Chapter M: E. Hume-Griffith, in her “Behind the Veil in Persia and Turkish (6)

A great mogul engine goes dashing along at a high speed, plowing
its way against wind, and defying every obstruction. But little
snowflakes, steadily falling on the track, grow into a heap that
brings the monster to a standstill.

Not one great crime, but many small sins block the soul’s progress heavenward.

(2961)

=Sin’s Causes=--See DISEASE, CAUSES OF.

SINS, PET

An officer in India, who one day fell asleep with his left hand
hanging over the couch, was awakened by his young pet lion
licking him. The rough tongue brought blood, and the officer
tried to withdraw his hand. At the first movement the lion gave
a short growl and grasped the hand more firmly, upon which the
officer, seeing that his lion cub had become suddenly changed
from a domestic pet to a wild beast, took a loaded pistol from
under his pillow with his right hand and shot the animal dead.

There are pet sins that men caress, parade, and boast of. They appear harmless enough to the casual observer, but at some unexpected moment they becoming a “roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.” (Text.)

(2962)

SINS OF YOUTH

In some strata there are to be seen the marks of showers of rain
which fell centuries ago, and they are so plain and perfect that
they clearly indicate the way the wind was drifting and in what
direction the tempest slanted from the sky. So may the tracks
of youthful sins be traced upon the tablet of life when it has
merged into old-age tracks on which it is bitter and sad to
look, and which call forth many a worthless longing for the days
and months which are past. (Text.)--MURSELL.

(2963)

=Sins That Are Regarded as Little=--See LITTLE SINS.

SINGING CONDUCIVE TO HEALTH

The time will soon come when singing will be regarded as one of
the great helps to physicians in lung diseases, more especially
in their incipient state. Almost every branch of gymnastics is
employed in one way or another by the doctors, but the simple
and natural function of singing has not yet received its full
meed of attention. In Italy, some years ago statistics were
taken which proved that the vocal artists were especially
long-lived and healthy, under normal circumstances, while of
the brass instrumentalists it was discovered that consumption
never claimed a victim among them. Those who have a tendency
toward consumption should take easy vocal exercises, no matter
how thin and weak their voices may seem to be. They will find a
result at times, far surpassing any relief afforded by medicine.
Vocal practise, in moderation, is the best system of general
gymnastics that can be imagined, many muscles being brought into
play that would scarcely be suspected of action in connection
with so simple a matter as tone production. Therefore, apart
from all art considerations, merely as a matter of health,
one can earnestly say to the healthy, “Sing! that you may
remain so,” and to the weakly, “Sing, that you may become
strong.”--Boston _Musical Herald_.

(2964)

=Singing Stays Panic=--See SELF-RESTRAINT.

SINGLENESS OF PURPOSE

The engineers of Nicholas I showed him their map of a crooked
railway line from St. Petersburg to Moscow, explaining that it
curved this way and that to take in this and that important
interest or city, but the Czar took a ruler and drew a straight
line between his two capitals, saying: “Build me that road.”

The secret of the Czar’s engineering was simply a single
purpose to join the old and new capitals of his empire.
The engineers thought of one great interest this way, and
another that way; but the Czar had no interests but the one.
That may have been poor business, but it was good military
engineering, and had it continued in Russian military autocratic
government, the Japanese, in the late war, would have had harder
work.--FRANKLIN NOBLE, “Sermons in Illustration.”

(2965)

=Sisterhood=--See GRACIOUSNESS IN WOMEN.

SIZE, COMPARATIVE

Many a man who looks large in small surroundings, is dwarfed to a pigmy when placed among his superiors:

Since the Statue of Liberty was erected the scale of almost
everything material has changed, especially in New York, so that
the colossus does not look even large now. It was all very well
for the Colossus of Rhodes to straddle the harbor entrance,
looking down on the tiny sailing craft, and pigmy buildings of
its day; it could not look otherwise than grandiose; but it
would have been swallowed up and lost among the sky-scrapers
and mammoth ocean-liners of twentieth-century New York, with
its huge bridges, lofty towers, and all-around bigness. Nothing
counts in a work of art but quality.--Boston _Transcript_.

(2966)

See COMPARATIVE, THE.

SIZE NOT POWER

John Stuart Mill gives us a wonderful contrast between man’s
brief day and the enduring ages of Neptune, yet Neptune is a
frozen clod, whirling on in eternal ice and darkness. A little
ball of ice can not laugh nor love nor sing nor curse nor faint
nor die; neither can a big ball of ice named Neptune. It is
man alone who is great, as the regent under God. The contrast
between the insignificance of man and the greatness of nature is
based on the fallacy that bulk is greatness. The truth is that
bulk is bulk, and concerns rocks and clods. Size is not power.
(Text.)--N. D. HILLIS.

(2967)

=Skill=--See HEADWORK.

=Skill by Experience=--See PRECAUTIONS.

=Skill Solving a Problem=--See CHARACTER CONDITIONED BY
THE PHYSICAL.

SKILL WITH TENDERNESS

Years ago, in Central New York, lived a Dr. Delamater, a noted
surgeon. It was before the days of anesthetics. A woman patient
consulted him, and after examination he told her, with tears in
his eyes, that a painful and dangerous operation was necessary.
“Proceed,” said the woman. The surgeon’s success was complete.
“Weren’t you afraid when you saw the surgeon affected so?” she
was asked later. “No,” she said, “that was what helped me. Those
tears assured me that the doctor was as tender-hearted as he was
skilful. I could trust such a man.” (Text.)

