blocks. They were singing for about ten minutes, when a policeman came along and rushed the whole company off to jail. We have a saying in the Philippines that our converts do not have any backbone until they have been in jail about three times. They did not have any regular jail, using instead the lower floor in the policeman's house. When they arrived there, Nicholas said: "Well, we are here; I guess we might as well do something"; and they began to sing the first verse of "Nearer, my God, to Thee." The policeman came down-stairs and said that singing must cease, and went back up-stairs. Nicholas said, "I guess we might as well have the second verse," and they began to sing it. The policeman came down again in high dudgeon and berated them most vigorously; and having cooled off, he went up-stairs again. Nicholas said, "We will now have the third verse." The policeman came down again as they were starting in strongly on the third verse. This was too much for the policeman, who said in anger: "Get out of here, and go right back to America. I don't propose to have any psalm-singing Methodists in my jail."—J. L. McLaughlin, "Student Volunteer Movement," 1906.
(1755)
LAUGHING PLANT, A
Palgrave, in his work on Central and Eastern
Arabia, mentions a plant whose seeds
produce effects analogous to those of laughing-gas.
The plant is a native of Arabia. A
dwarf variety is found at Kasum, and
another variety at Oman, which attains a
height of from three to four feet, with
woody stems, wide-spreading branches, and
light green foliage. The flowers are produced
in clusters and are yellow in color.
The seed-pods contain two or three black
seeds of the size and shape of a French
bean. Their flavor is a little like that of
opium, the taste is sweet, and the odor from
them produces a sickening sensation and is
slightly offensive. These seeds, when pulverized
and taken in small doses, operate on
a person in a very peculiar manner. He begins
to laugh loudly and boisterously, and
then sings, dances, and cuts up all kinds of
fantastic capers. The effect continues about
an hour, and the patient is extremely comical.
When the excitement ceases, the exhausted
individual falls into a deep sleep, which continues
for an hour or more, and when he
awakens, he is utterly unconscious that any
such demonstrations have been made by him.—Scientific American.
(1756)
LAUGHTER
Albert J. Beveridge, United States Senator from Indiana, believes that the direction of his career was completely changed by a careless laugh. A writer in Success quotes him as saying:
When I was a youth in Illinois I heard
that the Congressman from our district intended
to hold an examination to determine
what young man he should appoint to West
Point. I pitched in and studied hard for
that examination, and found it easy when
I came to take it. Most of the other fellows
seemed to be still struggling with it when I
had finished, and I was so confident that I
had made few mistakes that I was in a pretty
cheerful frame of mind. This is why I
laughed when one of the strugglers asked a
rather foolish question of the professor in
charge. The latter evidently felt that the
dignity of the occasion had been trifled with,
for he scored one per cent against me. When
the papers came to be corrected this loss
caused me to fall one-fifth of one per cent
below the boy who stood highest on the list.
He is a captain in the army now, where I
suppose I should be had it not been for that
laugh. I believe in the power of cheerfulness.
Looking back, I am rather glad that
I laughed. (Text.)
(1757)
LAUGHTER AS A VENT
It might be said of Lamb, as of Abraham
Lincoln, "laughter was his vent"; if he had
not laughed, he would have died of a frenzied
brain or of a broken heart. With Lamb
the maddest mood of frolic was a rebound
from the blackest mood of melancholia; a
fact which Carlyle, who did know Lamb's
history, might have remembered before he
used the phrase "diluted insanity," which, in
view of that sad history, is nothing less than
brutal.—W. J. Dawson, "The Makers of
English Prose."
(1758)
LAUGHTER, PERILS OF
There is certainly no harm in a good
laugh, and truly it is not forbidden to a
jester to speak the truth. Yet the laugh
must have the right ring to it. Socrates
laughed, and Voltaire laughed, as Thomas
Erskine remarked; yet, as he said, what a
difference in the laugh of the two! And
the man who laughs all the time will not
know what to do when the hour of weeping
comes. The laughing philosopher is a very
shallow philosopher or else a very shallow
laugher. An awful gravity which comes
