The Use of the Cut-off.
I well remember when there was introduced in our house that blessed little product of the Patent Office, the cut-off. Perhaps that isn't the right name for it, but I have never heard another.
The cut-off is the valve attached to the gas jet which allows all the gas to go out except a tiny spark kept safe at the bottom of a glass bulb. When you want to light the gas again, you simply pull the brass chain, the spark leaps into a blue streak of flame, and, presto! you have your gas jet as brilliant as ever.
Such a convenience! No matches to find, and scrape, and break, and burn your fingers with. No bother to adjust the gas to the proper height. You have only to jerk the chain, and the Patent Office does the rest.
In the old days—do you remember, my beloved?—we would sit, oh, many a dawdling quarter of an hour, because we were too lazy to light the gas. Now—it is just fun. The children have to be kept from the fascinating contrivance. We like to play with it ourselves.
And I like it so well that I want that sort of thing in my mind. I want to keep at least a little spark of enthusiasm somewhere down in that bulb, my skull, and whenever anyone pulls the chain on an appropriate occasion, I want that spark to leap into a full blaze of enthusiasm ready to light up the whole subject, whatever it is.
Now—I am sorry to say—matters are quite different. My friend suggests a plan, or a topic of conversation, or a need for help, or a game, or what not. He is all on fire with his scheme, for he has been thinking about it. Do I leap into eager sympathy with him? H-m! I reach out for the match box. It has been mislaid. I fumble around after it. Ah, here it is, under the paper. I open it, and take out a match. I rub it on the edge of the box. No sandpaper there. I try another place. A little flash, but with no special result, for the phosphorus is too scanty. I try another match, but the wood is poor and breaks off. I try another, and the head goes flaming down on to the carpet. The fourth is successful, and at last my interest in my friend's suggestion flashes tardily forth. He may have been talking about it for an hour.
"He gives twice who gives quickly”—sympathy, enthusiasm, interest, as well as greenbacks. I will put a Patent-Office attachment on my mind right away.
"a Perfectly Corking Time."
That is what one President of the United States said of his stay in the White House.
As he was leaving for his summer vacation Mr. Roosevelt was reminded by a reporter that he of all men had fairly earned a rest; and this was his characteristic answer: "Don't waste any sympathy on me. I have enjoyed every minute of my stay here, and my thanks are due to the American people, and not theirs to me, for the opportunity I have had to serve them. I have had a perfectly corking time."
That is one reason why I like President Roosevelt, and why the American people like him: he thoroughly enjoys his work. And that is one reason why his work is of the kind that can be enjoyed by him and by the rest of us.
Theodore Roosevelt has learned a lesson that every worker needs to learn if he is to amount to anything. There is no recreation to be compared with work that has become play. There is no achievement that is to be compared to the results of such work.
The man that goes to his task with a sour face soon has a plenty of sour-faced critics to keep him company. He does not value the chance to work, and speedily it happens that no one values the chance to have him do the work. But the man that thanks folks for his job finds people thanking him for doing it and asking him to keep on doing it.
"'A perfectly corking time'—how very undignified for a President to say such a thing!" and Miss Prim and Mr. Prim turn up their severe noses.
To be sure, Roosevelt is a boy still, for all he is so much of a man; and that, again, is a reason why I like him and why the American people like him. He works like a man and he enjoys life like a boy— verily, that is a combination worth having, in a President or a private citizen. That President Roosevelt taught it—or sufficed to teach it—to so many Americans should be set down as one of the chief accomplishments of his administration.
"There's Action in It."
A young man in Pittsburg was trying to put a pistol into his hip-pocket when it exploded. The police got hold of him at once, and began an investigation which led to his confessing that he was the author of a series of outrages that had alarmed a whole section of the city for a few weeks before. He had robbed two stores and had "held up" several pedestrians; and he was planning a far more extensive "job."
He was a college graduate, and was asked what had led him to take up such a miserable mode of existence. The reason he gave affords much food for thought. "The life of a burglar appealed to me," he said; "there's action in it."
Brothers of the church, what we need before everything else is to put action into our Christianity.
We need in all our church-work the dash, the vim, the go of a dime novel.
We need the ardor of a detective hunt. We need the gusto of the devil, his ardor, his zest. That is all we can copy from him, but there is no reason why we should not copy the one quality that gives him his power.
Magnetic Workers.
Great progress has been made in the use of large electromagnets at the end of cranes, to take the place of the cumbrous chains and ropes with which the heavy object to be lifted is usually attached to the hook of the crane.
That operation consumes valuable time, and requires a number of workmen on the ground. If an electromagnet, however, is in use, the crane is simply swung over the object to be raised, the magnet is lowered upon it, the current of electricity is switched on, the crane hoists away, and when the object has been moved to the desired location, the current is switched off, and the magnet falls loose.
