New Uses for Folks.
Glass, the brittle substance, is used nowadays for most substantial purposes. Streets are paved with glass blocks, which are cheaper than stone and far more durable. Telegraph poles are made of glass, and cannot be weathered, or eaten by boring insects. Dresses made of crystal thread look like silk. From glass also are made curtains, carpets, mantelpieces, and many other surprising articles. Indeed, glass is likely to prove as multifarious in its uses as paper, from which so many articles are now made, from drinking-cups to car-wheels.
The truth is that the chemists, physicists, and inventors are only at the edge of this wonderfully useful world. Every element furnishes a practically unexplored continent of possibilities. We may yet be printing our newspapers on sheets of aluminum, and sleeping on beds of asbestos. Our coins may yet be made of clay and our bottles of wool.
Would that we were as ingenious and enterprising in our use of the human material as these men of science are in the use of inanimate matter! All around us are discoveries of ability, and beauty of character, waiting for someone to make them. Somewhere among our friends and acquaintances is undeveloped power that might bless the entire world.
Such a discovery was Moody. Another was Gough. Another was that wonderful singer, Louisa McCuin, who was discovered working, unknown, in a laundry.
Some souls of power and beauty are their own Columbuses. They cannot be hidden. Edison could not help inventing. Miss Willard discovered herself, and so did John Howard and Florence Nightingale and Clara Barton. But most of us need to be stirred into developing activity by kindly summons from others.
Ah, it is grand to discover a new continent, or a new mineral, or a new star; but is it not far grander to discover a new soul?