case, the allegation being that the will was a forgery. The subscribing witnesses swore that the will had been signed by the deceased "while life was in him"—a mode of expression derived from the Irish language, and which peasants who have ceased to speak Irish still retain. The evidence was strong in favor of the will, when O'Connell was struck by the persistency of the man, who always repeated the same words, "The life was in him." O'Connell asked: "On the virtue of your oath, was he alive?" "By the virtue of my oath, the life was in him." "Now I call upon you in the presence of your Maker, who will one day pass sentence on you for this evidence, I solemnly ask—and answer me at your peril—was there not a live fly in the dead man's mouth when his hand was placed on the will?" The witness was taken aback at this question; he trembled, turned pale, and faltered out an abject confession that the counselor was right; a fly had been introduced into the mouth of the dead man, to allow the witnesses to swear that "life was in him." (Text.)—Croake James, "Curiosities of Law and Lawyers."
(1053)
Falsehood from Kindness—See Kindness Violating Truth.
False Safety—See Death, Christian Attitude
Toward.
FALSITY, INNER
It takes the greatest cunning and a life
of practical study to know how long, how
thick, and exactly where the sound-bar should
be in each instrument. The health and morale
of many an old violin has been impaired by
its nervous system being ignorantly tampered
with. Every old violin, with the exception
of the "Pucelle," has had its sound-*bar
replaced, or it would never have endured
the increased tightness of strings brought
in with our modern pitch. Many good forgeries
have thus been exposed, for in taking
the reputed Stradivarius to pieces, the rough,
clumsy work inside, contrasting with the
exquisite finish of the old masters, betrays
at once the coarseness of a body that never
really held the soul of a Cremona. (Text.)—H.
R. Haweis, "My Musical Memories.
(1054)
FAME
Fame is the sound which the stream of
high thoughts, carried down to future ages,
makes as it flows; deep, distant, murmuring
evermore like the waters of the mighty
ocean. He who has ears truly touched to
this music is, in a manner, deaf to the voice
of popularity.—William Hazlitt.
(1055)
The following anecdote of Björnson, the Norwegian poet, illustrates the peculiar turn that seized a mischievous delegation:
Björnson was once asked on what occasion
he got the greatest pleasure from his
fame as a poet. His answer was:
"It was when a delegation from the Right came to my house in Christiania and smashed all the windows. Because, when they had thus attacked me and were starting for home again, they felt that they ought to sing something, and so they began to sing, 'Yes, we love this land of ours.' They could do nothing else! They had to sing the song of the man they had attacked."
(1056)
FAME AND TIME
The crowning glory of the popular Japanese school was Hokusai, "The old man mad about painting," who wrote of himself, in a preface to his "Hundred Views of Fuji":
At seventy-five I have learned a little about
the real structure of nature—of animals,
plants and trees, birds, fishes and insects. In
consequence, when I am eighty, I shall have
made still more progress. At ninety I shall
penetrate the mystery of things; at a hundred
I shall certainly have reached a marvelous
stage, and when I am a hundred and
ten, everything I do—be it but a line or dot—will
be alive. I beg those who live as long
as I do to see if I do not keep my word.
Hokusai died in 1849, at the age. of
eighty-nine, his work revealing a continual
increase in power to the last. Of
his work, Mrs. Amsden writes:
His fecundity was marvelous. He illustrated
books of all kinds, poetry, comic albums,
accounts of travels—in fact, his works
are an encyclopedia of Japanese life. His
paintings are scattered, and countless numbers
lost, many being merely ephemeral
drawings, thrown off for the passing pleasure
of the populace.
On his death-bed Hokusai murmured,
"If heaven had but granted me five
more years I could have been a re-
