Something About Fillers.
Several times I have set out to fill my fountain pen, and found I couldn't. You may be as wise as Solomon (which I am not—quite), but you can't fill a fountain pen without a filler; and it must be a filler that will work.
On those occasions I have gone to my filler and discovered that the rubber was so deteriorated that no elasticity was left in it. Or, perhaps,—a matter quite as serious,—a hole had developed in the bulb, and it couldn't suck up the ink. I insert the glass tube in the ink bottle. I squeeze the rubber end vigorously. No use. The filler is as empty as when I began.
You can't pour ink into a fountain pen; that is, not without untoward results. An empty fountain pen calls for a filler, and for the only sort of filler that will meet the need,—a fountain-pen filler. There are fillers that are stoppers of bottles of fountain-pen ink. There are behemoth fillers, glorious affairs, so big in the bulb that they fill a pen with a single squeeze. But these also get old and cracked.
The success of a filler depends upon a vacuum. No filler will work unless it can empty itself, even of air. It must be empty before it can be filled, and it must be filled before it can fill the pen. If there is a crack so that the air can get in, no vacuum can be formed. If the rubber will not rebound from the squeeze, no vacuum can be formed. And no vacuum, no ink.
We have arrived, you see, at a very pretty moral. It is the humble spirit that learns. Empty yourself, if you would be filled. And it is the filled mind that alone can teach. Oh, so much in life depends upon humility! In the last analysis, does not everything depend upon it?
Bending Cathedrals.
It was in Stratford. I was visiting that central spot of the world's literary history, the church in which lies the dust of William Shakespeare. A very courteous and intelligent young man, connected with the church, was kindly pointing out the features of special interest, and among them he directed my attention to a matter new to me, though doubtless old enough to any student of architecture.
"Look," he said, "along the line of the pillars of the nave, up into the choir. Do you notice anything?"
Yes, I did. The line was noticeably bent, to the left.
"Now pass to the other side, and look."
I did, and saw the same thing, the twist being again conspicuous, and also to the left.
"It was a beautiful thought of the ancient monks," my guide explained. "They built their churches in the form of the cross, and they bent them thus to remind themselves of Christ's drooping form, as He hung upon the sacred tree."
It was indeed a beautiful thought. I have since seen it illustrated in several cathedrals, and it seemed to me the finest feature of each of them.
It is an illustration of that departure from symmetry which is often the truest beauty. It shows how the purpose of a thing should dominate its form. And it is a very lovely and appealing suggestion of the tendency that every Christian life should show, an eager willingness to bend from the way of pleasure, and elegance, and worldly success, if need be, that it may come into fellowship with Christ and enter into the spirit of the cross.