mill.

When the creaking and shaking of the machinery of a windmill is taken into account, one can hardly fail to be struck with the peculiar taste of the bird that chose such an apparently uncongenial spot in which to rear her young.—Harper’s Weekly.

(1419)

Home Discipline—See Family Religion.

HOME, FOUNDATION OF THE REPUBLIC

Judge Ben B. Lindsey who has secured many things for the children during the last ten years, such as playgrounds, detention schools, public baths, probation system, summer outings, fresh-air camps, etc., says in the Survey:

What began to loom upon me almost to oppress me, was the injustice in our social and economic system that made most of these palliatives necessary. I began to see more than I ever saw in my life how the foundation of the republic is the home, and the hope of the republic is in the child that comes from the home, and that there can be no real protection, no real justice for the child, until justice is done the home. More than through books I saw through the tears and misfortunes of these children, the defects and injustice in our social, political and economic conditions, and I have to thank the child for my education. After ten years I owe more to the children than they owe to me. They have helped me be a better man, and, I am sure, a more useful and serviceable one. I had learned to love to work with them and for them in the boys’ clubs, the recreation centers, through the court and probation work and in other ways, and when I began to see, as I thought I saw, some of the causes of poverty, misfortune, misery, and crime, I began to question myself. Could I help do real justice to the child unless I could help smash some of these causes that were smashing the homes, crippling the parents and robbing the child of his birth-right?

(1420)

HOME LIGHTS

The light of the home is indeed glorious. We think of the lighting of the lamps at eventime and find, in the coming of that artificial day which sets the light in the window, a sign of defiance to the night, as if it were a great triumph of human intelligence. It is, indeed, a triumph. The thought of sending on the heels of the day another day which keeps off the darkness of night shows how well man has mastered the forces around him. The spiritual light within the home, however, is greater than this—the kindliness of husband and wife toward each other and toward the children, the light on the faces of the home circle, this is a more precious gleam than any which shines from star or sun.—Francis J. McConnell.

(1421)

HOME, LONGING FOR

(1422)

Home Privacy—See Privacy, Lack of.

HOME, THE OLD AND NEW

The old home, with its family-room, evening-lamp, regular life, and community of interests, has given place to a home in which the family are all together for the first time in the day at the evening meal, and then only for a brief hour, after which they scatter to their several engagements. A little boy was asked by a neighbor, as his father was leaving the house one morning, who that gentleman was, and he replied: “Oh, I don’t know; he’s the man who stays here nights.” This might well be a leaf from the actual home life in our cities. In some cases fathers and mothers too seldom see their children. Business claims their daylight hours; committee, board, or lodge meetings claim their evenings; and so the fathers are unavoidably, as it would seem, away from home. The church and sundry organizations for social service or self-improvement leave the mothers little time for their own needy but uncomplaining households. The children have their own friends and social life, in which the parents have all too small a place and influence.—George B. Stewart, “Journal of the Religious Education Association,” 1903.