- cast to a boy who tried, really tried, to do
what was right? A clean suit of clothes, a warm bath, and a daily glass of milk, given by a teacher who sensed the boy's needs.
Have you read Owen Kildare's account of the effect upon him of the first gentle touch he had ever felt?
Seldom in his life as a child had any one said a kind word to him. One day when a strange woman patted him on the cheek he almost cried with the joy of it.
"With a light pat on my cheek and one of the sunniest smiles ever shed on me." he says of the incident, "she put a penny in my hand. She was gone before I realized what had happened. Somehow, I felt that were she to come back I could have said to her, 'Say, lady, I haven't got much to give, but I'll give you all me poipers, me pennies, and me knife if you'll do that agen.'"
Go back to your schools. Pick out the so-called worst boys. Find out whether heart-hunger as well as stomach-hunger may not be one of the symptoms of the disease. There is not a teacher in all our broad land who would knowingly let a child's body starve to death for want of physical food. Why should any child's heart or soul be allowed to starve to death for want of a little sympathy and affection? Bodily starvation, at its worst, can only end in death; soul starvation, at its worst, ends in a hateful, ugly, defiant, lawless attitude toward authority, which not only ruins the starved one but brings disaster to the social order. Does not some blame belong to the school if its teachers fail to feed these starving souls?—Julia Richman, "Proceedings of the National Education Association," 1909.
(1366)
HEART-INTEREST
When the old lady was training her son
for the trapeze, the boy made three or four
rather ineffectual efforts to get over the bar.
Then she was heard to suggest: "John
Henry Hobbs, if you will just throw your
heart over the bars, your body will follow."
(Text.)—James G. Blaine.
(1367)
HEART, REGENERATION OF
A fable among the Turks says that Mohammed,
when a child, had his heart laid
open, and a black grain, called the devil's
portion, taken out of its center; and in this
heroic way the prophet's preeminent virtue
and sanctity are accounted for.
A new heart entire, through the regeneration
of the Holy Ghost, far surpasses
the Moslem's fabled operation.
(1368)
Heart, Summer in the—See Summer in the Heart.
HEART, THE
The word "heart" is used figuratively and
metaphysically, but with vivid impressiveness
in Scripture, to indicate the capacity of
feeling after God without which faith is impossible.
Men of mathematical and philosophic
training have in many cases lamentably
exemplified the atrophy of the finer
feelings. Here is the great fault in the glittering
and brilliant writings of John Stuart
Mill. From early infancy he, a most precocious
boy, was taught to crush the heart,
to repress all sentiments of affection. The
moral nature of the lad was shockingly distorted,
and as he grew up he judged of
everything by the cold light of intellect only.
He wrote his autobiography, and in that
book is not a word about his mother. So
the book absolutely lacks heart, and it is
devoid of all fascination. (Text.)
(1369)
HEART, THE HUMAN
An American naturalist tells us that the
human brain is full of birds. The song-*birds
might all have been hatched in the
human heart, so well do they express the
whole gamut of human passion and emotion
in their varied songs. The plaintive singers,
the soaring ecstatic singers, the gushing
singers, the inarticulate singers—robin, dove,
lark, mocking-bird, nightingale—all are expressive
of human emotion, desire, love, sadness,
aspiration, glee. Christ gives a sadder
view of our heart, showing it to be "the hold
of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean
and hateful bird." Fierce hawk, croaking
raven, ravenous vulture, obscene birds,
birds of discord, birds of darkness, birds of
tempest, birds of blood and death—these are
all typical of the heart's base passions; these
all brood and nestle within, and fly forth to
darken, pollute, and destroy. And the Master
is not here speaking of some hearts, but
of the human heart generally. In the woods
we find occasionally a bird with a false note,
in the fields a misshapen flower, yet beauty
and music are the prevailing characteristics
of the landscape; but stepping into society,
the universal discord and misery declare the
common radical defect of our nature.—*