(2968)

SKY, THE

In landscape-painting the sky, it is said, is the keynote, the
standard of scale, and the chief organ of sentiment; just as the
sky is the source of light in nature, and governs everything.
This led John Constable to say that “the landscape-painter who
does not make his skies a very material part of his composition
neglects to avail himself of one of his greatest aids.” He says
he was advised to consider his sky as “a white sheet thrown
behind the objects.” He claims that the skies have what he calls
a natural history in the changes that they show. As West once
told him: “Always remember, sir, that light and shade never
stand still,” adding: “In your skies always aim at brightness
... even the darkest effects there should be brightness. Your
darks should look like the darks of silver, not of lead or of
slate.” It was the fault in the skies that led to the rejection
of Constable’s picture, “Flatford Mill,” by the Royal Academy.

How much life depends upon its skies.

(2969)

SLACKNESS

Mr. C. E. Russell, in _Hampton’s Magazine_, gives some experiences of Dr. H. H. Hart, of Chicago, member of the National Prison Association. One time he went to an Illinois jail in a small rural town, and asked to see the sheriff:

It appeared that the sheriff was visiting in another part of
the county. Doctor Hart asked for the jailer. The jailer was
absent, attending a funeral. Was any officer within range? Oh,
yes, there was a deputy sheriff somewhere about. After diligent
search, Doctor Hart succeeded in running down the deputy
sheriff, and announced that he had come to inspect the jail.

The deputy sheriff said he would get the key. He felt in one
pocket after another, and at last announced, with some trace of
annoyance, that he could not find the key. For a moment he stood
silent and meditating, until at last a bright thought seemed to
occur to him. “Wait a moment,” he said, and disappeared into the
barn. Presently he returned with another man.

“This is one of the prisoners,” said the deputy. “I guess he has
the key.”

Accordingly, the prisoner dug the key out of a pocket and
ushered Doctor Hart into the prison.

On another occasion Doctor Hart visited a jail, and found it
apparently deserted. He could discover no sheriff, no jailer, no
deputy. A man was sweeping the sidewalk, and of him Doctor Hart
asked for news of the county officers. The man shook his head.

“I guess I’m the only prisoner here. The sheriff and the jailer
have gone out into the country on a picnic.”

“What are you in for?”

“Oh, for murder,” said the man, nonchalantly, and resumed his
sweeping.

Incredible as it may seem, this man was telling the truth, and
not long afterward he was tried and found guilty.

(2970)

SLANDER

Against slander there is no defense. It starts with a word, with
a nod, with a shrug, with a look, with a smile. It is pestilence
walking in darkness, spreading contagion far and wide, which
the most wary traveler can not avoid; it is the heart-searching
dagger of the dark assassin; it is the poisoned arrow whose
wounds are incurable; it is the mortal sting of the deadly
adder, murder its employment, innocence its prey, and ruin its
sport.--_Catholic Telegraph._

(2971)

SLANDER IRREPARABLE

The man who breaks into my dwelling, or meets me on the public
road and robs me of my property, does me injury. He stops me on
the way to wealth, strips me of my hard-earned savings, involves
me in difficulty, and brings my family to penury and want. But
he does me an injury that can be repaired. Industry and economy
may again bring me into circumstances of ease and affluence. The
man who, coming at the midnight hour, fires my dwelling, does
me an injury--he burns my roof, my pillow, my raiment, my very
shelter from the storm and tempest; but he does me an injury
that can be repaired. The storm may indeed beat upon me, and
chilling blasts assail me, but Charity will receive me into her
dwelling, will give me food to eat, and raiment to put on; will
timely assist me, raising a new roof over the ashes of the old,
and I shall again sit by my own fireside, and taste the sweets
of friendship and of home. But the man who circulates false
reports concerning my character, who exposes every act of my
life which may be represented to my disadvantage, who goes first
to this, then to that individual, tells them he is very tender
of my reputation, enjoins upon them the strictest secrecy, and
then fills their ears with hearsays and rumors, and, what is
worse, leaves them to dwell upon the hints and suggestions of
his own busy imagination--the man who thus “filches from me
my good name,” does me an injury which neither industry, nor
charity, nor time itself can repair.--_Catholic Telegraph._

(2972)

SLAVE FOR THE GOSPEL’S SAKE

On the wall of a church in Algiers is a memorial tablet,
inscribed with the name of Devereaux Spratt. Born in England,
he, in 1641, with 119 other persons, the passengers and crew
on board an English ship, were captured by Algerine pirates
and sold into slavery. Having tasted of the salvation of Jesus
Christ, he soon began laboring for the salvation of others,
and many were brought to know and acknowledge the Lord. After
some time, his family, being influential, persuaded the English
Government to interfere on behalf of these poor captives, and
the dey of Algiers granted to Mr. Spratt his liberty. But those
among whom he had labored sorrowed so bitterly as they thought
of losing him from among them, and the bonds which held him to
them were so strong and tender, that he actually declined the
offer of freedom, gave up home and friends, and consented to
abide in lifelong bondage, that he, being a slave, might make
others free. Thus, for the sake of emancipating the souls of
others, he lived and died an Algerine slave. (Text.)

(2973)

SLAVE TRADE, ATROCITIES OF

Slaves of both sexes in South Africa were chained together
in pairs, many being mere skeletons from the misery, want,
and fatigue of their march. In some the fetters had, by their
constant action, worn through the lacerated flesh to the bare
bone, the ulcerated wound having become the resort of myriads
of flies. One captain had thrust his slaves between decks and
closed the hatches for the night. When morning came fifty of the
poor wretches were found to have been suffocated. The captain
swore at the untimely loss, had the bodies thrown into the
river, and went on shore to buy more negroes to complete his
cargo.

