Chapter M: B. Banks writes a missionary lesson after the style of “Mother (6)

Some years ago I visited Albany, N. Y., when the Capitol was not
finished. I saw men at work, apparently, removing stones from
the wall on one side. When I asked about it, a workman said:
“When that wall was erected they were unable to get granite of
the right quality and color to complete the architect’s design.
In order that the work might not be delayed, some blocks of wood
were used temporarily. Now they have the quality and color of
granite required, and are taking out those wooden blocks and
replacing them with granite.” The Capitol was being built up,
after the fashion of the architect’s ideal.

So it is to-day with us. In the temple, our character, which
is His dwelling-place, there are faulty stones. As we come
to a clearer knowledge of the person of Jesus we perceive
these imperfections and replace them with alabaster hewn from
the Rock of Ages, “carved as the angels carved their crowns
in the fadeless days of June.” If we are living up to the
requirements of our profession, we are thus being built up in
Him, continually approaching the ideal of the Master architect.
(Text.)--H. G. FURBAY.

(1551)

=Imperfections in Character=--See DIVERSE INFLUENCES.

=Imperviousness=--See EVIL, REPELLENCE OF.

=Impoliteness=--See POLITENESS.

=Importance, not Size=--See WORK DESPISED.

IMPOSSIBLE, ACHIEVING WHAT SEEMED

Hon. Richmond P. Hobson gives his impressions of army achievements as he recalls his prison experiences in a Spanish fortress, and has this to say:

From my prison window in Santiago, which was but little in the
rear of the Spanish line of entrenchments, I saw the Spaniards
fortifying the city for twenty days. I watched them with
critical interest. I saw them bring up guns from the ships and
place them. Then I saw our men come up and drive the Spaniards
into those entrenchments, and when they had driven them into the
entrenchments I saw them go on and try to take the entrenchments
themselves. It looked to be an impossible thing, but as yet
the artillery was silent. The men came on up the hill and the
artillery opened, and my heart sank when I saw that it was
flanking artillery. For a moment the American fire ceased as
tho the enemy’s guns had been a signal. “Now, then,” said I
to myself, “this is the place where the individuality of the
soldier will appear, for each man there knows that he is just
as likely as any other man to be struck with that shrapnel.”
None of them had ever been under fire before; they could not be
put to a harder test; but how did they respond to it? Instantly
after the lull a more rapid fire set in, and a more rapid rush
of men up to the trenches. In spite of flanking artillery we
had taken those fortified trenches with unsupported infantry--a
thing that army experts the world over said could not be done.

(1552)

IMPOSSIBLE, NOTHING

At the dedication of the Bunker Hill monument, when it appeared
that an accident was imminent by the surging of the crowds
against the speakers’ platform, Webster requested the people
to kindly move back. A man in the crowd answered back: “It is
impossible!” Thereupon the great Massachusetts statesman cried
out: “Impossible! Impossible! Nothing is impossible on Bunker
Hill!”--CHARLES E. LOCKE.

(1553)

IMPRECATION IN PSALMS

Said one Unitarian minister to another, about the time when
the breaking out of our Civil War exposed the wickedness of
its instigators: “I never before felt so much like swearing.”
“Well,” was the reply, “I felt as you do; but I turned to
the Old Testament, and picked out one of good old David’s
imprecatory Psalms. I read it twice aloud, and since then I have
felt much better.”

(1554)

IMPRESS

I took a piece of plastic clay
And idly fashioned it one day,
And as my fingers prest it still,
It moved and yielded to my will.

I came again when days were past;
The bit of clay was hard at last,
The form I gave it still it bore,
But I could change that form no more.

I took a piece of living clay,
And gently formed it day by day,
And molded it with power and art--
A young child’s soft and yielding heart.

I came again when years were gone;
He was a man I looked upon;
He still that early impress wore.
And I could change him never more.
(Text.)

(1555)

IMPRESSION BY PRACTISE

A native Korean, who was told to memorize the entire Sermon on
the Mount, did so with remarkable exactness. When asked how he
accomplished it, he said: “My teacher told me to learn it with
my heart as well as with my memory, so I hit on this plan. I
would try to memorize a verse, and then find a heathen neighbor
of mine and practise it on him. I found the verse would stick
after I had done that, and I couldn’t forget a word of it.”

(1556)

IMPRESSIONS

On almost any sea beach you may see lying together smooth white
pebbles, and ragged sponges, both drying in the sun and waiting
the return of the tide. But when the tide comes and strikes the
pebbles not a drop of the water enters them, thousands of years
they have rolled up and down there, wearing smoother and growing
more impervious all the time. But at the first touch of the
incoming tide the sponges drink themselves full.

There is the same difference in men. Tides of spiritual influence flow around some men and they keep growing harder--the same tides fill and transform others.

(1557)

See TESTIMONY OF NATURE.

IMPRESSIONS, EARLY

The things children most quickly note and in which they take most interest may indicate their bent of mind and help parents and instructors to shape their education along lines of least resistance. Thus R. H. Haweis says:

“Long before I had ever touched a violin I was fascinated with
its appearance. In driving to town as a child--when, standing up
in the carriage, I could just look out of the window--certain
fiddle-shops hung with mighty rows of violoncellos attracted
my attention. I had dreams of these large editions--these
patriarchs of the violin, as they seemed to me. I compared them
in my mind with the smaller tenors and violins. I dreamed about
their brown, big, dusty bodies and affable good-natured-looking
heads and grinning faces. These violin shops were the great
points watched for on each journey up to London from Norwood,
where I spent my early days.”

(1558)

=Impressions Permanent=--See TEACHERS’ FUNCTION, THE.

=Impression, Vivid=--See REMINDER, SEVERE.

