JARS, DAILY
It is not often the great strokes of misfortune that break men down, but the daily wear and tear of small troubles. An editor writes thus:
A huge cart-wheel lies in the gutter near
our office. The cart itself has been pulled
with difficulty out of the way of the trolley
cars. An axle has broken. And that axle!
It is fully four inches in diameter and was
originally forged of soundest steel. But as
you look at the fragments of it wedged in the
overturned hub you discover a peculiar condition.
"The steel has been crystallized," the
mechanic would explain. No sudden strain
broke it, no tremendous wrench twisted the
spindle from the beam. The ruin was
wrought by the constant small jars of daily
traffic. Rumbling over stones, bumping over
crossings, scraping against curbs threw the
atoms of steel in the axle out of cohesive
harmony. Then came the one jar, no heavier
than the others, that sent the load of coal
into the street.
(1683)
Jester, The—See Humor Overdone.
JESTING COMMENDED
It is wise to laugh, and Joe Miller is right
when he says that the gravest beast is an
ass, and the gravest man is a fool. This
opinion of the famous jester is in accord with
Plato, who is reported to have remarked to
his friends, when their social enjoyment was
occasionally intruded upon by the approach
of some sedate wiseacre, "Silence, my
friends, let us be wise now, for a fool is
coming." Other notable characters, if not
themselves witty, have sought relief from
the strain of serious employment by a laugh
and innocent merriment. Philip of Macedon,
Sylla, the Roman dictator, Queen Elizabeth,
and our own Abraham Lincoln, keenly enjoyed
a good joke, while Julius Cæsar,
Tacitus, Erasmus, and Lord Bacon compiled
jest-books. So there is high authority for
jesting, and a jest is merely petrified laughter—a
laugh congealed into words, so as to
be passed from mouth to mouth and handed
down to further generations.—Edmund Kirke, North American Review.
(1684)
JESTS, OLD
To Hierocles, who lived in the sixth century,
is attributed a book called "Asteia,"
which contains twenty-one jests, the most of
which are now alive, and passing themselves
off as "real, original Jacobs." Among them
is the man who would not venture into the
water until he had learned to swim; the man
whose horse died just as he had taught it
to live without eating; the other who stood
before the mirror with his eyes shut, to see
how he looked when asleep; the other who
apologized for a negligence by saying, "I
never received the letter you wrote me"; the
other who kept a crow expressly to satisfy
himself if the creature did live to the age of
two hundred years; and the old philosopher
who carried a brick about as a specimen of
the house he desired to sell. But, older than
Hierocles—old as Horace—is the stupid fellow
who, wanting to cross a stream, sat
down upon the bank to wait for all the
water to run by. The French king who said,
"After me, the deluge," was thought to be
original, but the phrase is found in the
Greek of two thousand years ago; as is also
the proverb, "There is many a slip between
the cup and the lip," which was the appropriate
inscription upon the drinking cup of
a rich Greek. Every one knows the lady
who insists that her age is but thirty, and
whose friend asserts that he believes her,
because he has heard her say so "any time
these ten years." Bacon, in his "Apothegms,"
asserts that the same anecdote is told of
Cicero.—Edmund Kirke, North American Review.
(1685)
Jesus All Right—See Christ Approved.
Jesus as a Character-builder—See Character-building.
JESUS AS COMPANION
A missionary riding on horseback through
one of the cotton States of the South came
upon an old tumble-down cabin in the doorway
of which stood a poor crippled negress.
Her back was bent nearly double with years
of hard work and her face was deeply
wrinkled and her hair was white, but her
two eyes were as bright as two stars. The