As the summary of the facts recorded, it may be stated that:

Of 1,000 victims to the slave trade, one-half
perished in the seizure, march and
detention 500

Of 500 embarked on the transports, one-fourth,
or 25 per cent, died in the
middle passage 125

Of the remaining 375 landed, 20 per cent
died soon after 75

Of 1,000 slaves, total loss 700

So that the annual loss to South Africa in its inhabitants was
500,000.--EDWARD GILLIATT, “Heroes of Modern Crusades.”

(2974)

=Slavery Abolished=--See FREEDOM, GRATITUDE FOR.

SLAVERY ENDED

In 1834 the children of the Jamaica slaves were freed, but
at midnight of July 31, 1838, a general proclamation of
emancipation went into effect and every adult slave in Jamaica
became a free man. In anticipation of this event, William Knibb,
the evangelist, gathered together the ten thousand slaves on
that island for a prayer and praise meeting, and when the
first stroke of the midnight bell pealed out, William Knibb
shouted, “The monster is dying!” When the second stroke came,
he said “dying”--after the third stroke he again said “dying,”
and when the twelfth stroke struck he said “The monster is
dead--let us bury him.” They had ready an immense coffin, into
which they cast the whips, the branding-irons, the handcuffs
and fetters, the slave garments and all the memorials of their
slavery--and screwed down the lid. They let the coffin down into
a twelve-foot deep grave, and, covering it over, they buried out
of sight all the memorials of their past life of bondage.

(2975)

SLAVES NOT HEROES

When Louis XIV, in order to check what he perceived to be the
growing supremacy of England upon the seas, determined to
establish a navy, he sent for his great minister Colbert, and
said to him, “I wish a navy--how can I create it?” Colbert
replied, “Make as many galley-slaves as you can.” Thereupon
every Huguenot who refused to doff his bonnet on the street
as the King passed by, every boy of seventeen who could give
no account of himself, every vagrant without an occupation,
was seized, convicted and sent to the galleys. Could a navy of
heroes be made of galley-slaves? The history of the Anglo-Saxon
race says “No.”--HAMPTON L. CARSON.

(2976)

SLAVES OF PLEASURE

Philanthropists in prison cells, missionaries to the Fiji
Islanders, people doing rescue work in the worst sections of
great cities, Livingstone in Africa, all these, through zeal,
can work till midnight to save lost men, but the votary of
pleasure will toil on up and down a waxed floor till daylight,
until the head reels and the whole heart is sick. In his
“Confessions” Tolstoi says that for ten years he went from
banquet to banquet, drinking rich wines, feasting, following
his tailor, concocting flatteries, lies, sleeping by day and
dissipating at night, and he adds, “My observation is that
no galley-slave or apostle like Paul has to toil as hard as
a society man and a society woman,” and both have lost their
beauty, their happiness and their health before the life
course is half run. So pleasure makes its disciples become
galley-slaves. But pleasure promised a velvet path, air heavy
with roses, the wine and nectar of Venus and Bacchus. Pleasure
promised perfumed bowers, days of happiness, nights of laughter
and song. But pleasure is a deceiver. (Text.)--N. D.
HILLIS.

(2977)

=Sleeping in Church=--See SELF-BLAME.

SLOWNESS

“A snail’s pace,” hitherto a remarkably indefinite phrase,
has at last been exactly defined, thanks to the experimental
philosophers of the Terre Haute Polytechnic. After putting half
a dozen of them through their paces, and making all necessary
differentiations, it was ascertained that a snail can travel
exactly a mile in fourteen days. Hence, it will be seen that
it is about nip and tuck between the snail and the boy when
you send the latter to a grocery past a vacant lot where the
other boys are engaged in a game of baseball.--Cincinnati
_Enquirer_.

(2978)

SMALL ANNOYANCES

James Drummond, in “Parables and Pictures,” says:

We have heard of a battle against cannibals gained by the use of
tacks. They had taken possession of a whaling vessel and bound
the man who was left in care of it. The crew, on returning, saw
the situation, and scattered tacks upon the deck of the vessel,
which penetrated the bare feet of the savages, and sent them
howling into the sea. They were ready to meet lance and sword,
but they could not overcome the tacks on the floor. We brace
ourselves up against great calamities. The little tacks of life,
scattered along our way, are hard to bear.

(2979)

SMALL BEGINNINGS

“Despise not the day of small things.” “Great oaks from little acorns grow.”

A boy used to crush flowers to get their color, and painted the
white side of his father’s cottage in Tyrol with all sorts of
pictures, which the mountaineer gazed at as wonderful. He was
the great artist, Titian.

An old painter watched a little fellow who amused himself
making drawing of his pots and brushes, easel and tools, and
said, “That boy will beat me some day.” So he did, for he was
Michelangelo.

(2980)

=Small Duties=--See HELPFULNESS.

SMALL EVILS HARDEST TO BEAR

Gerald Gould expresses in verse a sentiment that many will indorse:

It is the slow and softly dropping tears
That bring the furrows to man’s face; the years,
Falling and fall’n vain,
That turn the gold to gray upon his head;
And the dull days to disappointment wed,
And pain that follows pain
That make life bitter in the mouth, and strew
The dead with roses, but the quick with yew.

Better a wide and windy world, and scope
For rise and downfall of a mighty hope,
Than many little ills;
Better the sudden horror, the swift wrong,
Than doubts and cares that die not, and the long
Monotony that kills:
The empty dawns, pale stars, and narrow skies,
Mean hopes, mean fears, mean sorrows, and mean sighs.
(Text.)--_The Spectator._

(2981)

=Smallness and Bigness Compared=--See DESTRUCTIVENESS.

=Smiles=--See LOVE’S CAREFULNESS; TROUBLE.

SMILES AND FROWNS

We would all be willing to help in the pleasant task described in these verses:

If I knew the box where the smiles are kept,
No matter how large the key
Or strong the bolt, I would try so hard,
’Twould open I know for me.

