Cooling Parts.
Electric fans have added enormously to the comfort of humanity. When we fan ourselves, the exertion makes us hot as fast as the fan makes us cool; but when someone else fans us, especially when the servant is tireless electricity,—ah!
In theaters they have even gone so far as to ice the air, great roomfuls of it at once, and the devotees of the play may easily believe themselves on top of Pike's Peak, surrounded by July snow.
They are going to do that sort of thing more and more, for it is easy and inexpensive. The stores are going to do it next, and we shall see the signs so blissful in August: "Arctic Emporium!" "Blizzard Bazaar!" "The Ice Palace! 42° or less guaranteed!" Then the great office buildings will have to come to it, after the pioneer, the forty-story Cooley Building, has set the pace. Our homes will next become refrigerators, and perhaps even our churches.
But it was not of the literal fact that I wanted to speak.
Brethren, maintain a steady temperature in the soul! Get a bracing spiritual atmosphere even in dog-days! Cool off!
If artificial refrigeration is possible in material affairs, why not in the affairs of the mind? If the summer enervation of the body can be counteracted, why not the enervation of the soul? If they can have cooling plants in theaters, why not in hearts?
An even temper, steady industry, level purposes, no fluctuations of will, 20° below zero to-day, 90° in the shade to-morrow,—this is possible even for the impulsive and the moody. If you are cold and torpid, heat up! If you are relaxed with the heat, wilted, dispirited, brace up! God has furnaces of the soul, but He has also cooling plants, charged with breezes fresh from His seas and mountains. Turn on the current and put yourself in the way of it.
A Safe Average.
A railroad curve is usually laid on the arc of a circle, though recently they have begun to place the rails along parabolic curves. Now of course, as every boy knows, the outer rail must be laid higher than the inner rail, or the train would run off the track in rounding the curve. The sharper the curve, the higher the outer rail.
But also,—and here's the point new to me,—the faster the trains are to run, the higher must be the outer rail. If a curve is laid for a maximum of sixty miles an hour, a train running at seventy miles would shoot off that curve into the ditch. On the other hand, if the curve is laid for an average of fifty miles an hour, then a train going twenty miles an hour on that track would grind the flanges off its wheels.
In other words, to run engines and cars economically and safely, you must keep them pretty steadily at the average rate of speed for which the road was constructed.
Now I understand certain passages in my life. Certain times when I tried to go too fast, and landed in the ditch of a physical breakdown. Certain times when—but no; I never went too slow; no one ever does, now-a-days.
I guess I'll learn for what speed my life-railroad was constructed. Not a hundred miles an hour, I have discovered already. I guess I'll see just how much I should let up on the pace, with cheerful recreation and serene rest. I guess I'll fall into the steady gait God meant for me when He put together the machinery of my body and laid the rails of my circumstances. I may not make a record, but I'll keep on the track, and I'll reach the terminal on schedule time.
Overlying Letters.
The bar typewriter, which is the commonest kind, is able to print one letter on top of another. This is done when an overhasty or clumsy operator depresses the keys without the proper interval between them. The result is that such words are rendered illegible, and must be guessed from their context.
Thus also in making our life-record we are liable, in our hurry and awkwardness, to make one impression on top of another and spoil the sentences we are trying to write.
"Make haste slowly" is a wise old rule, never more needed than to-day. "Without haste, without rest" is Goethe's version. Press the keys swiftly, but with an ordered steadiness. Keep your head, and your fingers. Be zealous, but calm. Seek not only to make a record, but to make a record that can be read.
Twelve-Cylinder Lives.
My automobile has four cylinders. It is not an aristocrat of six cylinders, a nabob of eight, or a super-nabob of twelve; it is just a plain, ordinary, four-cylinder affair. This is the way the four cylinders work.
The cylinder is the part of the engine in which the pistons move back and forth very rapidly, pushing the motor as they move so that it whirls at the rate of perhaps three hundred revolutions a minute. The pistons are caused to move by explosions of a vapor of mixed air and gasoline.
Just after a charge of gas spray, properly mixed with air, has been delivered into the chamber of the cylinder, the piston plunges down on it and thus compresses it. Just as the compression is at the maximum, the electric apparatus delivers a spark in the chamber, and explodes the compressed air and gas vapor, driving the piston back, and turning the motor, which revolves the shaft, which in turn revolves the wheels of the auto mobile. Next the piston returns, driving out the products of the explosion and clearing the chamber for a new charge. Then the piston draws back, the new charge of gas and air enters, the piston returns and compresses it, the spark explodes it, and so the series continues as long as the automobile is running.
If you have followed the course of events, you see that the piston has made four movements-two backward and two forward, though only one of these movements has produced motion in the car. The other movements were to allow the chamber to be charged, to compress the charge, and to drive out the exploded gas and air.
Here now is the use of the four cylinders; for the engine is ingeniously contrived so that while one piston is being driven by the explosion, the second is withdrawing for the charge, the third is compressing the charge, and the fourth is expelling the waste gas and air. Thus, at all times, one of the four cylinders is delivering power to the wheels, and so the explosions are nearly continuous, imitating as well as a four-cylinder gasoline engine can, the steady flow of power from steam expansion or from electricity.
It is plain that the more cylinders you can bring into operation in one cycle of the engine, the more rapidly you will give the impulses of power, and the less jerk will be perceptible in the engine. Hence the value of the six-cylinder, and of the more recent eight-cylinder and twelve-cylinder engines. The more cylinders you have in operation, the less likely are you to stall the engine. The makers of these engines talk of a flow of power, quite as if they were dealing with steam or electricity. There is so little vibration in one of these engines, that while the car is standing still, a lead pencil will stand upright on the mud guard.
The more I think about this matter of cylinders, the more earnestly do I wish my own life to be an affair of eight cylinders or even of twelve cylinders. There is my mental cylinder, doing something all the time, even while I sleep. There is my physical cylinder, my bodily powers, now active, now resting. There is my social cylinder, my intercourse with my friends and acquaintances and business associates. There is my spiritual cylinder, my communion with God. These are the fundamentals of life, just as the four-cylinder engine is the fundamental automobile type.
But how jerkily these four cylinders work in many lives! Long intervals between thinking—real thinking; long intervals between prayers—real praying; long intervals between exercise ½ real exercise; and long intervals between the acts of social intercourse—really helpful association with one's friends. No constant flow of influence, no steady outgoing of self, but, instead, a life of endless jerks, first 'No one thing and then to another, and something always left undone.
This is not what might be, what should be. I can "pray without ceasing." I can keep my body always in good condition. I can have my mind always thought-filled. I always can be kindly and loving and practically helpful. I can so bring to bear all the impulses of my being, that there shall be no jar, no jerk, but life shall flow like the river of God.