- son is that a tragic story hangs about it.
Every one who ever wore it died—Mercedes, Queen Christina, Infanta del Pillar, and others. It is known as "The Ring of Death." (Text.)
(694)
DEATH, UNTIMELY
Louis Albert Banks tells this story of a young girl cut off just after her graduation from school:
And there is her diploma, lying just as
she threw it there, when she came home from
college, but a few days before she was taken
ill. I came up with her to the room, and
she flung the diploma in there with a sort
of girlish glee, and it stuck at an angle
across the compartment of the bookcase.
She closed the door on it and said, "Well,
I'm glad I've got you anyhow!" and it has
never been touched since. Two weeks later,
we went with her over to the cemetery and
laid her beside her father; and there lies
her unused diploma that cost her so much
hard work and that she was so proud to obtain.
(Text.)
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DEATH USUALLY PAINLESS
Sudden and violent death, shocking to the
senses, may not be, probably is not, painful
to the victim. Drowning, hanging, freezing,
shooting, falling from a height, poisoning of
many kinds, beget stupor or numbness of
the nerves which is incompatible with sensation.
Persons who have met with such accidents,
and survived them, testify to this.
Records to this effect are numberless. Death
from fire dismays us; we can scarcely conceive
aught more distressing. In all likelihood,
however, it appears far worse than it
is. Fire probably causes suffocation from
smoke, or insensibility from inhaling flame,
so that the agony we imagine is not felt.
They who have been near their end have experienced
more pain on returning, so to
speak, from their grave, than if they had
gone to it. They have endured all the
pangs, corporeal and mental, of death, without
actually dying. It is an error, therefore,
to suppose that men may not have
tasted the bitterness of death, and yet be
alive and in good health.—Junius Henry Browne, The Forum.
(696)
Death Valley Conquered—See Conquest, Severe. DEATH WITH SAVAGES H. M. Stanley relates that an African king, as a delicate compliment, presented him with the heads of a dozen of his own subjects whom he had just killed in his guest's honor; and these twelve unfortunates accepted death as stolidly as a matter of course, and the incident made no sensation whatever.—Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen, Chautauquan.
(697)
DEBAUCH, FATAL
A twisted auto on a dead man's chest— Ye ho, and a bottle of rum! Drink and the devil had done their best— Ye ho! and a bottle of rum! The roadhouse bar and the "lady friend"— Ye ho! and a bottle of rum! And at eighty miles they took the bend— Ye ho! and a bottle of rum! A swerve that mocked their drunken wills, A crash and a shriek through the darkness thrills; "Joy riding" is the pace that kills— Ye ho! and a bottle of rum! —New York World.
(698)
Debt Paid—See Kindness. Debt-paying Converts—See Testimony, Indisputable. Debts, Payment of—See Payment of Debts. Debtors to All—See Mutualism. Decadence, National—See Retribution Inevitable. DECAY Old ships lying at anchor may have the appearance of soundness and the outward evidence of strength, usefulness, and seagoing qualities, but, when carefully examined for a sea voyage, are often found to be covered with barnacles and to be affected with dry rot. When such a vessel, no matter what good it has done or what use it has been in the traffic and carrying trade, is condemned, it is at once replaced by a new or more modern one that is in perfect order and fully seaworthy. What is true of vessels is often true of men also.—American Artisan.
(699)
See Judgment, Gradual.
Deceit—See Enticement; Untruthfulness.
Deceit Discovered—See Falsehood.
DECEIT WITH GOD
Rev. F. W. Hinton, of Allahabad, relates this story in the C. M. S. Gazette:
