be to anybody. But when he saw the smile of favor focused on me there, and me, I dare say, appearing to bask somewhat in it, the dear old man took alarm. He was apprehensive of the consequences to that youngster. And so, taking me by the hand and wrestling down his natural feelings—he was ready to cry for joy—he said: "Well, Joseph, I hope you'll live to preach a great deal better than that!"—Joseph H. Twitchell.
(506)
Compositions Compared—See Education Not Vicarious.
COMPREHENSIVENESS IN EDUCATION
"What are these boys studying Latin for?"
said an English visitor at a manual-training
school as he looked in upon a class reading
Cæsar.
"What did you study Latin for?" was my illogical but American response. "Why, I am a bachelor of arts?" was his prompt reply, with the air of one who had given a conclusive answer. "Perhaps these boys will be bachelors of arts by and by," I added cheerfully. "Then, what in the world are they in a manual-training school for?" he exclaimed, with almost a sneer at my evident lack of acquaintance with the etiquette of educational values. I tried to explain my theory of an all-round education—and my practise of "putting the whole boy to school"—but he would not be convinced. He could not see the propriety of mixing utility and tool dexterity with culture—Calvin M. Woodward, Science.
(507)
COMPROMISES IN GRAVITIES
All orbits, including the orbits of comets,
are the result of compromises in gravities.
Now you have got to get over the idea that
because one body attracts another strongly it
is likely to draw it smack into it. It doesn't.
I made an apparatus in my laboratory the
other day to show my students about that.
I fixt up a little gun capable of shooting a steel ball quite a distance up an inclined plate of glass. The ball shot upward and then rolled directly back into the muzzle of the gun time after time. That was to show what a comet would do if just merely shot out into space to be uninfluenced by any other heavenly bodies after it got a start.
Then I put a powerful electric magnet under the plate of glass, quite a little distance away from the track of my steel ball. This time when it was shot upward instead of keeping on its straight path or swerving directly into the magnet, as some of my students expected it to do, it shot on past, curving its course toward the magnet, and then finally it swung around the magnet in very much the way the comet is swinging around the sun. On its return course it swung off in a new direction altogether. My students were quite delighted with the oval course taken by the steel ball. It was just such a course as they had seen mapped out for Halley's visitor.—H. Jacoby, New York Times.
be italic too/F2 not ital. elsewhere]
(508)
Compulsion in Religion—See Militant Evangelism.
CONCEIT
There are too many men who make the sentiment of this verse their creed:
This is the burden of my song,
I sing it day and night:
Why are so many always wrong
When I am always right?
(509)
See Comparisons, Apt; Self-flattery.
CONCEIT OF OPINION
When Lord Hardwicke's marriage bill was
in the House of Commons, Fox, afterward
Lord Holland, saying that one clause gave
unheard-of power to parents on the marriage
of minors, proceeded to lay open the chicanery
and jargon of the lawyers, and the
pride of their mufti, and drew a most severe
picture of the Chancellor under the application
of the story of a gentlewoman at Salisbury,
who, having a sore leg, sent for a
country surgeon, who pronounced that it
must be cut off. The gentlewoman, unwilling
to submit to the operation, sent for
another more merciful, who said he could
save her leg without the least operation.
The surgeons conferred. The ignorant one
said: "I know it might be saved, but I have
given my opinion; my character depends
upon it, and we must carry it through." The
leg was cut off. (Text.)—Croake James,
"Curiosities of Law and Lawyers."
(510)
CONCENTRATION
It has been told of a modern astronomer
that one summer night, when he was withdrawing
to his chamber, the brightness
showed a phenomenon. He passed the whole
night in observing it, and when they came
to him early in the morning and found him
in the same attitude, he said, like one who