Then over the land and sea broadcast
I’d scatter smiles to play,
That the children’s faces might hold them fast
For many and many a day.

If I knew a box that was large enough
To hold all the frowns I meet,
I would try to gather them, every one,
From nursery, school, and street.

Then, folding and holding, I’d pack them in,
And turn the monster key;
I’d hire a giant to drop the box
To the depths of the deep, deep sea.

(2982)

SMILING

In Brooklyn, two young women undertook to band together a smile
club. In this club’s membership may be included every one,
everywhere, who is willing to pledge as many smiles as possible
to make life generally happier. Here are some of the things
required of members: “Radiate! Smile! Shine like a little sun!
Begin each day anew, and begin it by smiling until you are in a
good humor. Think only of the things you wish to possess or of
what you desire to become, for thoughts are things. Have faith
and your wishes will come true. Smile! And keep on smiling, and
you will find that the happiness you have always been seeking is
within yourself. Express this happiness.” Surely no objection
can be offered to the organizing of clubs of this sort, tho
we need not necessarily join one to acquire and practise the
smiling habit. It may be said of smile clubs and smiles, the
more the merrier. As a popular post-card puts it: “Smile a
while, and while you smile another smiles, and soon there are
miles and miles of smiles because you smile.” Grouches could not
exist if every one was smiling. It’s worth trying for a few days
anyhow, just to see how well it works.

(2983)

=Snob versus Gentleman=--See GENTILITY, FALSE STANDARD OF.

SNOBBERY

A countryman had been to the city and went home brimful of
news. “You ’member the Smiths?” he asked his wife, “the Silver
Crik Smiths, them as got rich on the’r gran’feyther’s money.”
Yes, she remembered them. “I seen ’em. They’re way up; live in
a gran’ house on a street they call a thavenoo. They ride in a
double kerridge, and have no end of money.” She said she s’posed
as much. “But, ’Mandy, you wouldn’t want ter change places with
her; I see her a minnit, and I didn’t hev the heart to speak
t’her. She’s bin humbled right down to the dust. She’s as blind
as a bat.” Blind! She guessed not. “But she is. Fust, she didn’t
know me, me that’s rid down hill and played tag with her when
she warn’t knee-high to a turkey. Then, ’Mandy, tho her eyes was
wide open, she went right along the streets, all drest up in her
fine clothes, and a leetle mite of a dog was leading her along.
He was tied to a streeng, and she had hold of t’other end of
the streeng. Now, ’Mandy, how’d you like to be her?”--Detroit
_Free Press_.

(2984)

SNOBBERY REBUKED

Social standing is not always a sign of moral worth, as the following story suggests:

“The late Francis Murphy,” said a Pittsburg man, “perhaps the
greatest temperance reformer our country has ever seen, hated
snobbishness hardly less than drunkenness. At a dinner in
Pittsburg I once heard him rebuke, with a little anecdote, a
snobbish millionaire.

“He said there was a rich and snobbish English woman living in
the country. Her husband put himself up for a political place,
and in order to help his campaign along the woman gave a garden
party to which every voter for miles around was invited.

“Among the humble guests was a very independent grocer. The
grocer made himself quite at home. No duke’s manner could
have been easier and freer. Indeed, the man’s total lack of
subservience angered his hostess extremely, so that in the end,
thinking to take him down a peg, she said to him significantly:

“‘You know, Mr. Greens, in London, shopkeepers don’t go into the
best society.’

“The grocer looked at her, and nodded and smiled.

“They don’t here, either, ma’am,’ he said.” (Text.)

(2985)

SOCIAL CHRISTIANITY

In other days when people did not have matches they were
sometimes obliged to go to the neighbors for fire, if their
own blaze went out. Usually a bunch of large knots were laid
on the coals at night and then covered over with ashes until
morning. But if the knots failed to burn, then the oldest
child was usually sent to the neighbors with an iron kettle to
borrow fire. Happy to be of use, the child soon returned with a
kettleful of bright coals and a blazing knot on top.

No man can live at his best who leads a solitary life. Without
the fellowship of others, like an isolated coal he soon ceases
to glow and burn. Very few can remain for a long time in a white
heat of enthusiasm. The flames die down, the warmth disappears
unless the fires are kept replenished. Brainard’s prayer was
“O that I could be a flame of fire in the service of my God.”
(Text.)

(2986)

See CHRISTIANITY, SOCIAL.

=Social Faults=--See DIFFICULTIES, SOCIAL.

SOCIAL INSTINCTS IN BIRDS

On one occasion Mr. Leander Keyser’s several cages of birds
were moved from one porch to another on the other side of the
house. The jay’s cage, being too big for the new quarters,
was left behind, when at once the bird began to express his
dissatisfaction and loneliness. All day he rushed about his
cage, calling in the most pitiful way. The next morning he was
no more reconciled, and showed so plainly by every look and
motion his unhappiness that a place was made for him near the
others. The moment he saw them he gave a cry of delight, his
calls ceased, he chirped and twittered, and was his happy self
again.--OLIVE THORNE MILLER, “The Bird Our Brother.”

(2987)

SOCIAL INTERDEPENDENCE

There was once a rich man who lived in a certain village. The
people were pleased to have this man of influence among them.
The only fault that they found with him was that he was selfish.
It did not trouble him if his neighbors were poor or sick or
out of work or in trouble. What was that to him? It only added
to his position of superiority. He could import his edibles. He
could hire foreign labor. But one day a family was stricken with
a contagious disease induced by their poverty and poor food. The
village was quarantined. He went to a gardener for vegetables
but the cut worms had made the garden fail. He went to the
poultry-dealer for eggs, but his hens were not laying well. He
went to the farmer for fruit, but the drought had injured his
vines. Then the rich man began to realize the relation between
himself and his fellow man. If trouble came to his neighbor, he
could not escape its blight. It was then that he became truly
humble and began to love his neighbor as himself.