IMPRISONED LIVES

In the Persian desert the sad sight may be seen of brick pillars
in which many an unfortunate victim has been walled up alive,
as a horrible method of inflicting capital punishment. Some
awful tales of cruelties perpetrated here are told. The victim
is put into the pillar, which is half built up in readiness,
then, if merciful, the executioner will cement quickly up to the
face, when death comes speedily; but sometimes the torture is
prolonged, and the inmate has been heard groaning and calling
for water for three days.

How many lives are walled lives--built around and bricked in by torturing limitations that suffocate joy and hope, and are no more than a lingering death!

(1559)

IMPROVED CONDITIONS

In a district of Glasgow where the death-rate used to be forty
in a thousand, sanitation has brought it down to twenty-eight,
and it has been brought down to seventeen or eighteen in
some parts of London. Boston reduced its death-rate from
thirty-one to twenty, and Croydon, Eng., from twenty-eight
to thirteen. Even the friction-match has had its share in
prolonging life. “Doubtless many a fatal pneumonia and pleurisy
has been contracted when the luckless householder’s lire had
died out overnight, and he was struggling with flint, steel
and tinderbox.” In London during the last century nearly two
hundred thousand persons perished of smallpox. Macaulay says
that a person without a pitted face was the exception. But,
thanks largely to vaccination, in a recent year there were only
fourteen cases of smallpox among New York’s inhabitants, and
in the German army, where vaccination is compulsory, the dread
disease has been eradicated. The production of pure water by
distillation has done much to abolish alimentary diseases among
sailors at sea, and lime-juice defends them from scurvy. When
the first emigrant ships went out to Australia, one-third of
the passengers perished on the voyage, but when the ship-owners
were forced to alter their terms and receive pay only for those
they landed safely, the death-rate became smaller than when
these same persons were living upon shore. In Queen Elizabeth’s
time, one in two thousand of her London subjects was murdered
annually. At the same rate there would be 2,500 murders every
year in London now, whereas the number is no more than twelve.
This is what the lighter street and a more efficient police
have done for the British metropolis. Facts like these are a
most wholesome and agreeable corrective for the lament over the
departure of the “good old times,” so much affected by the cynic
and the pessimist.--Boston _Journal_.

(1560)

=IMPROVEMENT=

He came to my desk with a quivering lip,
The lesson was done--
“Dear teacher, I want a new leaf,” he said,
“I have spoiled this one.”
In place of the leaf so stained and blotted,
I gave him a new one all unspotted,
And into his sad eyes smiled--
“Do better now, my child.”

I went to the throne with a quivering soul,
The old year was done--
“Dear Father, hast Thou a new leaf for me,
I have spoiled this one?”
He took the old leaf, stained and blotted,
And gave me a new one all unspotted,
And into my sad heart smiled--
“Do better now, my child.”

(1561)

* * * * *

We can all help make the world better, as suggested by Annie Aldrich in these verses:

Make the world a little better as you go;
And be thoughtful of the kind of seed you sow;
Try to make some pathway bright
As you strive to do the right,
Making the world a little better as you go.

Make the world a little better as you go;
You may help to soothe some fellow-creature’s wo;
You can make some burden light,
As you try with all your might
To make the world a little better as you go.

Make the world a little better as you go;
As you meet your brother going to and fro,
You may lend a friendly hand,
Lift the fallen! Help them stand!
Make the world a little better as you go.

(1562)

* * * * *

If Christian methods of felling the tree of evil had advanced as far as the art of tree-cutting described below, we should soon be rid of bad institutions and tendencies:

“It is reported in the German press,” says _Forestry and
Irrigation_, “that successful experiments have been made
in various forests of France in cutting trees by means of
electricity. A platinum wire is heated to a white heat by an
electric current and used like a saw. In this manner the tree is
felled much easier and quicker than in the old way, no sawdust
is produced, and the slight carbonization caused by the hot wire
acts as a preservative of the wood. The new method is said to
require only one-eighth of the time consumed by the old sawing
process.”

(1563)

* * * * *

Some day we shall be wise enough to utilize the hint suggested in the extract, by caring as much at least for improving the human race as we now care for improving our domestic animals:

A. Ogerodnikoff, a wealthy Russian dealer in furs in
Vladivostok, while visiting San Francisco, told an interesting
story of experiments made by his cousin, Rachatnikoff, who
has been devoting himself for years to the propagation of a
beautiful race of people. Ogerodnikoff, according to the press
reports, said:

“Years ago Rachatnikoff attracted to his estate especially
handsome men and girls of more than usual beauty by offering
free land to forty or fifty men carefully picked from among
a large number of applicants and selecting for them as wives
fine-looking young women from different parts of Russia. This
selected colony has flourished beyond all expectation, and over
a hundred children have been raised from these unions.

“These children are so pretty as to make the Rachatnikoff estate
famous.” (Text.)

(1564)

=Improvement, Material=--See ADVANCEMENT, RAPID.

=Improvement Meeting With Disfavor=--See SAFETY VALVES.

IMPROVING TIME

One of the most important books on British ornithology is
Gilbert White’s “Natural History of Selborne.” This work is
made up of the jottings and notes of the author concerning the
animals he saw in his daily walks through the woods and fields
in the immediate vicinity of his little country parish, which he
seldom left. (Text.)

(1565)

IMPUDENCE, BRAZEN

Unblushing assurance in rascality is not a new thing in the world.

A firm of shady outside London brokers was prosecuted for
swindling, says _Everybody’s_. In acquitting
them, the court, with great severity, said:

“There is not sufficient evidence to convict you, but if any one
wishes to know my opinion of you I hope that you will refer to
me.”

Next day the firm’s advertisement appeared in every available
medium, with the following well displayed: “Reference as to
probity, by special permission, the Lord Chief Justice of
England.”

(1566)

=Impulsiveness=--See SUSPICION.

