added, as to be easily conveyed through pipes to an abandoned pond which the company wished to fill as a part of the improvement plans." (Text.)
The streams of Christian influence
are leveling society by washing away
human pride and building up the humble.
(1779)
Levity—See Gravity. LIAR EXPOSED In a large factory in which were employed several hundred persons, one of the workmen, in wielding his hammer, carelessly allowed it to slip from his hand. It flew half way across the room, and struck a fellow workman in the left eye. The man averred that his eye was blinded by the blow, altho a careful examination failed to reveal any injury, there being not a scratch visible. He brought a suit in the courts for compensation for the loss of half of his eyesight, and refused all offers of compromise. Under the law, the owner of the factory was responsible for an injury resulting from an accident of this kind, and altho he believed that the man was shamming, and that the whole case was an attempt at swindling, he had about made up his mind that he would be compelled to pay the claim. The day of the trial arrived, and in open court an eminent occulist retained by the defense examined the alleged injured member, and gave it as his opinion that it was as good as the right eye. Upon the plaintiff's loud protest of his inability to see with his left eye, the occulist proved him a perjurer, and satisfied the court and jury of the falsity of his claim. And how do you suppose he did it? Why, simply by knowing that the colors green and red combined made black. He prepared a black card on which a few words were written with green ink. Then the plaintiff was ordered to put on a pair of spectacles with two different glasses, the one for the right eye being red and the one for the left eye consisting of ordinary glass. Then the card was handed him and he was ordered to read the writing on it. This he did without hesitation, and the cheat was at once exposed. The sound right eye, fitted with the red glass, was unable to distinguish the green writing on the black surface of the card, while the left eye, which he pretended was sightless, was the one with which the reading had to be done.—Pottery Gazette.
(1780)
Liberality—See Generosity.
LIBERALITY IN RELIGION
Father Mathew was going among a large
number of his temperance converts, signing
the cross on their foreheads, when a man
on his knees looked up and said, "Father,
here am I, an Orangeman, kneeling to you,
and you blessing me." "God bless you, my
dear, I didn't care if you were a lemon-*man,"
said Father Mathew.
(1781)
Liberty—See Freedom Chosen.
Liberty, A Spider's Struggle for—See
Ingenuity.
LIBERTY, INDIVIDUAL
Throughout his life Milton, tho profoundly
religious, held aloof from the strife of
sects. In belief, he belonged to the extreme
Puritans, called Separatists, Independents,
Congregationalists, of which our Pilgrim
Fathers are the great examples; but he refused
to be bound by any creed or Church
discipline:
"As ever in my great Task-Master's eye."
In this last line of one of his sonnets is found Milton's rejection of every form of outward religious authority in face of the supreme Puritan principle, the liberty of the individual soul before God.—William J. Long, "English Literature."
(1782)
Liberty, Promoting—See Emancipation.
LIBERTY, SPIRITUAL
Madam Guyon, in the Bastile, speaks to
us still of patience in suffering. The walls
of her prison were nine feet thick and a
narrow slit through the massive masonry
admitted all the light that ever reached her.
The cell was narrow and dirty with the mold
of ages. Dreary and cold in winter and
suffocating in summer. No privileges, no
books, no recreations or employments. But
here was born that blithe bird-song of her
captivity:
"My cage confines me round:
Abroad I can not fly;
But tho my wings are closely bound,
My heart's at liberty.
My prison walls can not control
The flight, the freedom of the soul.
And in God's mighty will I find
The joy, the freedom of the mind." (Text.)
(1783)
