The Haughty Mucilage.
The Mucilage was, as the boys say, “stuck on himself." He thought he was quite as important as the Paperweight, the Scissors, and even the Ink-bottle and the Fountain-pen.
“But such menial work as my master sets me to doing!" he grumbled one day. “Sticking old stamps on to envelopes, pasting receipted bills into a big book, and making a scrap-book of newspaper items! Now if he would use me on poems, for instance, or something similarly refined, I should be in my element. I am made for something better than old stamps, and I won't do such work any longer. I'll rebel!"
The next work of the sort the writer tried to do with the Mucilage was a failure. The Mucilage refused to stick and acted like so much water. The writer was a patient man and made several trials, but all were in vain. Thereupon the writer threw the Mucilage away and got a new bottle.
Moral: You'll never get better work to do by failing to do your present work.
Judases.
“This is a terrible ending of a misspent life. I have betrayed every trust imposed in me."
So wrote a man, and after writing it he took poison and died. He was thirty-two years old, a surgeon in the United States service, and friends say that overwork and worry were the cause of the suicide.
However that may be, the sad statement he left behind him is true of many a life that is lived on, after a fashion, and does not come to the tragic and sinful end of self-murder. Judas Iscariot is not the only Judas. There are thousands and millions more.
Every man who, like this suicide in his confession, has betrayed the trusts that are placed in his care is a Judas. In proving false to the work which should be done for Christ he has proved false to Christ.
Judas committed suicide. Every one of his followers is also a suicide, murdering his own soul.
Micaceous Moralizing.
I have been learning something of the precariousness of mica-mining. You know what mica is—those thin sheets of tough, translucent mineral that are inserted in stove doors and make the chimneys for our Welsbach burners. When it comes from the mine, it looks like anything rather than the smooth, glittering, beautiful substance with which we are familiar. It comes out in great, rough blocks, the edges rotten and crumbling. Mica breaks down under the frost and rain, and this worthless outer mass must be trimmed away until the more solid material is found.
But even then the difficulties are only in their beginning. The mineral may be split into wonderfully thin sheets, as thin as thin paper; but it is essential that these sheets be even, smooth, large, pure, and transparent, or else translucent. And few of them are all this.
Often they are specked with black bits of garnet or oxide of iron. Often they are streaked with iron rust. Often they are transversely laminated, so that on being split they fall into slivers rather than sheets. Often they are ribbed, corrugated. Often they split into wedge-shaped sheets, thicker at one side than at the other. Each of these defects renders the mica worthless.
O my soul, do even work! Take warning from Master Mica! How often your work is spotted, specked, wrinkled, patchwork rather than whole sheets. How seldom is it clear and clean, smooth and even, regular and perfect, in large sheets and not all cut up into worthless strips. How often you must disappoint the Great Architect, as He comes to your mine for His building. I'm ashamed of you, my soul! Yes, I'm ashamed of you!
Hands and Character.
You have a pretty face. Well, what of it? You are not to be credited with it, are you? The bright eye, the fair skin, the pink cheek, the red lip, the even teeth, were not of your contriving, were they? No pride in all the world is quite so silly as pride in a pretty face. You have a right to be glad of it, to be sure; but conceited over it—how absurd!
It is a little different with the hands. They are more of your own creation than your face. They express your character far more than regularity of features and fineness of complexion.
I am thinking of people in the ordinary walks of life, people that cannot afford manicures. For such people to have white hands, with finger-tips daintily cared for, means something. It means thoughtfulness and patience and painstaking. It means a love of beauty and a sense of neatness and order. It means thoroughness, and a desire to be pure and lovely through and through, and not merely in the face that all men see.
Hands that spend the day in useful work, that come in constant contact with the roughness of the world, and yet maintain their beauty, thereby testify to skill and practical wisdom and the artistic soul. Their owners would furnish the world something pleasant to look upon and touch and have to do with.
There is so much careless disregard of this matter that I sometimes think that ministers ought to preach about it. It Is so common to see pretty, bright faces flashing through the world above hands that are actually repulsive with their neglect and lack of cleanliness. I believe that this is a discord most frequently to be found in men and women alike, and it is as annoying in one as in the other.
In all of this I am speaking literally, with a jealous regard for this most wonderful tool ever fashioned, this most expressive portion of the human frame; but also I am speaking in a figure.
For the hand may symbolize all those elements of human life that are within your own control, and yet are often scorned just because there are other elements more splendid to the eye that are determined for us by causes outside our volition. We may not be rich, but we can always be generous. We may not be a genius, but we can always be faithful. We may not be witty, but we can always be kind. We may not be commanding, but we can always be helpful. We may not be learned, but we can become wise. The first of each couple is the face, the second is the hand.
Now let me have regard henceforth for what God has put within my power. Let me make the most of that, for myself and others. And in the beauty and the usefulness and the charm of that let me find my satisfaction.