I only know that every day brings good above
My poor deserving;
I only feel that on the road of life true Love
Is leading me along and never swerving.
Whatever turn the path may take to left or right,
I think it follows
The tracing of a wiser hand, through dark and light,
Across the hills and in the shady hollows.
Whatever gifts the hours bestow, or great or small,
I would not measure
As worth a certain price in praise, but take them all
And use them all, with simple, heartfelt pleasure.
For when we gladly eat our daily bread, we bless
The hand that feeds us;
And when we walk along life's way in cheerfulness,
Our very heart-beats praise the Love that leads us.
(1294)
Gratuities—See Ridicule, Apt.
GRAVITATION AND ICEBERGS
The hundreds of thousands of icebergs
that every spring and summer terrify our
ocean steamers are simply detachments from
the glaciers that perpetually cover the face
of northern lands. As far as can be learned,
the interior of Greenland has a surface of
tall hills and deep gulches, with an elevated
range rather on the eastern side, running
from north to south. Hence, if the climate
of the interior of Greenland were mild, this
extended range would serve as a watershed
diverting streams to the sea on both
sides. But the temperature some distance
inland is nearly always below the freezing
point, so that the almost constant snowfall
and the brief midsummer rains remain on
the surface, accumulating year after year,
till there are formed thousands of square
miles of blue compact ice, some of it over
1,500 feet thick. This enormous body of
ice, like water, is subject to the laws of
gravitation, and is eternally on the march to
the sea. But its rate of travel is so slow
as to be in most places imperceptible to the
eye. So deep is this mass of inland ice that
after a couple of days' march from the sea
there are no longer any hills visible, the entire
landscape being white and naked. The
ice from the higher ground is being constantly
forced into the valleys and most of
these valleys terminate toward the sea in
very deep fjords. These fjords are in
reality the launchways for most of the ice-*floes
and a great many of the bergs. You
might lie for hours in your boat by most of
the glaciers where they enter the sea, and
not be aware that they were moving; but
each one pushes constantly, and at a regular
rate of speed, outward and outward into
the sea, till the buoyancy of the water under
it causes it to break at the shore, and sets
it free to rove the ocean for thousands of
miles, till it melts in Southern latitudes.—Edmund
Collins, Harper's Weekly.
(1295)
GRAVITATION, LAW OF
Time after time astronomers have found
seeming irregularities in the planets' motions,
which they could not explain by, nor deduce
from this law of Newton's (law of
gravitation). In every case, however, later
investigations showed the fault to lie in the
imperfections of their methods; their calculations,
or their assumptions in regard to
the number and size of the planets were in
error, not the law of gravitation. A discrepancy
of only two minutes between the
observed and theoretical places of Uranus
led to the discovery of Neptune, and possibly
the minute discrepancy in the motions of
Mercury may lead to important discoveries
regarding the properties or distribution of
matter in the neighborhood of the sun.—Charles
Lane Poor, "The Solar System."
(1296)
GRAVITATION, MORAL
When the strata of the earth forms, the
heaviest elements work down to the bottom,
the next heaviest fall on these, and so on
to the top, where the lightest will be found.
The same is true of men. You do
not have to do anything to men to put
them down or lift them up. Every man
sooner or later goes "to his own place."
(1297)
GRAVITY
Shiel told Moore of a good thing said by
Keller, an Irish barrister. Keller, meeting
some judge, an old friend of his, a steady,
solemn fellow who had succeeded as much
in his profession as Keller had failed, said
to him: "In opposition to all the laws of
