Inches and Maturity.
One day a boy seventeen years old was brought into a Boston court. He was six feet, three inches tall, and he weighed 180 pounds. His mother was not able to control this monster of a child, and brought him into court for his stubbornness and disobedience. The judge gave him a lecture and placed him on probation.
What makes a child a child? Evidently not size. Evidently, too, not age, for some of the most childish persons I know are men much nearer sixty than six. Yes, and not education, for other childish persons have learned degrees at the ends of their names.
“When I became a man," said Paul, "I put away childish things." That is the only way out of childishness.
A Sound Bank Closed up.
A savings bank in Maine was closed on the order of the State bank examiner.
The institution was entirely sound. There was no lack of confidence in its officers. The bank had been paying dividends regularly. Why, then, was it closed?
Because it had not been growing. It had merely been standing still. Indeed, relatively to the banks around it, this bank had been retrograding. It had lost in deposits, when the amount was not stationary. Its dividend was half a cent less than that of other banks. On the whole, it was felt that this bank, under the conditions of strong competition that obtained, was not strong enough to do business safely; and therefore it was closed up.
I thought, when I read of the procedure, "Lucky for some men I know that there are no character examiners, armed with similar power to close up a life!"
For many a life, while stanchly honest, while commanding people's confidence, and, in a mild way, their liking, is standing stock still while the world of lives whirls by it. Such a life is not laying in new stores of information or giving out increasing dividends of helpfulness. It drones along, opens up for work at nine, closes at three, and sends a daily report to the clearinghouse; but the clearing-house balance is always against it.
On second thoughts, I suppose there is just such an Examiner of Lives. And His decisions are always just.
Fattening an Oyster.
Of all the industries, oyster-raising has seemed to me the most subject to chance. It is so much in the dark. You dump your seed oysters overboard into the bay. You leave them alone on the bottom. After awhile you come back, grope around down below with a sort of double rake, and bring up whatever fate sends you, oysters or mud.
But I suppose if I knew more about it the element of chance would disappear, and I should see how the oyster-farmer knows his business and works according to the well-understood laws of it quite as securely and confidently as the land farmer.
For instance, I have been reading how they fatten oysters. The pleasing bivalves feed on little plants called diatoms. Now your scientific oyster-farmer takes his microscope, takes a certain portion of water, and counts the diatoms in it. If they are too few, he adds to the water a certain kind of fertilizer that diatoms eat. Promptly the tiny plants begin to multiply, and promptly also the oysters begin to grow fat. It is only a question of knowing just what to do, and doing it. A fat oyster is no longer a product of chance.
Well—oysters and men,—they are not so different, after all! Each has the kind of food he will take, and can be nourished by. If you want to build up a man in the true life, find out what his natural food is, and feed it to him. Don't try to raise cows on diatoms or oysters on hay. Don't say, "Oysters ought to like hay, and if I persist in laying it before them, chopped fine, by and by they will learn what is good for them." Study your oyster, and "feed it with food convenient for it."
Frozen Mortar.
Eight "flat" houses were laid flat one Sunday in New York. They collapsed without warning. Every day the building inspector had reported those houses as being in first-class condition. That inspector has come to grief, but too late to save the houses. Moreover, nine other apartment houses built at the same time and practically completed had to come down at once.
And why? Why all this waste? why this danger to human life?
Frozen mortar.
The contractors could not wait for warm weather. In defiance of the law, which absolutely forbids building when the weather is cold enough to freeze mortar, they pushed ahead, though every day the thermometer was below the danger point. And that was the result. The mortar did not grip the bricks, and the buildings crumbled.
Let me remember this the next time I am in a hurry about my life building. Am I ready for this important task, that ambitious achievement? Have I prepared myself for it? Are brain and heart all ready? Have I strength enough to carry it through? Have I ever a surplus of all these, to meet the unexpected hindrances that are sure to arise?
If not, the mortar is stiff.
Better wait.
Diamond Trees.
Do you know what a "diamond tree” is? Perhaps it is as well that you do not, though it is a tree on which diamonds grow big.