It is as true in our moral and spiritual life as it is in our
physical life. The sin that blasts our neighbor’s character
will sooner or later cast its shadow upon us, live we ever so
blameless. No one can live his life apart from his neighbors.
(Text.)

(2988)

SOCIAL PROGRESS

“The farmers’ telephone was a boon during heavy and
unprecedented snows,” says _The Electrical World and
Engineer_, “and many interesting uses are reported in New
York State in places where many roads were blocked with drifts
over ten feet deep. Hemmed in so that they could not see a
neighbor for weeks, farmers have been able to converse with
their friends and thus keep in touch with the world.” (Text.)

(2989)

See ECONOMIC MOTIVES.

SOCIAL RELIGION

Only the selfish man could wish to go to heaven alone. The door of life is always closed to the man who is not helping some other man on his journey.

A priest had a striking dream. He dreamed he had ascended the
ladder that reached from earth to heaven. Expectantly he knocked
upon the door. Some one responded, and demanded, “Who is there?”
Proudly the priest called his name. “Who is with you?” came the
reply. “No one,” answered the priest; “I am alone.” “Sorry,”
said the angel, “but we are instructed never to open these gates
for a single individual.” And, crestfallen and disappointed, he
descended to earth.

(2990)

SOCIAL STRENGTH

A constant struggle is going on in nature, and those animals
best adapted to their conditions will be the ones to survive
and transmit their superior characteristics to subsequent
generations. This is natural selection. This same law governed
man in his early history, and in almost the same way as it
governs the brute kingdom. From the time that the tribal
relation is established among men the struggle for existence
ceases to be one of individuals and becomes one of tribes. It
little profits an individual to be strong if he belongs to a
weak tribe; it little profits a tribe to be composed of strong
individuals if they fail to work in harmony with each other.
Natural selection will still preserve the strongest, but it
will be the strongest tribe. It is mutual trust, fidelity,
honesty, concert in action, patriotism, disregard of death,
that form the sinews of the nation, personal strength becoming
a subordinate factor. Wolves hunt in companies, and together
fearlessly attack animals which would easily master them
separately. Insects live in communities and tho individually
they are weak, by concert of action they make themselves
formidable to the strongest of animals. But the central feature
of the teaching of Christ was the law of love. It constantly
appears in His words--now clothed in one parable now in another.
The new command given to man was to love his enemy, to do good
to them that hated him, to help the weak, to pardon the erring,
to resist evil, and to give to him that asked. Henceforth it
was to be the peacemaker who should be blest, and he who wished
to be greatest was to be servant of all.--H. W. CONN,
_Methodist Review_.

(2991)

See UNITY, STRENGTH IN.

SOCIAL TRAITS IN CHILDREN

Pedagogs tell us that the plays of children under seven or eight
are noncompetitive and noncooperative. Kindergarten children
play side by side or in pairs, rarely spontaneously in groups.
They are gregarious rather than social. The plays between the
ages of seven and twelve are social, cooperative and competitive
games, but each child usually plays for himself. After twelve
group games with opposing sides are more popular, and finally
tend to crowd out all others.

(2992)

SOCIAL VANITY

I read in a Paris paper an interesting account of a reception
that some of our distinguished friends passing the season in
Newport gave to a chimpanzee. Of course, it was mortifying to an
American to have it known by Europeans that my compatriots were
prepared to confess in that practical way to their belief in the
evolution theory, and to have it understood in the cultivated
centers of English and Continental life that over here people
of advertised refinement could drop into such close relations
of social reciprocity without either the Newport gentlemen and
ladies or the chimpanzee feeling themselves insulted by the
contact. But that first feeling, which of course was one of
loathing, not for the chimpanzee, but for his companions, soon
gave place to one which I am sure was more just and wholesome,
this, namely, a pathetic realization of the horrid sense of
emptiness which people must be suffering under to be willing to
fill up the vacuum with material of such an abominably unhuman
type; like a man so agonizingly hungry that he had rather
fill himself with carrion than go to bed supperless, and not
only that, but reduced to such an extreme point of inanition
as even to acquire an appetite for carrion.--CHARLES H.
PARKHURST.

(2993)

SOCIETY IS MAN’S PLACE

The man of the city closes his house, forgets his office and
goes away. He has a suit of store clothes on him and two linen
collars in his handbag, but for the rest he carries the garb
of the vagabond, and getting into this as quick as he can he
buries his face in the pine-needles and lets the wind and rain
beat down on his uncovered head and untrimmed beard. And the
weeks pass; and then happens the stranger thing. Through the
music of the forest and the harmonies of the falling waters, he
hears, at first, far away and hardly audible, then ever nearer
and clearer, the voice of the city he deserted, and to his
manhood’s spirit that voice speaks with a charm which overcomes
the woodland’s spell and in another day he is back again, back
in the old street, to the old work, to the ever dear old city.
And once more keeping step with the vast army of toilers, he
knows that not in solitude, but in society, is character made,
and more, that not nature, but human nature, is God’s best
handiwork.--T. C. MCCLELLAND.

(2994)

=Soil=--See FRUIT AND SOIL.

SOLACE OF THE SEA

The following paragraph is the conclusion of James G. Blaine’s eulogy of President Garfield, and forms one of the finest passages of English prose:

Gently, silently, the love of a great people bore the pale
sufferer to the longed-for healing of the sea, to live or to
die, as God should will. Within sight of its heaving billows,
within sound of its manifold voices, with wan, fevered face
tenderly lifted to the cooling breeze, he looked out wistfully
upon the ocean’s changing wonders, on its far sails whitening
in the morning light, on its restless waves rolling shoreward
to break and die beneath the noonday sun, on the red clouds of
evening arching low to the horizon, on the serene and shining
pathway of the stars. Let us think that his dying eyes read a
mystic meaning, which only the rapt and parting soul may know.
Let us believe that, in the silence of the receding world,
he heard the great wave breaking on a farther shore, and felt
already upon his wasted brow the breath of the eternal morning.

