Saved by Their Cargo.
A schooner that came into Boston harbor once was a floating—though barely floating—parable. A tug had found her waterlogged and about to sink. She was towed safely through Boston Bay and tied to the wharf.
When the schooner was picked up by the tug, the schooner's crew of nine men was camped upon the cargo, and this cargo alone saved them from drowning. The cargo consisted of lumber piled upon the deck, and as the boat sank the sailors climbed up on the boards. As it was, they were constantly drenched by the waves that swept over them, and had suffered much from those and from the cold.
From this incident on the Atlantic Ocean I get a useful hint for my voyage upon the stormy seas of life. It is this: Carry a full cargo, and heap it high! A well-stocked head and well-balanced mind, lots of information about all sorts of subjects, many acquaintances, wide experience, deep thinking, hearty living-all of this makes up a cargo that heaps the decks high with freightage. And if it is tightly bound together so that the rolling of the ship and the dashing of the billows will not shake it off, then, though the boat sink deep in the water, I can ride to port on the top of the cargo!
Of course I do not intend that the boat shall become waterlogged; but even if not a seam starts, I choose to reach port with a heaped-up cargo.
Fruit Above and Below.
A well-known journal is responsible for the statement that a tomato shoot has been grafted on a potato sprout, the result being eleven potatoes underground and eleven tomatoes on its branches. Whatever may be the truth regarding that horticultural wonder (and certainly Luther Burbank has produced results as surprising), the human plant may be expected to do quite as well. Body, mind, and spirit, the three components of our nature, all should bring forth fruit to the glory of our Maker. Our lower faculties should be at work no less than our higher faculties, all doing their best. The Kingdom of God needs fine singing of hymns. It also needs fine sweeping of floors.
Live in the Open.
All users of automobiles have learned, or should learn, the dangerous character of the fumes given off while the engine is running. More than one man has kept the engine going in a closed garage, and, hours later, has been found there, suffocated by these deadly gases. If one must keep the engine running in the garage, the big door should be wide open, that the waste products of gasoline combustion may get into the outer air as speedily as possible.
In all our work it is best to keep in the open air, literally, when we can, and always spiritually. All toil has waste products—the gas of weariness, the gas of fretfulness, the gas of worry, the gas of gloom. Shut yourself in with your own life, and soul asphyxiation is the sure result. Get out into the large, free spaces of human interests and God's eternal plans! There is no other health for the soul.
Why My Trees Would Not Grow.
I am the happy possessor of a summer home by the sea. It is right on the shore, on an exposed bluff, swept by all the winds of the Atlantic, and the problem of making things grow on the grounds around it is a difficult one.
Having succeeded fairly well with grass, I turned my attention to trees.
The country back of me is crowded with the most delightful pines and cedars and deciduous bushes—the American holly, the bayberry and the like. I was covetous of them for close quarters; but when I declared my intention of transplanting them from the woods, the wiseacres all shook their heads. "They won't grow," they asserted. "You will have just your trouble for your pains."
I smiled egotistically at their gloomy prophecies, and fancied the triumphant bower in which I should dwell a few summers thereafter, to their confusion and envy. I would be a horticultural Columbus. If these beautiful things grew so luxuriantly in the woods, why should they not grow a few hundred feet in front of the woods in the splendid soil and with the splendid care that I would give them? That they would not was nothing but a superstition.
Therefore I hired my Portuguese with a horse and cart and set them to work. What fun it was, ranging through the uplands and tying strips of white cloth to this and that lovely specimen, thus claiming it for my very own! And as the green beauties came down the road, heaped up in the cart, I felt as if I were annexing a forest to my private domain.
When I got through, my little yard was dotted with perfect pines and cedars, young oaks and wild cherries, beach plums and bayberries and hollies. I flattered myself that not even a landscape gardener could have packed more into the space; indeed, probably a landscape gardener would have indignantly taken half of them out of the space. "But," said I to my wife, "perhaps some of them will not live, and then there will be none too many." In my heart, however, I was confident that every one of them would live.
But, alas! during the winter disquieting rumors came to me, as several of my friends visited our summer abode and brought back word of the condition of affairs there. My trees were dead, every one of them, they declared.
I refused to believe it. "Of course, the leaves are dead," I replied; "but wait till spring, and my place will be a paradise of green."
Spring came, but greenness did not come with it to my transplanted trees. Summer came, but still they were brown and dead. I called in an expert, a nurseryman. He shook his head at the dispiriting array, twenty-five gaunt skeletons of trees; he took out his pocketknife, and cut off bits of the wood here and there.
"Dead!" was his solemn verdict. "Dead! Every one of 'em!"
Then he told me about his own experience; how he had transplanted carefully more than three hundred evergreens from the woods, tended them with all painstaking, and yet got only three or four live trees out of the lot.