IMPURE THOUGHTS

A man went to his friend and asked the loan of a barrel.
“Certainly,” was the reply, “if you will bring it back
uninjured.” The man used the barrel to hold brandy until he
could get certain bottles from the factory, when he filled them
and returned the barrel to his friend. But the barrel smelled
of brandy, and the owner sent it back with the request that it
be cleansed. Boiling water was poured into the barrel, but it
still smelled of brandy. Acids and disinfectants were put in,
but the smell of the brandy could not be removed. It was left
out in the rain, but all to no purpose; the smell of the brandy
still remained. So it is with impure thoughts; when they are
once admitted they remain and taint the whole life.--JAMES
T. WHITE, “Character Lessons.”

(1567)

IMPURITIES

Should not men be as careful of the moral atmosphere of their lives as of the air in their rooms?

Mr. John Aitken, a well-known investigator of the atmosphere,
made a series of experiments on the number of dust particles in
ordinary air. His results show that outside air, after a wet
night, contained 521,000 dust particles per cubic inch; outside
air in fair weather contained 2,119,000 particles in the same
space; that near the ceiling contained 88,346,000 particles per
cubic inch. The air collected over a Bunsen flame contained no
less than 489,000,000 particles per cubic inch. The numbers for
a room were got with gas burning in the room, and at a height
of four feet from the floor. These figures, tho not absolute,
show how important is the influence of a gas-jet on the air we
breathe, and the necessity for good ventilation in apartments.
Mr. Aitken remarks that there seem to be as many dust particles
in a cubic inch of air in a room at night when gas is burning
as there are inhabitants in Great Britain, and that in three
cubic inches of the gases from a Bunsen flame there are as many
particles as there are people in the world.--_Cassell’s Family
Magazine._

(1568)

=Impurities, Atmospheric=--See SOOT.

=Impurities Tested=--See TESTS.

INADEQUACY OF NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS

Dr. H. O. Dwight was telling us of a voyage that he took in the
Levant with a Turkish official; and as they sat down in the
cabin at the dinner table the Turkish official, inviting Dr.
Dwight to drink with him, said: “You may think it strange that
I, a Mohammedan, should ask you, a Christian, to drink with
me, when wine-drinking is forbidden by our religion. I will
tell you how I dare to do this thing.” He filled his glass, and
held it up, looking at the beautiful color of it, and said:
“Now, if I say that it is right to drink this wine, I deny
God’s commandments to men, and He would punish me in hell for
the blasphemy. But I take up this glass, admitting that God
has commanded me not to drink it, and that I sin in drinking
it. Then I drink it off, so casting myself on the mercy of
God. For our religion lets me know that God is too merciful to
punish me for doing anything which I wish to do, when I humbly
admit that to do it breaks His commandments.” His religion
furnished this pasha with no moral restraints or power for
true character.--ROBERT E. SPEER, “Student Volunteer
Movement,” 1906.

(1569)

=Inattention Overcome=--See RANK, OBSEQUIOUSNESS TO.

=Inborn, The=--See INNATE, THE.

=Incantation=--See BIRTH CEREMONIES; EXORCISM.

=Incense=--See OFFERINGS, EXTRAVAGANT.

=Incentive=--See HEAVEN.

INCENTIVES

The most interesting chapel in Italy is the _Santa Maria
Novella_, in Florence. In this edifice is a famous picture.
On the right-hand side is a female figure with three children
at her knee; she is holding in one hand a little rod, and in
the other a golden apple; and she is pointing to an exceedingly
narrow door.

Yes, the gate of life is narrow, and rod and apple--chastisement and reward--are necessary incentives urging entrance. (Text.)

(1570)

INCERTITUDE

The Rochester _Democrat and Chronicle_ is responsible for the following story from Washington:

“Jadam,” said Major McDowell, the clerk of the House of
Representatives, to J. Adam Bede, of Minnesota, yesterday,
“that was a fine speech you made to-day, a fine speech.” “Yes,
I thought it was a pretty good speech,” Mr. Bede assented
modestly. “It was an extremely fine speech. It was logical and
had wit in it, and was delivered with great declamatory effect.
I listened to it with much pleasure.” “I am glad you liked it,”
chirruped Mr. Bede. “Indeed I did,” the Major continued, “and
now, if it is betraying no confidence, I’d like to ask you a
question.” “Why, my dear Major,” exclaimed Bede, “of course I
shall be glad to do anything I can for you. Go ahead.” “Well,
Jadam,” and the Major put a fatherly hand on Bede’s shoulder. “I
wish you would tell me which side of the question you are really
on.”

(1571)

* * * * *

The representative of an English newspaper, sent some time since
to Ireland to move about and learn by personal observation the
real political mind of the people there, reported on his return
that he had been everywhere and talked with all sorts, and that
as nearly as he could make out the attitude of the Irish might
be stated about thus: “They don’t know what they want--and they
are bound to have it.”--JOSEPH H. TWICHELL.

(1572)

See DUALITY.

=Incitement=--See INSPIRATION, SOURCES OF.

INCITEMENT

Very much of human discontent arises from first hearing our wrongs described by others:

Rufus Choate, the American lawyer, defended a blacksmith whose
creditor had seized some iron that a friend had lent him to
assist in the business after a bankruptcy. The seizure of the
iron was said to have been made harshly. Choate thus described
it: “He arrested the arm of industry as it fell toward the
anvil; he put out the breath of his bellows; he extinguished the
fire upon his hearthstone. Like pirates in a gale at sea, his
enemies swept everything by the board, leaving, gentlemen of
the jury, not so much--not so much as a horseshoe to nail upon
the door-post to keep the witches off.” The blacksmith, sitting
behind, was seen to have tears in his eyes at this description,
and a friend noticing it, said: “Why, Tom, what’s the matter
with you? What are you blubbering about?” “I had no idea,” said
Tom in a whisper, “that I had been so abominably ab-ab bused.”
(Text.)--CROAKE JAMES, “Curiosities of Law and Lawyers.”