(2995)

=Solar Energy=--See ENERGY; UTILIZATION.

SOLDIER, A TRUE

In the midst of a hot engagement, Napoleon asked one of his
aides about the battle. “Sire,” said he, “this battle is lost,
but,” pointing with his sword to the sun still an hour high,
“there is still time enough to win another.”

(2996)

=Soldier’s Dying Sentiments=--See ESSENTIALS.

SOLIDARITY

Smith’s family in Brooklyn went on short allowance, the oldest
son was taken out of college, the two daughters gave up their
music-teacher, there was no summer vacation. They explained
that Smith had lost thirty-six thousand dollars on R. & P.
stock. Smith knew that he had lost this money because he was ten
minutes late in getting a receipt from the directors.

On a certain day there were twenty-four directors in the head
office. They waited vainly for the twenty-fifth. Their half-hour
delay was costly to Smith and many others.

Mr. Brown, the twenty-fifth director, was late because his
clerk had not brought a certain mail package due on the
one-o’clock express. The clerk came at last with the package;
the one-o’clock express had arrived late.

Fifty more plans went wrong because the express was late.
Men rang up the general manager’s office to complain of the
annoyance. The manager sent for the conductor. The conductor
explained that the fault was a “hot box.” Inquiry at Rochester
traced the hot-box to the inspector and oiler. He had come late
to his work and was only in time to go over half the wheels of
the express. The oiler, being questioned, admitted that he was
late owing to a sick baby, for whom he had been obliged to go
for a doctor. So, in a way, an oiler’s sick baby, two hundred
miles away, upset Smith and his family, delayed boards of
directors, changed Wall Street fortunes. Victor Hugo said that
at Waterloo “the universe changed front.” But it changes front
every time we act. If one member suffers, all the members suffer
with it.

(2997)

* * * * *

The people of the world have a community of interests. Sickness in the slums of a great city, for instance, breeds disease in the whole community:

A man in the city of Chicago was asked why he did not do more
to better the condition of the working people in the poorer
sections of the city. “What are they to me?” he heartlessly
answered. A few weeks later his daughter died of typhoid-fever
brought to her in clothing made in the sweat-shops which her
father thought it was not his business to try to do away with.
(Text.)

(2998)

See SENSITIVENESS.

SOLIDITY OF OLD TRUTHS

The fine-grained old truths of religion have been deposited by
the world’s best life. Its age is theirs; but, altho so many
epochs and races went to make them, we use them now without
a thought of their age or of the gravity of getting them
well-grown; like the beautiful ivory mammoth tusk, sticking six
or seven feet out of the frozen ground in Alaska, which the
Indians have used for generations as a hitching-post. Tribes
come and go, and generations succeed each other; but we all
hitch up to the solid truths which offer their convenience,
embedded in the past. (Text.)--JOHN WEISS.

(2999)

SOLITUDE, LESSON OF

My safety (from madness) lay, as I found, in compressing my
thoughts to the smallest compass of mental existence, and no
sooner did worldly visions or memories intrude themselves, as
they necessarily would, than I immediately and resolutely shut
them out as one draws the blind to exclude the light. But this
exclusion of the world created a dark background which served
only to intensify the light that shone upon me from realms
unseen of mortal eyes. Lonely I was, yet I was never alone.
(Text.)--Mrs. MAYBRICK, “My Fifteen Lost Years.”

(3000)

SOLITUDE, TRAINING IN

A writer tells of a little bird which would not learn to sing
the song its master would have it sing while its cage was full
of light. It listened and learned a snatch of this, a trill of
that, a polyglot of all the songs of the grove, but never a
separate and entire melody of its own. Then the master covered
its cage and made it dark; and then it listened and listened
to the one song it was to sing, and tried, and tried, and tried
again, until at last its heart was full of it. Then, when it had
caught the melody, the cage was uncovered, and it sang the song
sweetly ever after in the light. (Text.)

(3001)

=Solving Worry=--See CONTENTMENT.

=Son Conquered=--See WORSHIPER, A MOTHER.

=Song=--See PRAISE.

SONG AND HUMANITY

The teacher of music should bear in mind that his subject is
related to life in a profound and many-sided fashion. The songs
of home and friendship, of religion and patriotism, have no
small place in the higher life of humanity. To cite one example:
I have been present at a Phi Beta Kappa dinner at Harvard when,
at the close, the company of scholars joined hands and sang
together Burns’ song of “Auld Lang Syne.” I have heard the
same song at a company of ministers at a theological seminary
reunion. After the battle of Manila Bay, where the British and
American marines fraternized, as the British men-of-war left the
harbor, the marines of both nations sang the same song. It was
the music of the plowman-poet that best fitted as a parting-song
of friendship for the scholar, the theologian, and the marines
of two great modern nations. Read the tributes to music of noted
men of letters like Carlyle and Newman. See how they have been
imprest by this art, which opens into the world of the ear or
sound--a word which has its artists and poets, its historians
and dramatists, its architects and builders, as the world
of letters or of space.--W. SCOTT, “Journal of the
National Educational Association,” 1905.

(3002)

SONG AND SUFFERING

It is said of Charlotte Elliott, the author of the “Invalid’s
Hymn-book,” that tho she lived to enter her eighty-second year,
she never knew a well day. Her sweet hymns, such as “Just as I
am without one plea,” were the outpouring of a heart that knew
what it was to suffer. Like so many other bards, she “learned in
suffering what she taught in song.” (Text.)

