- book," a seaman said bitterly as he kicked
a holystone out of the way. "Why is it called that? Well, in the first place, it is called that because in using it, in holystoning the deck, the sailor has to kneel down; and in the second place, because all holystoning is done on Sunday. Don't you know the chantey?
"'Six days shalt thou work and do all that thou art able,
And on the seventh holystone the decks and scrape the cable.'
"The stone is called holystone because the first holystones were bits of tombs stolen from cemeteries. It's got a pious, religious sound—holy, and prayer-book, and Sunday and all that—but it is when he is using this stone that the seaman is most profane."
(829)
See Best, Making the.
Drudgery as a Teacher—See Humdrum Development. DRUDGERY RELIEVED When Lucy Larcom was fourteen years old she worked in a cotton-mill in Lowell, Mass. After she had been there a few weeks, says The Youth's Companion, she asked and received permission to tend some frames which were near a window, through which she might look out on the Merrimac River and its picturesque banks. After she had worked there a little while longer, she began to make the window-seat and frame into a library. She pasted the grimy paint all over with clippings of verse which she gathered from such newspapers and magazines as fell into her hands. So the little factory drudge secured for herself three essentials for human happiness: work, the sight of nature, and the beauty of the poet's vision. No doubt the work was often wearisome. Perhaps some of the poetry was not very good. But the river and its meadows and hills must have been always refreshing, and the spirit which so intelligently desired the best in the world could not have faltered even on a toilsome path.
(830)
Drunkard's Fate—See Drink, Effects of. Drunkards Saving Drunkards—See Personal Influence. Drunkard's Soul—See Defacement of Soul. DRUNKARD'S WILL, A It was written just before he committed suicide. "I leave to the world a wasted character and ruinous example; I leave to my parents as great a sorrow as in their weakness they could possibly bear; I leave to my brothers and sisters as much shame and dishonor as I could have brought them; I leave to my wife a broken heart and a life full of shame; I leave to my children poverty, ignorance, a bad character and the memory of their father lying in a drunkard's grave and having gone to a drunkard's hell." This is typical. Decent men are becoming sick at heart with this thing. We are now in the midst of a war that promises to become world-wide, relentless until our Christian obligation to the world is fully met. Since religion, business, science, education and the State have taken the field against drink there is certain promise of victory.—Methodist Recorder.
(831)
Drunkenness, Disastrous—See Debauch, Fatal.
Drunkenness, Safeguard Against—See
Safeguard for Drunkards.
DRUNKENNESS, THE TRAGEDY OF
A recent orator gives this incident:
I think the subject has been kept back very
much by the merriment people make over
those slain by strong drink. I used to be
very merry over these things, having a keen
sense of the ludicrous. There was something
very grotesque in the gait of a drunkard.
It is not so now; for I saw in one of
the streets of Philadelphia a sight that
changed the whole subject to me. There
was a young man being led home. He was
very much intoxicated—he was raving with
intoxication. Two young men were leading
him along. The boys hooted in the street,
men laughed, women sneered; but I happened
to be very near the door where he
went in—it was the door of his father's
house. I saw him go up-stairs. I heard
him shouting, hooting and blaspheming. He
had lost his hat, and the merriment increased
with the mob until he came up to the door,
and as the door was opened his mother came
out. When I heard her cry, that took all the
comedy away from the scene. Since that
time, when I see a man walking through
the street, reeling, the comedy is all gone,
and it is a tragedy of tears and groans and
heartbreaks. Never make any fun around