(1573)

See INSPIRATION.

=Incitement to Evil=--See RESPONSIBILITY EVADED.

INCONSISTENCY

An anonymous writer in _The Independent_ tells the following story as illustrating Mr. Hearst’s belief that “money will buy the fruit of any man’s work”:

Some time ago a young writer applied to him for employment on
his New York newspaper, and was engaged to fill a position which
would become vacant at the end of a week, but in the interval
the fact came to the attention of a university professor who had
always taken an interest in his advancement.

“I am sorry,” said the good man, “that you should have chosen
that particular school of journalism for your professional
start.” And he proceeded to descant upon the responsibility
a journalist owed to society, the influence of one educated
youth’s example upon others of his class, the tone a writer
inevitably took from the character of the journals he worked
for, etc. “And your untarnished sense of self-respect, my young
friend,” he concluded, “will be worth more to you, when you
reach my time of life, than all the salaries an unprincipled
employer can pour into your purse.”

So imprest was the neophyte with this lecture in morals that he
called upon Mr. Hearst the next morning and announced that he
had changed his mind about accepting the proffered position.
The editor scanned his face shrewdly, and then inquired the
reason. After much hesitancy the young man told him the whole
story, and started to leave.

“Ah,” said Mr. Hearst. “Be seated a moment, please!” And,
turning to his secretary, he added: “Write a letter at once to
Professor X. Y., present my compliments, and say that I should
be pleased to receive from him a signed article of five hundred
words--subject and treatment to be of his own choosing--for the
editorial page of next Sunday’s paper. Inclose check for $250.

“Now,” he remarked, with a cynical smile, as he bade his caller
good-by, “you can see for yourself what comes of that.”

He did. The Sunday issue contained a signed article, which gave
the paper the reflection of a good man’s fame, and spread the
influence of his example among other university professors,
and--did what to his self-respect?--all at the rate of fifty
cents per word! (Text.)

(1574)

See INJUSTICE.

INCONSPICUOUS WORKERS

Most of this world’s work is done by the people who will never be known. To every worthy worker, however, a mede of credit is due, and sometimes it finds recognition, as in the instance here recorded:

An officer who was at West Point a generation ago tells of the
influence Miss Susan Warner had on the boys of the Academy in
the ’70’s and ’80’s. “The Wide, Wide World,” by Miss Warner,
was a popular book then with the cadets’ mothers, who would
urge their sons to visit Constitution Island and write home a
description of the author. So many boys would visit the Island.
Every Sunday afternoon the Warner sisters would send their
man-of-all-work in a boat to the Point to bring over a load
of cadets. The boys would gather around Miss Susan as she sat
on the lawn and listen to her read the Scriptures and explain
them in a bright, cheerful view of religion and life. After
the talks would come a treat of tea and home-made gingerbread.
She was very delicate and frail and often her talks would
completely exhaust her. She kept up correspondence with many of
the visiting cadets long after they had become distinguished
officers. Her last letter to one just before her death had a
pathos known only to her cadet friends. It read: “I no longer
have the strength to cross the river to meet the boys, and the
superintendent we now have will not allow them to come to me, so
my usefulness with them seems to be at an end.”

(1575)

=Incorruptible, The=--See PURITY.

=Increase by Civilization=--See CONSERVATION.

=Increasing and Decreasing=--See SELF-ESTIMATE.

INCREDULITY

Dr. W. H. Thomson, in his book on “What is Physical Life,”
says that “once, while talking to a roomful of the naturally
bright people of a town in Mount Hermon about the achievements
of Western civilization, I happened to tell a toothless old
man present that in our country we had skilled persons who
could make for him an entirely new set of teeth. Glancing round
the room, I noticed some listeners stroking their beards in a
fashion which I knew meant that I was telling a preposterous
yarn. Fortunately I had with me an elderly Scotch friend who
had a set of false teeth, and on explaining the situation to
him, he forthwith opened his mouth and pulled the whole set out.
The Arabs jumped to their feet in fright, not sure but he might
start to unscrew his head next, for had any of their venerated
ancestors ever seen such an uncanny performance with teeth? They
afterward said that never would they have believed this if they
had not seen it.”

(1576)

See CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION.

INDECISION

When the King of Sparta had crossed the Hellespont and was about
to march through Thrace, he sent to the people in the different
regions, asking them whether he should march through their
country as a friend or as an enemy. “By all means as a friend,”
said most of the regions; but the King of Macedon replied, “I
will take time to consider it.” “Then,” said the King of Sparta,
“Let him consider it, but meantime we march, we march.” (Text.)

(1577)

See SENTIMENT, MIXED.

=Indestructibility of Man=--See MAN INDESTRUCTIBLE.