(3003)

SONG AS A WELCOME HOME

In the mountains of Tyrol it is the custom of the women and
children to come out when it is the close of day and sing. Their
husbands, fathers and brothers answer them from the hills on
their way homeward. On the shores of the Adriatic such a custom
prevails. There the wives of the fishermen come down about
sunset and sing a melody, listen for a while for an answering
melody from off the water, telling that the loved one is almost
home. How sweet to the weary fisherman, as the shadows gather
around them, must be the songs of the loved ones at home that
sing to cheer them, and how they must strengthen and tighten the
links that bind together these dwellers of the sea.

(3004)

SONG, EFFECTIVE

An African heathen chief from an inland district was passing a
mission school in Livingstonia. He heard the children singing
their simple parting hymn. He sat down and waited till they came
out. Then he asked the teacher “What were these children doing?”

“Singing a hymn,” she replied.

“What is a hymn?” asked the chief; “it has touched my heart. I
should like the children of my village taught some hymns.”

There has since been a school established in that chief’s
village, and the gospel is reaching the people through the
simple messages carried by the children in song and story.

(3005)

* * * * *

Thirty men, red-eyed and disheveled, lined up before a judge
of the San Francisco police court, says The _Youth’s
Companion_. It was the regular morning company of “drunks
and disorderlies.” Some were old and hardened, others hung
their heads in shame. Just as the momentary disorder attending
the bringing in of the prisoners quieted down, a strange thing
happened. A strong, clear voice from below began singing:

“Last night I lay a-sleeping,
There came a dream so fair.”

Last night! It had been for them all a nightmare or a drunken
stupor. The song was such a contrast to the horrible fact that
no one could fail of the sudden shock at the thought the song
suggested.

“I stood in old Jerusalem,
Beside the temple there.”

The song went on. The judge had paused. He made a quiet inquiry.
A former member of a famous opera company, known all over the
country, was awaiting trial for forgery. It was he who was
singing in his cell.

Meantime the song went on, and every man in the line showed
emotion. One or two dropt on their knees. One boy at the end
of the line, after a desperate effort at self-control, leaned
against the wall, buried his face in his folded arms, and
sobbed, “O mother, mother.”

The sobs cut the very heart of the men who heard, and the song,
still welling its way through the court-room, blended in the
hush. At length one man protested:

“Judge,” said he, “have we got to submit to this? We’re here to
take our punishment, but this--” He, too, began to sob.

It was impossible to proceed with the business of the court, yet
the judge gave no order to stop the song. The police sergeant,
after a surprized effort to keep the men in line, stept back and
waited with the rest. The song moved on to its climax:

“Jerusalem, Jerusalem! Sing for the night is o’er!
Hosanna in the highest! hosanna for ever-more!”

In an ecstasy of melody the last words rang out, and then there
was a silence.

The judge looked into the faces of the men before him. There
was not one who was not touched by the song; not one in whom
some better impulse was not stirred. He did not call the cases
singly--a kind word of advice, and he dismissed them all. No man
was fined or sentenced to the workhouse that morning. The song
had done more good than punishment could have accomplished.

(3006)

SONG IN THE NIGHT

Years ago, when the _Ocean Monarch_ was wrecked in the
English Channel, a steamer was cruising along in the darkness,
and the captain heard a song, a sweet song, coming over the
waters, and bearing down in the direction of the voice, he found
it was a Christian woman on a plank of the wrecked steamer
singing:

“Jesus, lover of my soul,
Let me to thy bosom fly,
While the nearer waters roll,
While the tempest still is high.” (Text.)

(3007)

=Song of Cheer=--See CHEER, GOOD.

=Song, Power of=--See LIFE-LINE, HYMN.

SONG, THE GOSPEL IN

The ministry of song in modern times has been of incalculable value in spreading the truths of the Word. Speaking of a city-wide revival in Boston, a current news item says:

The city is ringing with revival melodies. Everywhere Mr.
Alexander’s songs are being hummed and whistled and sung. A
number of revival hymns have been published in the newspapers,
and a few days ago two drummers were seated in a train going out
of Boston, holding a newspaper before them and singing from it
lustily, “Don’t Stop Praying.” A gentleman who happened to be in
the same car, which was filled with people, said that he finally
approached them and asked them if they were ministers. “Oh, no,”
was the reply, “we are just drummers.” In one of the hotels some
theatrical women were singing, “He Will Hold Me Fast,” instead
of their own songs. These are simply indications of the way in
which the gospel songs have permeated the entire city. (Text.)

(3008)

=Songs Born in Trouble=--See NEGLECT OF GENIUS.

SONGS THAT ENDURE

George Sylvester Viereck, in “Prisoners of Song,” has these suggestive lines on the immortality of the song:

With rumbling thunder and discordance hideous
The gods and stars shall tumble from the sky,
But beauty’s curve enmarbled lives in Phidias,
And Homer’s numbers can not die.

And when the land is perished, yea,
When life forsakes us and the rust
Has eaten bard and roundelay,
Still from the silence of the dust
Shall rise the song of yesterday!

(3009)

SOOT

The Chicago public laboratories recently made tests to determine
the amount of soot and dust deposited from the air in that
city. The acreage deposit, as estimated from samples collected
at eight different heights during a period of four weeks, was,
approximately, at the rate of 8.5 tons per acre per year. On
the Board of Trade Building, 110 feet above the street level,
the estimated annual deposit was 10.5 tons. On the county
building, 160 feet above street level, the amount was 7.8 tons,
and on the Reaper Block, 120 feet above street level, 12.6 tons.
The situation in Chicago is different only in degree from that
prevailing in every large city. It would be interesting (and no
doubt appalling) to know how many tons of soot enter the lungs
of the inhabitants of our large cities.--_Good Health._

(3010)

=Sorrow=--See SUFFERING TRANSFORMED.