Thus:
The jeweler (not any jeweler, of course; only the rogue jeweler) receives a diamond ring to be mended. He takes out the big central diamond and inserts another, just a wee bit smaller. You couldn't tell the difference, and the stone on his diamond tree has grown twenty dollars' worth.
Next day, someone else brings in a diamond breastpin. The central stone is a little larger than the stone on the diamond tree, and is promptly exchanged for it. The diamond on the tree has grown thirty dollars' worth, this time.
And so on. You see how it works.
There are many branches on the tree, and many stones may be growing simultaneously.
Outrageous, isn't it? Moral: Always deal with honest jewelers.
But there is a diamond tree that I should like to own, and tend. On it those diamonds of beautiful thoughts and deeds grow larger and larger from day to day.
Thus:
You hear a fine sentiment, or you read it. You think it over, and by and by you introduce it into conversation or repeat it at the prayer meeting. You will perceive that it has grown in power over your life. Repeat it again; bigger yet. Sometimes a very little thought, treated thus, will influence for noble ends an entire life; nay, a thousand lives.
And it is the same way with beautiful deeds.
If you don't possess this sort of diamond tree, go to the nursery, and obtain one. While you are about it, get a whole grove of them!
When Are You Old?
A wise man has put on his specs, and twisted down the corners of his mouth, and written it out in a book: "On the average a human being stops his mental growth at almost thirty."
"On the average"—bless him for that! That gives me a chance.
For I am past thirty—dear me, yes! Thirty—why, thirty is a boy, a mere boy! And to stop one's mental growth at almost thirty! "On the average." Deliver me from the average.
Come to think, that accounts for something. It accounts for the failure of some folks I know,-folks all the way from fifteen to fifty, who have come to "know it all." They have "stopped their mental growth." There is no other way to feel that you know it all; for, of course, if you are still studying and learning, you will see oceans of knowledge ahead of you still unexplored.
Some of these folks, I say, are only fifteen. "On the average," you know; and if some keep on growing mentally far above thirty, some must stop growing mentally far below thirty.
That accounts, too, for some of the dismissals from situations. Men in them have stopped growing mentally. Accounts for the "dead line" in all occupations. It is a dead line, to stop growing.
Well, there's no compulsion about it; I'm glad of that. And I want to do my part to lift that miserable average just a little above thirty.
Dry Farming.
Every American should be greatly interested in the wonderful advance of possibilities for the West owing to the discovery that much of the land heretofore thought to be arid can be farmed with great profit without irrigation. By "dry farming" the wheat belt has already been moved into eastern Colorado fairly to the foot of the Rockies, and where the line will stop no one can predict. These Colorado dry lands, that had been thought useless except for a little grazing, produced last year an average of twenty-five bushels of wheat to the acre, thus leading the entire country.
The steam plow is the chief factor in the miracle. It will plow, pack, harrow, and seed thirty or forty acres a day, at a cost, including seed, of less than two dollars an acre. The plowing and seeding are one operation, so that there is no chance for the ground to lose what moisture is in it. Moreover, the modern farmer drives his weeder and harrow without compunction through his growing wheat, not minding if he does destroy some of the stalks, knowing how necessary it is to preserve the moisture by breaking up the soil. It is believed that if the land is thus cultivated, at least five hundred million acres of land west of the Missouri River, that have been considered arid and barren, may be transformed without irrigation into enormously productive wheat fields.
I want to do this!
Not in Colorado, but right in my own town.
Not in soil, but in life.
For I have a notion that no heart is altogether hardened in sin.
And I have an idea that no fortune is altogether arid and barren.
And I believe that the right kind of farming will make even the worst spiritual desert blossom as the rose, and the most desolate lot bloom like the Garden of Eden.
There is a Master Farmer.
Mary, at the sepulcher, thought He was the gardener.
He is the Gardener, but His field,
His garden, is the world.
I will go to school to Him.
Weight While You Wait.
