"My husband is very heroic," said Mrs. Black. "For instance, he will give up his visit to the club to play jackstraws with my old mother, and she is his mother-in-law, you know."
"I think I can beat that," remarked Mrs. Gray. "When my milliner's quarterly bill comes in my husband smiles as he writes a check, and never thinks of looking at the items."
"I can give you a better example than either of those!" exclaimed Mrs. White. "When the morning paper comes at breakfast-time my husband always offers me the first reading of it."
An informal vote awarded the last speaker's husband the medal of heroism.
(812)
DOMINANT ELEMENTS
Every animate or inanimate structure responds
to some chord or note of music,
called, I believe, the dominant. We have all
felt some building vibrate in unison with the
pulsation of some note of a musical instrument;
we have felt "creepy" shivers run
through us as some musical chord is sounded.
It is well known that animals are strangely
affected by certain harmonies. Some day,
when civilization has advanced, I believe that
these evidences of psychological structure
will be better understood. It will be recognized
that vice and virtue are in accord with
different harmonies, and yield to the power
of different dominants; and, when once the
classification is made, and the disclosures of
the dominant understood, then the extent and
influence of the dominant will be a psychological
test to define the character and ruling
passions of men's nature, and to decide the
fitness of men for the various pursuits of
life, and even for life itself. (Text.)—Arthur
Dudley Vinton, American Magazine.
(813)
Dominion of Man—See Mastery of Nature.
Doors, Opening Human—See Receptiveness.
DOUBLE MEANINGS, DANGER OF
The last great martyr to the double meaning in our Constitution, mentioned below, was Lincoln. It was a clause that protected the most gigantic evil of history:
An American historian says of the Constitution
of the United States: "Our Constitution
in its spirit and legitimate utterance
is doubtless the noblest document which
ever emanated from the mind of man. It
contains not one word hostile to liberty. . . .
But yet ingloriously, guiltily, under sore
temptation, we consented to use one phrase
susceptible of a double meaning, 'held to service
or labor.' (Article IV Section 2.)
These honest words at the North mean
a hired man, an apprentice. At the South
they mean a slave, feudal bondage. So
small, apparently so insignificant, were those
seeds sown in our Constitution which have
resulted in such a harvest of misery."
(814)
DOUBLE-MINDEDNESS
Charles Wagner, in "The Gospel of Life," remarks thus on the double nature of men:
Duplicity, rending apart, partition of the
will and of the heart, lamentable division—that
is our life! It is not a continuous
chain; it is only links broken and dispersed.
We are peace-loving, just, truthful, sober,
chaste, disinterested; but we are also malicious,
unjust, cunning, intemperate, impure.
We are like those ships that carry to the
colonies, along with the Bibles and religious
tracts, cannon, alcohol, and opium; or those
poets full of contrary talents, who play turn
by turn on the sacred lyre and on the strident
conch-shell.
(815)
DOUBT ISSUING IN PEACE
The peace of God descends more softly shed
Than light upon the deep,
And sinks below the tumult of my years
Deeper than dreams or sleep.
And somehow, as of dusk was born the star
Whose fire is on the sea,
Another star from doubt's profounder dark
Is risen and shines on me. (Text.)
—Henry Fletcher Harris, Harper's Magazine.
(816)
DOUBTS, DISSOLVING
Crossing the Atlantic, a vessel is often
encircled by small ice-floes, looking like a
flock of white sheep on the blue ocean.
When they started on their course southward,
those ice-floes were great frozen
masses. But the warm Gulf Stream played
on them beneath, and the sun melted them
from above, till they dwindled as they en-