SORROW FOR A LOST CAUSE

In reminiscences of her husband, General George E. Pickett, of the Confederate Army, his widow has this to say in regard to the sadness that filled the Southern heart at the close of the unsuccessful war:

He (General Pickett) gave his staff a farewell breakfast at
our home. They did not once refer to the past, but each wore a
blue strip tied like a sash around his waist. It was the old
headquarters flag, which they had saved from the surrender and
torn into strips, that each might keep one in sad memory. After
breakfast he went to the door, and from a white rose-bush which
his mother had planted, he cut a bud for each. He put one in my
hair and pinned one to the coat of each of his officers. Then
for the first time the tears came, and the men who had been
closer than brothers for four fearful years clasped hands in
silence and parted. (Text.)

(3011)

SOUL A UNITY

The Christian soul is not a department store. It does not
advertise songs for Sunday, sharp bargains for Monday, doubts
for Tuesday, worldliness for Wednesday, dishonesty for
Thursday, compunction for Friday, repentance for Saturday, and
then songs again for Sunday. No! The Christian soul is not a
fractional mechanism, but an organism. It is fed by the divine
sap that flows into it from the true vine. Thus does the glow
of its life splendor every service it renders. The rich hues
of its godliness vein the whole of its life as a spiritual
mosaic.--F. F. SHANNON.

(3012)

SOUL AND NATURE

The daisy brightening in the shadow of the hedgerow, or strewing
the fields as with golden flakes; the trees spreading their
whispering roof of tremulous foliage, or holding against the
blast their rugged arms, inlocked with a trunk deep-set and
rooted; brooks, lapsing or leaping from their summit springs;
the ocean, which takes these to itself, without an added ripple
on its bays, or an increase of its tides; all sounds, of mirth,
or suffering, or fear; the drowsy hum of multitudinous insects;
the arrowy song of birds, swifter than wings, aspiring to the
skies; all forms and tones of human life; the immeasurable
azure which is over us everywhere, brilliant with stars, or
flecked with clouds, or made the blue and boundless realm of
the victorious sun--all these, and all the visible system which
these but partly represent, the soul perceives. It goes out to
them, in its observant, inspecting glance. It meets and hears
them, if they are vocal, with its attent sense. It apprehends
them all, arranges them in their natural and obvious order,
assigns to each its place and service, and lives amid them as in
a home reared for it and furnitured at the commencement of its
being.--RICHARD S. STORRS.

(3013)

SOUL FLIGHT

A human soul went forth into the night,
Shutting behind it Death’s mysterious door,
And shaking off with strange, resistless might
The dust that once it wore.
So swift its flight, so suddenly it sped--
As when by skillful hand a bow is bent
The arrow flies--those watching round the bed
Marked not the way it went.

Through the clear silence of the moonless dark,
Leaving no footprint of the road it trod,
Straight as an arrow cleaving to its mark,
The Soul went home to God.
“Alas!” they cried, “he never saw the morn,
But fell asleep outwearied with the strife”--
Nay, rather, he arose and met the dawn
Of everlasting life.

(3014)

SOUL, GREATNESS OF THE

The mountain is vast in size and weight. The weary feet clamber
over it painfully. It offers homes along its breast to the
enterprise which seeks them. Its quarries build palaces, and its
woods timber navies. It lifts its crown of snow and ice against
the sky, and stands amid the scene a very monarch of earth,
primeval and abiding. But the soul can compass that mountain
in its thought, without weariness or pain; can take it up and
weigh it, in the balances of exact mathematical computation;
and spurning it then, as a mere footstool for its activity, can
spring from it to that boundless expanse amid which the mountain
is less than is the least of the dust grains of the balance to
its solid bulk.--RICHARD S. STORRS.

(3015)

=Soul-growth=--See GROWTH, UNCONSCIOUS.

SOUL, HARMONIOUS NATURE OF

A harp might conceivably be so framed by its maker that every
string, tho rightly tuned and rightly struck, according to the
theory and design of the instrument, should emit when touched
a separate discord. Or it may be so framed, as we know by
experience, that from it shall flow, when fitly swept by an
educated hand, the concerted numbers of noble music; inspiring
the thoughts with their spiritual force, or suffusing the
very air around us with an audible glory, and making it drop
benedictions upon us. If the former be the case, we know that
the instrument was made without design, or else was made with
malicious intent, to mock with pain where it promised to please.
Now God has so framed the human soul, in His wise and benevolent
ordination of its powers, that each of these powers as normally
employed, according to His plan, gives a separate pleasure.
If unhappiness comes from them, it is from their wrong use,
not from their use; from our perversion, and not from our just
employment of them.--RICHARD S. STORRS.

(3016)

SOUL-MUSIC

During the fame of Ole Bull he played one night before the
students of Princeton College. It was a wonderful exhibition.
They marveled, as so many had marveled before them, at the
strange things which he did with the violin. They heard the
birds as they warbled among the trees of the forest; they heard
the storms as they hurled their thunders back and forth among
the crags of the mountain. Then the tones became so soft and
sweet they could almost believe a mother was singing her babe
asleep. When he had finished they gathered about him and said,
“Tell us the secret.” Ole Bull answered, “It is not in the
instrument nor the bow, tho I use the best that money can buy.
It is not primarily in the hand that wields the bow, nor the
fingers that press the strings. If there is anything to tell, it
is this: I never play until my own soul is full. Then the music
is the overflow of the musician’s soul.”

(3017)

SOUL QUERIES