INDIA, MEDICAL OPPORTUNITIES IN

I wish it were possible for me to give you some idea of the
amount of suffering and misery there is in India to-day; but I
fear that I can not do it, for you have seldom been where you
could not obtain the services of a good physician in time of
need, or even be taken to a hospital, if it were desirable.
But there are millions of people in India who have no such
resources as that. Shall I tell you of a man who came to our
hospital some time ago suffering from a cataract in one eye?
He was an intelligent man, well educated, and he wanted to
save his eyesight. He employed some of the native doctors to
treat the eye, and when he came to us he said that he thought
he had had at least twenty-five pounds of medicine put in his
eye. That sounded like such a large story that we asked for
the particulars, and I think he was about right. It was all to
no purpose, however, so that he changed doctors and got a new
remedy that was guaranteed. They opened his eye and sifted it
full of pounded glass. If you have ever had a cinder in your
eye, perhaps you can to some small extent imagine the agonies
which that man endured before he came to us. That is not an
uncommon case, and frequently when I go into the dispensary in
the morning I find there mothers with their little children.
They hold them out to me in their arms and say, “Won’t you look
at this child’s eyes?” I say, “Well, mother, what is the matter
with the eyes?” “Oh, about two or three weeks ago the child’s
eyes were red and it cried a little bit, and we tried to open
them to see what was the matter, but the child made so much fuss
we couldn’t do anything. Now, they have been shut so long that
we are afraid there is something the matter; we want you to look
and see.” I open those eyelids with my fingers; I know what I am
going to see. The front part of the eyeball is gone--sloughed
away, rotted out just in those few days. A few simple remedies,
a little cleanliness at the proper time, would have saved those
eyes, but often I have to say to those mothers, “Your child
is blind for life.” There are many thousands of such little
children in India to-day sitting by the side of the road waiting
for the coppers which the passer-by will fling to them, and
which they must find by feeling around in the dust. It is a very
common practise on the part of the native physicians to apply
as a counter-irritant to the surface of the body a material
which burns like a red-hot iron; and if you have burned your
finger recently, you can imagine how it would be to be burned in
stripes from the nape of your neck right down to your heels, or
to have patterns worked on your body with that fiery material.
If you have suffered recently from such a simple ailment as a
toothache, imagine a land without any dentists or other means to
relieve that ache. The tooth must ache in India, until nature
brings its own remedy, and the tooth drops out.--A. S.
WILSON, “Student Volunteer Movement,” 1906.

(1578)

=Indian, The=--See CONSERVATION.

=Indian, The Word of an=--See PROMISE, AN INDIAN’S.

INDIANS, AMERICAN

“The ‘noble’ red man of traditional lore was usually a very low-bred, dirty savage, uninteresting except for his blood-thirstiness and capacity for rum and mischief.” What education, mostly under government supervision, has been able to do with the Indian is shown in the extract:

Supt. Friedman of the Carlisle Indian School remarks that thirty
years have elapsed since the first group of eighty-two Sioux
Indians from the Pine Ridge and Rosebud Reservations of South
Dakota arrived at Carlisle, Penn., to receive the benefit of a
civilized education. Out of this beginning an elaborate system
of Indian schools has grown, including 167 day-schools, 88
reservation boarding schools and 26 non-reservation schools,
so that to-day 25,777 Indian students are being educated under
the Government’s immediate patronage, at a cost for the fiscal
year 1909 of $4,008,825. The students in the contract schools
and missions swell this total to 30,630. The Carlisle school,
the largest of all, has an enrolment of 1,132, which is not much
below the enrolment of Princeton College.--New York _Times_.

(1579)

=Indians’ Receptiveness to the Gospel=--See FATHER, OUR.

INDICATOR, AN INSECT

One of the simplest of barometers is a spider’s web. When there
is a prospect of rain or wind the spider shortens the filaments
from which its web is suspended and leaves things in this state
as long as the weather is variable. If the insect elongates its
thread it is a sign of fine calm weather, the duration of which
may be judged of by the length to which the threads are let out.
If the spider remains inactive it is a sign of rain; but if,
on the contrary, it keeps at work during the rain the latter
will not last long, and will be followed by fine weather. Other
observations have taught that the spider makes changes in its
web every twenty-four hours, and that if such changes are made
in the evening, just before sunset, the night will be clear and
beautiful.--_La Nature._

(1580)

=Indifference=--See BALLOT, A DUTY.

=Indifference to Strangers=--See CONFIDENCE.

INDIFFERENCE TO THE GOOD

_Zion’s Herald_ prints this significant poem:

People tell the story yet,
With the pathos of regret,
How along the streets one day,
Unawares from far away,
Angels passed with gifts for need,
And no mortal gave them heed.
They had cheer for those who weep,
They had light for shadows deep,
Balm for broken hearts they bore,
Rest, deep rest, a boundless store;
But the people, so they say,
Went the old blind human way,--
Fed the quack and hailed the clown
When the angels came to town.

It has been and will be so:
Angels come and angels go,
Opportunity and Light,
’Twixt the morning and the night,
With their messages divine
To your little world and mine.
And we wonder why we heard
Not a whisper of their word,
Caught no glimpse of finer grace
In the passing form and face;
That our ears were dull as stones
To the thrill of spirit tones,
And we looked not up, but down,
When the angels came to town.

(1581)

INDIFFERENTISM

A German professor of theology is reported to have said in
lecturing to his students on the existence of God, that while
the doctrine, no doubt, was an important one, it was so
difficult and perplexed that it was not advisable to take too
certain a position upon it, as many were disposed to do. There
were those, he remarked, who were wont in the most unqualified
way to affirm that there was a God. There were others who,
with equal immoderation, committed themselves to the opposite
proposition--that there was no God. The philosophical mind,
he added, will look for the truth somewhere between these
extremes.--JOSEPH H. TWICHELL.

(1582)

INDIVIDUAL INFLUENCE

I met, the other day, a learned judge who told me that for
more than twenty years he had met every winter, in his own
library, once a week, a club of his neighbors, men and women,
who came, and came gladly, that he might guide them in the study
of history. “And all those people,” said he, laughing--there
are three or four hundred of them now, scattered over the
world--“they all know what to read, and how to read it.” You
see that village is another place because that one man lived
there.--EDWARD EVERETT HALE.

(1583)

=Individual Initiative=--See NEED, MEETING CHILDREN’S.

=Individual, Seeking the=--See PERSONAL EVANGELISM.

=Individual Value=--See COLLECTIVE LABOR.

