Hot Halos.
In addressing a large meeting of his fellow alumni of Brown University in Boston, Charles E. Hughes once said: "There is nothing in office except the work you do. The distinction is a mockery to those who enjoy it. The halo is a little hot. There are times when you would just like to take it off and rest your head, times when you would like to withdraw from public gaze, from public demands, from public criticisms, and just be an individual. But, after all, the one rule, according to my philosophy, has been to do what is put up to you to do as well as you know how, and let the rest take care of itself."
There is indeed a great deal of hero-worship in this country. Presidents, vice-presidents, members of the cabinet, governors, senators, judges, generals, famous authors, millionaires -such men are attended by crowds, their doings are chronicled in the papers, men hang upon their words. In America every man has a vast opportunity for influence, and those that have attained prominence are far more powerful than in most other nations of the globe. We Americans know how to make halos.
Yes, and we know how to make them hot! Hot with this very thing, this incessant attendance upon our great men, prying into the least details of their daily life, and publishing abroad their least utterance. Hot with fulsome praise. Hot with hostile suspicion. Hot with complaints. Hot with slanders. Hot with misrepresentations. Hot with persecutions. Hot with sarcasm. Hot with ridicule. There are so many ways of heating up a halo!
Perhaps the two tendencies balance each other. Perhaps, since we have the first, it is well that we also have the second. But if I were a public man (and I thank heaven that I am not!) I think I could get along with a very little halo, if I were allowed to control its temperature myself!
"Keep Dark."
The electric searchlight in war will soon be a thing of the past. One of the contrivances that does away with it is the following:
From a gun of special construction shells containing calcium carbide are fired. These shells, when they hit the water, go under, but at once come to the surface again. In the dip, however, water gets into the shell through a tube provided for the purpose, and the action of the water upon the calcium carbide makes the powerful acetylene light. Every shell will produce a light of three thousand candle power, and will burn for three hours.
The beauty of the arrangement is that it gives no clue to the position of the ship that fired the shell, while the object aimed at is thrown into a brilliant glare. When a searchlight is used, it can at once, of course, be traced to its source.
I like that plan, and it gives me a fine hint for my living. I should like to illumine, if only a little, the dark waters of life around me. And I should like to do it while myself keeping in the dark.
There are many whose chief desire seems to be to "get into the limelight" and stay there. They do not care so much about throwing the limelight into the dark places of the world, but they want it thrown on them. To be sure, in that case the light is quite likely to strike a dark place; but they do not think so.
I recognize that as a dangerous procedure. If anything I do appears worthwhile to any mortal, I am profoundly grateful; but heaven forbid that men begin to investigate the doer! My heart and my life are open to the eye of God, and I ought to be willing that they should be open to the eye of men; but I am not so sure of men's sympathy and compassion and forgiveness as of God's. Too well do I know the wisdom of keeping in the dark!
And there is a duty in it, too, as well as a prudence. Illumination is needed for the waves and not for the ship, for life and truth and not for men. We must put ourselves back of our message, or it will have no force; and if we put ourselves beside our message, it will have no force then, either. Let a man's personality be the gun which projects the acetylene shell, and let it be projected so finely far that the man will be left in the dark!