The Boston post-office is laughing over the experience of one of its examiners who has been testing candidates for clerkships in that big institution. One man who was examined weighed only 112 pounds. Now 125 pounds was at that time (I believe the rule has since been changed) the least that a post-office clerk might weigh. If a man weighed less than that, he was not considered strong enough for the work. According to custom, the candidate was given thirty days in which to increase his weight the necessary thirteen pounds.
Up he popped at the end of the month, and the scales showed that he now weighed 127½ pounds. That looked like a miracle. The examiner's suspicions were aroused. He viewed the applicant closely. He did not appear plump. He did not look like a man that was "heavy for his size." Under the circumstances, the man was told to take off his clothes.
This being done, lo! ten strips of lead were found bound about his manly form. Some of them were six inches long, some of them were two feet long. Altogether they weighed 154 pounds. The miracle was explained, and the candidate was dismissed.
When I read that story, I thought at once of the many short cuts to knowledge that so abound nowadays. "German in Six Weeks!" “Shorthand in Ten Easy Lessons!" “Three Months in our Business College and a Position is Assured!" “The Universal Sage, or, All Knowledge Condensed into a Vest-Pocket Volume for Handy Reference!" That is the way some of the promises read.
Now it is good to realize that you cannot get weight "while you wait." Strips of lead are easily obtained and quickly attached, but they are not weight. The world has many examiners, keen of wit and shrewd of eye. One or another of them is sure to find you out. Then come confusion and disgrace.
It is useless to think of it; there is only one way to gain weight, and that is by proper eating, proper exercise, and proper sleep. And there is only one way to gain mental and spiritual weight, and that is by proper brain food and heart food, digested by thought and action. It is a slow process. It is carried on "while you wait," to be sure, but the wait is, oh, how long!
It pays, however. It is the open sesame to every position worth having in all the world.
Acetylene Christians.
They have been making some interesting experiments on the effect of light on the growth of plants. For three months a set of plants in a hothouse was exposed to sunlight and darkness in the usual way, and another set of the same sorts of plants, of the same age, with exactly the same heat, and with all other conditions the same except light, was exposed during the hours of darkness to the rays of thirty-five candle-power acetylene lamps. These rays were reflected down upon the latter set of plants, so that they enjoyed light through all the twenty-four hours.
The result was that many of the plants on the acetylene side matured just twice as fast as the plants of the same kind that were exposed only to the sun's rays, and then left in darkness during the night. Plants and vegetables kept in the light for twenty-four hours were at the end of the period just twice the size of those not so favored. It seems to be proved that an easy method of forcing vegetable growth is simply to use continuous light.
Now that is the way a Christian should grow spiritually,—just bathe his soul all the time in the Light of the World.
There are dark days in the life of everyone, days of doubt, days of sorrow, days of trial and testing. The midnight comes to all of us, and the cheery sunshine seems a thing of the past.
But there is still the Light of the World! It shines in the darkness as well as in the day. Midnight is to it the same as noon. And we can remain perpetually in its vivifying rays.
There is no excuse for midnight Christianity, or even for twilight Christianity. It should always be high noon with a Christian. We must never let market gardening get ahead of our religion.
Five Thousand Blooms.
I suppose there is no harm in envying a plant, and I certainly do envy a certain chrysanthemum that was exhibited once in a Boston flower show. It was entered by Galen L. Stone, whose first name indicates that he makes a good doctor for flowers. This chrysanthemum had five thousand white blossoms. It stood on a platform measuring forty-nine square feet, and it covered the platform with a beautiful dome of flowers reaching to the very edges. It was a wonderful triumph of horticulture.
I envy that flower because I should like to make just such a showing in my life. I do not like meager results, half a dozen paltry blossoms, a one-sided life. Give me a big cluster of blooms, great masses of accomplishment. Let me branch out in all directions. Let me bloom richly in every direction in which I branch out.
It is a matter of soil, air, sunshine, water, and training. Any good chrysanthemum, with these aids, would produce commensurate results. The meager life most of us are living is meager because we do not give it the right food or the right care. Here goes for the five thousand blooms.