INDIVIDUAL, VALUE OF THE

This fine verse is from Canon Farrar:

“I am only one,
But I am one.
I can not do everything,
But I can do something,
What I can do
I ought to do
And what I ought to do
By the grace of God I will do.” (Text.)

(1584)

=Individualism=--See INITIATIVE.

INDIVIDUALISM, EXCESSIVE

Haydon, the painter, was an ill-used man; but it was purely
his own fault. He would paint high art when people did not
want it--would paint acres of hooked-nosed Romans, and bore
the public with Dentatus, Scipio and Co., when they wanted
something else. He was like a man taking beautiful pebbles to
market when people wanted eggs, and telling that they ought
not to want eggs, because they led to carnality and had a
nasty and disgusting connection with bacon. But people would
not have it--eggs they wanted, and eggs they would have, how
beautiful soever the pebbles might be. So with Haydon. He
persisted that the people ought to have what they did not want,
and he went from a prison to a lunatic asylum, and died a
suicide.--GEORGE DAWSON.

(1585)

INDIVIDUALITY

Rembrandt paints all in a shadow, and Claude Lorraine in sunny
light. Petrarch frames with cunning skill his chiming sonnets,
and Dante portrays with majestic hand, that makes the page
almost tingle with fire, his vision of the future. Shakespeare,
with a well-nigh prescient intelligence, interprets the secrets
of history and of life, and reads the courses of the future in
the past, and Milton rolls, from beneath the great arches of
his religious and cathedral-like soul, its sublime oratorios.
And the copiousness of experience, the variety, affluence,
multiformity of life, as it exists upon earth and arrests our
attention, is derived altogether, in the ultimate analysis, from
this personal constitution of each individual.--RICHARD S.
STORRS.

(1586)

* * * * *

Jesus said of the Good Shepherd, “He calleth his own sheep by name.” We have each his own personal marks, and are never lost in the mass of humanity.

An inspector of police and, in general, every person unfamiliar
with the application of the “verbal portrait,” tho possessing
the photograph of an individual, will pass by that individual
without recognition, if the photograph is a few years old or
if the general appearance has been altered by a gain or loss
of flesh, or by a change in the beard or the hair or even the
clothes. On the other hand, descriptive identification, which
means an accurate description of the immovable parts of the face
(forehead, nose, ears, etc.), enables those who are sufficiently
familiar with the method to identify a person with certainty,
not only with the aid of a photograph, but also simply by means
of a printed description of those characteristics of the person
in question which are out of the ordinary. (Text.)--L.
RAMAKERS, _The Scientific American_.

(1587)

* * * * *

No rainbow that paints its arch upon the cloud, no river that
courses like liquid silver through emerald banks, no sunset
that opens its deeps of splendor, with domes of sapphire and
pinnacles of chrysolite, hath any such beauty to him who
surveys it as the poem or discourse which speaks the peace, or
the triumphing hope, of another human soul. For forever is it
true that the life in each stands apart from the life in every
other. It hath its center, tho not its cause, within itself; is
full-orbed in each; commingled with that of no other being; as
separate in each, and as purely individual, as if there were no
other besides it in existence!--RICHARD S. STORRS.

(1588)

* * * * *

Students of social phenomena must allow for the personal equation. Men are certainly as individual as birds:

Every bird sings his own song; no two sing exactly alike, ...
the song of every singer is unique. There are, of course,
similarities in the songs of birds of the same species.... For
lack of intimate acquaintance with the music of a particular
bird, we think he sings just like the next one. Why! do all
roosters have the same crow? No; any farmer knows better than
this.... Every individual sings his own song.

(1589)

See ORIGINALITY; PERSONAL ELEMENT.

INDIVIDUALITY IN INTERPRETATION

On the question as to how far it is permissible for the actor’s own personality to enter into his interpretation of Shakespearian characters, Mr. Herbert Beerbohm Tree said:

“Certain it is that while the actor’s self-suppression is
among the most essential factors of success in his art,
so also his own individuality, his own personality--in a
word, his humanity--are all-important. I mean, you can not
imagine a characterless person playing the great characters
of Shakespeare. You say: ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter! Shakespeare
has taken care of all that!’ ‘Yes,’ I reply, ‘but it requires
individuality to interpret individuality--power, force,
character, to realize the creations of the master brain.’
Nothing else than individuality will make the humanity of these
characters stand out sharp and clear from the mass of humanities
grouped behind it.” (Text.)--_The Fortnightly Review._

(1590)

=Individuality in Nature=--See ANIMISM.

INDIVIDUALITY OF GERMS

Change is stamped upon life, but according to science, the opposite also is true. Life, in its minutest subdivisions, is true to itself. It knows no variation nor shadow of turning. Dr. Stirling remarks concerning protoplasm:

Here are several thousand pieces of protoplasm; analysis can
detect no difference in them. They are to us, let us say, as
they are to Mr. Huxley, identical in power, in form, and in
substance; and yet on all these several thousand little bits of
apparently indistinguishable matter an element of difference
so pervading and so persistent has been imprest, that of them
all, not one is interchangeable with another! Each seed feeds
its own kind. The protoplasm of the gnat will no more grow
into the fly than it will grow into an elephant. Protoplasm is
protoplasm; yes, but man’s protoplasm is man’s protoplasm, and
the mushroom’s the mushroom’s.

(1591)

INDIVIDUALS, GOD’S CARE OVER

Mrs. Julia Ward Howe was in Washington and brought a case of
need before a distinguished Senator, who excused himself,
writing that he was so taken up with matters of wide public
interest that he could not look after individual cases.
Mrs. Howe wrote in her note-book that “at last accounts
the Lord God Almighty had not attained to that eminence.”
(Text.)--FRANKLIN NOBLE, “Sermons in Illustration.”

(1592)

=Indolence Forerunner of Dishonesty=--See DISHONESTY.

