bees, and is analogous to the fat of higher animals. To produce a single pound of wax, the bees must consume from fifteen to twenty pounds of honey. This expensive substance is used by the thrifty little insects with the greatest economy. (Text.)—Public Opinion.
(1596)
INDUSTRY OF BIRDS
"Our hours," said a nature student, "are
nothing to the birds. Why, some birds work
in the summer nineteen hours a day. Indefatigably
they clear the crops of insects.
"The thrush gets up at 2:30 every summer morning. He rolls up his sleeves, and falls to work at once, and he never stops until 9:30 at night. A clean nineteen hours. During that time he feeds his voracious young two hundred and six times.
"The blackbird starts work at the same time as the thrush, but he 'lays off' earlier. His whistle blows at 7:30, and during his seventeen-hour day he sets about one hundred meals before his kiddies.
"The titmouse is up and about at three in the morning and his stopping time is nine at night. A fast worker, the titmouse is said to feed his young four hundred and seventeen meals—meals of caterpillar mainly—in the long, hard, hot day."—Green's Fruit Grower.
(1597)
INDUSTRY VERSUS IDLENESS
There was a great painter named Hogarth,
who painted a series of pictures. The first
of the series shows two lads starting in life
as apprentices under the same master. They
are about the same age, are equally clever,
and have the same prospect of getting on.
Yet in the other pictures, one apprentice,
whose name is Tom Idle, is shown to neglect
his work for bad company of every kind,
gradually sinking from idleness into every
crime. The other apprentice, Frank Goodchild,
is depicted as always industrious and
attentive to his business, and becoming prosperous
and rich. Another picture shows that
Tom has sunk into poverty and misery;
another picture shows that Frank has become
a great merchant. One of the last
pictures shows Tom in the hands of the
constables, brought before Alderman Goodchild,
who is now high sheriff, and who is
pained and distrest in recognizing his old
fellow apprentice in the prisoner at the bar.—James
T. White, "Character Lessons."
(1598)
INEBRIETY, INCURABLE
Is the drunkard curable? Dr. Gill, a British expert, in a recent report says that mental recoveries in a considerable number never go beyond a certain point, and he classes nearly 50 per cent of his patients as higher-grade imbeciles, while many others are weak-minded and unable to work—perhaps congenital neurasthenics. He goes on to say:
Even in the smaller number classed as
normal men, the mental recovery is very
slow, so that the advertised methods of quick
cure are fallacious. Notwithstanding the
fact that men of great or average intelligence
might be afflicted, most of our inebriates are
congenital defectives—even the drunken
genius is a warped mental specimen. The
inebriety is a result of their condition and
not a cause. How dishonest, then, it is, to
hold out the promise of cure, as many of
the sanatoriums do! The present trend of
thought among lawmakers is in the direction
of the confinement of inebriates for life,
and it seems to be founded on sound pathologic
findings.
(1599)
INEQUALITIES
Twenty little maidens
Sighing at a hop,
Wishing twenty fellows
Would come there to stop.
Twenty dapper clerklings
Sitting in a row,
Dipping pens in ink-stands,
Much would like to go.
Ah! this world's an odd one,
Things don't even up;
When we want a quartful,
We only get a cup.
(1600)
Inexperience Reenforced—See Encouragement.
INFANTICIDE IN CHINA
Missionaries see little bodies floating upon
the scum of the ponds or thrown out by the
roadside and half-eaten by the wolfish dogs.
It is not necessary to open the little bundle
of matting lying by the side of the city
wall to know what it contains. Shanghai
has its hexagonal tower into which their
bodies can be cast. Nanking has its temple