Hot material may thus be handled without discomfort. A number of iron plates may be taken up at once, and, by quickly opening and shutting the switch, may be dropped, one at a time, wherever they are needed. These magnets will lift nineteen times their own weight.
Now for the application.
You have heard of magnetic speakers; wouldn't you like to be a magnetic worker?
Not one that must be trussed up to his work, "tied down to it," rather, hung in chains, with a tedious bother and much fuss.
But one that, as soon as a bit of work to be done comes in sight, leaps upon it with electric energy, becomes one with it, and soars aloft like an eagle with his prey!
A liking for one's work—that is the secret, I guess. That is the electricity that gives power to the magnet that swings the task.
And may I never lose my appetite for work.
Why the Gas Went Out.
A lecture was being delivered at our college in Ohio. The audience was a large and interested one, for the speaker was Professor Venable, a well-known Ohio historian, the author of a famous poem, "The Teacher's Dream." I am sorry to say I remember nothing about the lecture, except one incident which was an interruption of it.
Professor Venable had come to that part of his lecture where he introduces "The Teacher's Dream," and he was reciting it with great effect. He was picturing the scene in the schoolroom as the twilight gathered around the weary teacher and his head sunk in slumber, when—the lights all went out! It fitted into the poem as beautifully as if it had been designed—as appropriately as the sudden eclipse of the electric light at one of our Christian Endeavor conventions just as Dr. Hill was reciting "The Star-Spangled Banner," and was repeating the words, "O say, can you see?" It came in so pat that Professor Venable went on quietly with his recitation, and finished it and his lecture undisturbed; for by the time his teacher woke up, lights had been brought in.
That trick was played more than once, I am sorry to say, by the bad boys of our college. It was an easy and cheap trick. All they had to do was to go down cellar, pry open a joint of the gas-pipe, blow in a bubble of air, and close the joint again When—some time afterward—that bubble of air reached the lecture room above, it broke the connection of flame in every gas-jet, and the room was at once plunged in darkness, while the still escaping gas added its choking poison to the general confusion. It was, as I say, a low, cheap trick, and was stopped only when the faculty kept a goodly supply of kerosene lamps burning at the lectures in addition to the gas. There was no fun in it then.
These happenings of my school days have made clear to me many an account of asphyxiation in hotels and private houses. The gas is left burning in a close sleeping-room. A bubble of air gets some way in the pipe comes quietly along, about midnight puts out the light, and the sleeper is poisoned with the unconsumed gas.
Moral: turn off the gas, and open your windows!
There is another little moral for the spiritual life: do not trust your enthusiasm to keep burning by itself. It is easy, for example, to light at some great convention the flame of your religious zeal. You go home all afire with ardor for religious service. Church work, prayer-meeting work, Sunday-school work, receive your vigorous assistance. And you go at it so energetically, and you are so successful, and you enjoy it so much, that you think the zeal will last forever without any care to keep it up.
But—the first thing you know—along comes an air bubble and puts out the light. You may be asleep when it happens, and not know it. You may slumber on, drawing in poison at every breath. Many a religious life has died from an extinguished enthusiasm.
So keep your enthusiasm lighted! You know how it was set on fire in the first place—often repeat the operation. Read the books, associate with the friends, attend the meetings, cultivate the thoughts and the associations, that will perpetuate your zeal. Do not expect any part of your spiritual life to run itself. Watch your light, and keep it burning.
Flinging Forth the Soul.
In many games of athletic skill success is gained by no ability more than by the power of the player to put his whole body back of the stroke or the throw. It is thus in the familiar game of quoits. If the player's entire frame is, as it were, flung out over the course with the quoit, the quoit will go straight to the peg and very probably make a "ringer." But if even an inch or two of muscle holds back, the quoit is twisted and falls far from its goal. It is the same with golf, with tennis, with baseball, and with many another sport.
The spiritual analogy is important. If we would succeed in what we say or do for Christ, the word or the deed alone is never enough. We must manage to put our whole soul into it. We must deliver ourselves with the speech or the action; or it will not hit the mark. Words are common, deeds are plentiful; but spirit-impelled words and deeds are not often found, and they are always victorious.
Why They Shone.
"Why do your dishes always shine so brightly?" one woman of our acquaintance asked another. The second woman, a housekeeper of skill, answered briefly, "Plenty of soap and hot water." The inquirer, as she knew well, was in the habit of washing her dishes slovenly, in lukewarm water with only a dash of soap.
The principle applies to more than dishes. All our tasks are dingy and dull if performed in a limp and lax fashion. All of them shine brightly if we put into them lots of hot water and soap, lots of vim and good cheer. There is no secret about sparkling work. We can all be brilliant in this regard, though we may have no atom of genius.