INDORSEMENT

Old Gorgon, apropos of letters of introduction, hands out a
whole string of neat conclusions. “Giving a note of introduction
is simply lending your name with a man as collateral, and if
he’s no good you can’t have the satisfaction of redeeming your
indorsement even; and you’re discredited.... I reckon that
the devil invented the habit of indorsing notes and giving
letters to catch the fellows he couldn’t reach with whisky and
gambling.”--GEORGE HORACE LORIMER, “Old Gorgon Graham.”

(1593)

=Industrial Church Training=--See PRACTISE AND INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

INDUSTRIAL TRAINING

The boy utterly unable, even if he were studious, to keep up in
book knowledge and percentage with the brighter boys, becomes
discouraged, dull, and moody. Let him go to the work-room for an
hour and find that he can make a box or plane a rough piece of
board as well as the brighter scholar, nay, very likely better
than his brighter neighbor, and you have given him an impulse of
self-respect that is of untold benefit to him when he goes back
to his studies. He will be a brighter and better boy for finding
out something that he can do well.--_American Magazine._

(1594)

INDUSTRY AND LONGEVITY

Capt. Robert McCulloch, who was elected president of the United
Railways Company at the age of sixty-seven, was asked recently
why he does not retire and live comfortably on his income.
As general manager of the $90,000,000 corporation, Captain
McCulloch is frequently at his office at 5 A.M. and
remains until late in the evening.

“I had a friend once,” said Captain McCulloch, answering the
inquiry, “who started in life in a very modest way. He sold
railway supplies, and to help him along I bought some of his
goods. Eventually he branched out, became the general manager of
a railway-supply house, and in time got rich.

“I met him two weeks before his fiftieth birthday. He told me
he had acquired a competency, having several hundred thousand
dollars invested in gilt-edged securities, besides his
magnificent home in Chicago, and that on his fiftieth birthday
he was going to retire and enjoy life.

“Just a year later I received his funeral notice. If he had
kept on working like I have, he would be living yet. Work is
necessary to enjoyment, good health, and length of days. That’s
why I don’t quit. I prefer to live a while longer, and know I
would die if I quit.”--St. Louis _Post-Dispatch_.

(1595)

INDUSTRY OF BEES

It is estimated that, to collect one pound of honey, 62,000
heads of clover must be deprived of their nectar, necessitating
3,750,000 visits from bees. It would seem from this that the
reputation of the wonderful little insect for industry has not
been overrated. Wax is a substance secreted by the bees, and
is analogous to the fat of higher animals. To produce a single
pound of wax, the bees must consume from fifteen to twenty
pounds of honey. This expensive substance is used by the thrifty
little insects with the greatest economy. (Text.)--_Public
Opinion._

(1596)

INDUSTRY OF BIRDS

“Our hours,” said a nature student, “are nothing to the birds.
Why, some birds work in the summer nineteen hours a day.
Indefatigably they clear the crops of insects.

“The thrush gets up at 2:30 every summer morning. He rolls up
his sleeves, and falls to work at once, and he never stops until
9:30 at night. A clean nineteen hours. During that time he feeds
his voracious young two hundred and six times.

“The blackbird starts work at the same time as the thrush, but
he ‘lays off’ earlier. His whistle blows at 7:30, and during his
seventeen-hour day he sets about one hundred meals before his
kiddies.

“The titmouse is up and about at three in the morning and his
stopping time is nine at night. A fast worker, the titmouse is
said to feed his young four hundred and seventeen meals--meals
of caterpillar mainly--in the long, hard, hot day.”--_Green’s
Fruit Grower._

(1597)

INDUSTRY VERSUS IDLENESS

There was a great painter named Hogarth, who painted a series
of pictures. The first of the series shows two lads starting
in life as apprentices under the same master. They are about
the same age, are equally clever, and have the same prospect of
getting on. Yet in the other pictures, one apprentice, whose
name is Tom Idle, is shown to neglect his work for bad company
of every kind, gradually sinking from idleness into every
crime. The other apprentice, Frank Goodchild, is depicted as
always industrious and attentive to his business, and becoming
prosperous and rich. Another picture shows that Tom has sunk
into poverty and misery; another picture shows that Frank has
become a great merchant. One of the last pictures shows Tom in
the hands of the constables, brought before Alderman Goodchild,
who is now high sheriff, and who is pained and distrest in
recognizing his old fellow apprentice in the prisoner at the
bar.--JAMES T. WHITE, “Character Lessons.”

(1598)

INEBRIETY, INCURABLE

Is the drunkard curable? Dr. Gill, a British expert, in a recent report says that mental recoveries in a considerable number never go beyond a certain point, and he classes nearly 50 per cent of his patients as higher-grade imbeciles, while many others are weak-minded and unable to work--perhaps congenital neurasthenics. He goes on to say:

Even in the smaller number classed as normal men, the mental
recovery is very slow, so that the advertised methods of quick
cure are fallacious. Notwithstanding the fact that men of
great or average intelligence might be afflicted, most of our
inebriates are congenital defectives--even the drunken genius
is a warped mental specimen. The inebriety is a result of their
condition and not a cause. How dishonest, then, it is, to hold
out the promise of cure, as many of the sanatoriums do! The
present trend of thought among lawmakers is in the direction
of the confinement of inebriates for life, and it seems to be
founded on sound pathologic findings.

(1599)

INEQUALITIES

Twenty little maidens
Sighing at a hop,
Wishing twenty fellows
Would come there to stop.

Twenty dapper clerklings
Sitting in a row,
Dipping pens in ink-stands,
Much would like to go.

Ah! this world’s an odd one,
Things don’t even up;
When we want a quartful,
We only get a cup.

(1600)

=Inexperience Re-enforced=--See ENCOURAGEMENT.