"The reason," he said, "is this. You see, the wild trees, growing in rocky ground, have no mass of little rootlets, but only one or two long roots."
Yes, I had noticed that.
"And so they cannot, when transplanted, get into touch in their new quarters. They can't reach out and get nourishment. They haven't the outfit for transplanting. Now I can give you from my nursery," he went on to suggest, "evergreens raised from the seed in fine, rich ground. They have great masses of rootlets, and I send them to you with the original earth all around them. I will warrant them to grow, but the wild trees from the woods are sure to die."
So I gave him an order, had the Portuguese come and cart off my failures, and now I am waiting for the fall rains, when I shall make my second, and, I doubt not, my successful planting.
This experience has set me to thinking about the superiority of the full-rooted life, the multiple-contact life, as against the life that may be strong and beautiful, but along only one line, carried on only one idea, the life of narrow sympathies, of a single inspiration.
Like the wild pine, the one-ideaed life is vigorous and stout while left to itself, in the solitary environment in which it has grown up; but it collapses when brought out of the wilderness to live among men. It is battered by the wind, perplexed by the light, unable to draw nutriment from the alien soil. It is a hermit, and not a citizen of the world.
Broad culture is an advantage for one's own pleasure, but even more for one's effectiveness. New situations are inevitable, if one gets out into the moving world. The new situations cannot be met without the active sympathy, the keen intelligence, the profound humility and the ready adaptation which culture gives. We must have long and strong roots for anchorage, but it is equally necessary to have delicate and many roots for nourishment. Thus only, in all the transplantings of our lives, can we be like the trees of the Lord, which are full of sap.
Lifting the Low-Water Limit.
They had been having a disagreeable time on the shores of the lovely Lake Winnepesaukee in New Hampshire. The seasons had been unusually dry for two or three years, and less water than usual had flowed into the lake. Furthermore, the lessees of water privileges around the lake had drawn off the full amount of water to which they had been entitled. The result was that the banks became mud flats, the boat landings were left high and dry, and the summer colonists found much of their vacation enjoyment spoiled.
But all this was remedied by an act of the legislature raising the low-water mark twenty-one inches above the former one. Now, when the water in the lake sinks to the new minimum, no manufacturer is allowed to draw it off. As this minimum is within the reasonable prospect of supply from the incoming streams, the shores of that beautiful sheet of water will be preserved fresh and charming as ever.
Such a condition of affairs as those summer colonists passed through comes to almost every life. We use up the water of life too fast. We work too hard. The mills grind too fast. Perhaps the year is dry with us. Fortune does not favor us, sickness may come, or failure and disappointment.
Then our life banks yawn muddily above the receding water. Then the grim ugliness of poverty or old age or invalidism stares us in the face. Beauty and gayety have gone, and sullen despair has taken their place. It is hard even to launch the boat of our faith to ferry us over our shrunken fortunes.
Is there such a thing as raising the low-water mark of our soul?
There certainly is! And it is easier on the lake of life than on Lake Winnepesaukee.
Here also the way out is by law, and there is no need to pass a new law, for the laws already existing are ample. They are the laws of God.
Some of these are the laws of health. We have been burning the candle at both ends. We have neglected exercise and recreation and rest and sleep. We have not given our food a chance to digest. We have abused the marvelous instruments given us with which to do our work. We have known the laws of health, but have deliberately disregarded them. And we have fooled ourselves by pleas of necessity, knowing that those pleas were false.
Some of these laws are the laws of kindness. We have been engrossed in our own work, our own pleasure, our own progress and gains and selfish interest. We have forgotten those nearest to us and dearest to us. We have idolized our own existence. We have been seeking our own life, and so have lost it.
Some of these laws are the laws of worship. Of course, in forgetting our friends we have forgotten God. Prayer has been neglected. The Bible has remained closed. The prayer meeting and the church service have not seen us, or they have seen only our bodies, our minds being far from them. We have been drawing away the waters of our life into worldly mill races, the race for wealth or fame or pleasure, and we have forgotten the skies and the stars.
We do not need new laws, then, but only to obey the good old laws. ‘We need to stop our overwork and our overplay. We need to topple from its pedestal the idol of self. We need to limit severely and strictly the amount of time and strength and thought that we will allow to worldly pursuits and selfish interests. We need to clear out the channels of the springs of life. We need to take a vacation, to get close to the trees and the grass and the clouds. We need to get close to people, by entering upon many activities of living service; and we need to get close to God in long periods of daily Bible-reading and meditation and prayer.
It will not be long, then, before the hills will become our help, and their waters will pour by a thousand rippling streams into our muddy basin, and the banks will fill with an abundant tide of life and health and beauty and joy. Let us take care this time that the lake does not henceforth get down to the mud.