upon the homeopathic principle, a New Englander got on a railroad car one night. Now, it is a remarkable fact that a New Englander never goes to sleep in one of these cars. He lies awake all night, thinking how he can improve upon every device and patent in sight. He poked his head out of the upper berth at midnight, hailed a porter and said, "Say, have you got such a thing as a corkscrew about you?" "We don't 'low no drinkin' sperits aboa'd these yer cars, sah," was the reply. "'Tain't that," said the Yankee, "but I want to get hold on to one of your pillows that has kind of worked its way into my ear."—Horace Porter.
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Diploma Valueless—See College or Experience.
DIPLOMACY, COWARDLY
A distinguished divine was called upon to
offer prayer in a mixed company, when
in accordance with the custom of the times,
he included in his petition to the Almighty a
large measure of anathema, as "We beseech
thee, O Lord! to overwhelm the
tyrant! We beseech thee to overwhelm and
to pull down the oppressor! We beseech
thee to overwhelm and pull down the
Papist!" And then opening his eyes, and
seeing that a Roman Catholic archbishop and
his secretary were present, he saw he must
change the current of his petitions if he
would be courteous to his audience, and said
vehemently, "We beseech thee, O Lord! we
beseech thee—we beseech thee—we beseech
thee to pull down and overwhelm the Hottentot!"
Said some one to him when the
prayer was over, "My dear brother, why
were you so hard upon the Hottentot?"
"Well," said he, "the fact is, when I opened
my eyes and looked around, between the
paragraphs in the prayer, at the assembled
guests, I found that the Hottentots were the
only people who had not some friends
among the company."—Henry Codman Potter.
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DIPLOMAT, A, AND MISSIONS
Sir Henry Mortimer Durand, at one time ambassador of Great Britain to the United States, gave the following advice to missionaries before the Fifth International Convention of the Student Volunteer Movement, held at Nashville, in 1906:
I beg you to consider earnestly before you
go whether you are really fitted for the task
before you. Do not be misled by love of excitement
or adventure, or by the glamour of
the East. It has a wonderful glamour, and
any man of thought and feeling who has
been out there will "hear the East a-calling"
for many a year. But a great part of a missionary's
work, as indeed a great part of the
work of every profession, is hard drudgery.
To master an Oriental language, as you
must master it if you are to be of any use,
is itself a labor of years. Judson used often
to sit and study his Burmese for twelve
hours out of the twenty-four, and, as I have
said, it took him twenty-seven years to complete
his translation of the Bible. That is
the kind of toil you must be ready to face.
I once saw a missionary attempt to convert
an Afghan. His manner of doing so was to
walk up to the Afghan on the road and say
in very bad Persian, which was not really
the Afghan's language, "Christ is the Son of
God." He repeated the remark twice, receiving
each time a monosyllabic answer, and
then he sheered off, having apparently no
more Persian at his command. This is the
sort of thing which causes the enemy to
blaspheme. And remember Judson's warning.
Do not be tempted to spiritual pride.
Do not stand aloof and condemn the diplomatist,
or the administrator, or the soldier,
because their lives and their views are not
what yours are. They, too, know some
things—some things which you can not know—and
they, too, are trying to do their duty.
Above all, never look down on the soldier.
He may be rough and reckless at times, but
he is always ready to lay down his life for
his country, and all good missionaries should
honor the soldier's uniform.
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DIRECTION
All life is short in itself. But we do not
complain that the night is short if we are
looking for the dawn, nor that the winter is
short if we are eager for the spring. A
short life is long enough to take the right
direction, and direction is the main fact about
our life. For our children we ask: How
are they coming out?—Franklin Noble,
"Sermon in Illustration."
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"I'd have you know, sir," said the Congressman from one of the tall-grass districts, "that I am walking in the footsteps of George Washington."
"I see you are," rejoined the wise guy, "but for some reason unknown to me, you