INFANTICIDE IN CHINA

Missionaries see little bodies floating upon the scum of the
ponds or thrown out by the roadside and half-eaten by the
wolfish dogs. It is not necessary to open the little bundle
of matting lying by the side of the city wall to know what it
contains. Shanghai has its hexagonal tower into which their
bodies can be cast. Nanking has its temple to which may be
brought any little dead body which the parents care not to bury
themselves.

(1601)

INFIDELITY ANSWERED

While Ingersoll was still living, in answer to an inquiry by some of his students as to whether the arguments of Ingersoll are unanswerable, a college president answered them in the _Andover Review_ as follows:

An infidel is an abnormal growth, and nature feels funny once in
a while and creates a freak, _e.g._, the living skeleton;
the fat woman, the two-headed girl. So there is about one
infidel to a million sane men. The most of these noisy fellows
are amateur infidels. They talk Ingersoll in fair weather and
pray themselves hoarse every time it thunders. A well-developed
case of cholera morbus will knock their infidelity out of them,
and leave them in a cold sweat like a china dog in an ice-house.
I know them. The most of them are like the boy who runs away
from home, and comes back to stay with his father nights. Then,
again, boys, take a look around you when you invest another
fifty cents to hear Ingersoll talk on “liberty,” and compare the
crowd with the kind of people you find in almost any church.
Is it the odor of sanctity you smell? Hardly, boys, hardly.
But you can eat peanuts there, and choke on the shells, while
you applaud the funny jokes about heaven where you know in
your hearts your dear mother is; or hear the humble Nazarene
ridiculed, who, you think, and always will think, gave a home to
your weary old father when he left the earth.

(1602)

INFIDELITY REPULSIVE

The nurse who waited upon Voltaire, the French infidel, during
his last hours, was requested a few months later to attend
another infidel in the same city. Her answer was, “I would
not wait upon another infidel for all the gold of Paris.” All
infidelity is repulsive. (Text.)

(1603)

=Infinitesimal, The=--See LITTLE THINGS.

=Infirmity, Blind to=--See CONSIDERATENESS.

INFLUENCE

A little clock in a jeweler’s window in a certain Western town
stopt one day for half an hour, at fifteen minutes of nine.
School-children, noticing the time, stopt to play; people
hurrying to the train, looking at the clock, began to walk
leisurely; professional men, after a look at the clock, stopt to
chat a minute with one another; working men and women noted the
time and lingered a little longer in the sunshine, and all were
half an hour late because one small clock stopt. Never had these
people known how much they had depended upon that clock till it
had led them astray.

Many are thus unconsciously depending upon the influence of
Christians; you may think you have no influence, but you
can not go wrong in one little act without leading others
astray.--Seattle _Churchman_.

(1604)

See INDIVIDUAL INFLUENCE; MOTHER’S INFLUENCE.

INFLUENCE, BAD

As these wild cattle mentioned below soon demoralize the domestic herds, so one or two wild youths may draw away many others from safe paths.

Much has been written lately about wild horses infesting certain
mountain ranges of the West and menacing the interest of
stockmen. A report from a district in the Shasta National Forest
of California states that wild cattle have become a nuisance.

These animals are the descendants of domestic cattle, but having
run without restraint for several generations, have become
as wild as deer. Stockmen will not apply for ranges infested
by these cattle, since tame cattle soon adopt the habits of
their wild relatives and become equally as unmanageable. It is
impossible to gather young stock in the fall, which have run
with these animals even for a season.

The majority of the stockmen desire to shoot them, but certain
mountain-dwellers claim them, and shoot an occasional one for
winter beef. The forest officers will, in conjunction with the
stockmen interested, investigate the matter, and decide upon
some plan of ridding the forests of this pest.

(1605)

INFLUENCE, CORRUPT

An American traction-owner, visiting St. Petersburg, was
imprest with the inadequacy of the horse-car service and
employed engineers to work out a modern system. Failing to make
an impression on the local officials, he had abandoned the
plan when he fell in with a clever Russian who assured him
that his ignorance of the ways of the country was responsible
for the failure, and offered to engineer the deal for a part
interest in the company. The first step was to purchase, for
several thousand rubles, the sympathy and support of a certain
_danseuse_ of the capital. Everything went smoothly and
Witte, the Czar’s Prime Minister, finally wrote a report
recommending the scheme, and the Czar endorsed on the document:
“I approve this in every particular.” Thereupon an American
rival attempted to blackmail the successful franchise-holder.
When the man refused to be held up the rival set various
influences at work. A few days later Plehve handed the
Emperor a report condemning the traction scheme and favoring
its annulment, across which Nicholas wrote: “I approve this
report in every particular.” Horse-cars still operate in St.
Petersburg. (Text.)

(1606)

INFLUENCE, ENDURING

Whitefield’s influence resembles the gale sweeping over the
surface of the sea. The effect is instant, and visible to every
sense. But of Wesley’s work the true symbol is the coral reef,
built up slowly, and cell by cell, in the sea depths, over
which the soil forms, and on which great cities will rise and
unborn nations will live. The one stirred the surface; the
other built up from the depths, built deeply, and built for all
time.--W. H. FITCHETT, “Wesley and His Century.”

(1607)

See GREATNESS APPRECIATED.

INFLUENCE OF SONG

It was sunset, and a number of girls, some of whom were
Sunday-school teachers, were singing at their work in a certain
factory Bishop Doane’s verses beginning,

“Softly now the light of day,”

to the tune of “Holley,” when a Christian woman who was visiting
the factory was shown the singing girls through an opened door.
On being told that the singing was now a regular custom with
the girls, she asked, “Has it made a difference?” Said the
superintendent who was escorting her around, “There is seldom
any quarreling or coarse joking among them now.”

(1608)

INFLUENCE, PERSONAL