Life as Testimony—See Native Converts. Life, Brevity of—See Brevity of Life. LIFE CHEAP Mard Bird, in "Persian Women and Their Creed," tells the following: A Persian Haji's baby had convulsions and the parents brought it to the Mohammedan village teacher, who said the child was possest, and the only remedy for her disease was for them to buy a prayer of the exact length of the child, and strap it on her back. The child was so long that the cost of the prayer was five dollars, and the parents decided that a girl baby was not worth that much and took her home to die.
(1794)
LIFE, CLINGING TO They used to tell during the Civil War of a colonel who was ordered to assault a position which his regiment, when they had advanced far enough to get a good look at it, saw to be so impossible that they fell back and became immovable. Whereupon (so the story ran) the colonel, who took the same sense of the situation that his command did, yet must do his duty, called out in an ostensibly pleading and fervid voice: "Oh, don't give it up so! Forward again! Forward! Charge! Great heavens, men, do you want to live forever?"—Joseph H. Twichell.
(1795)
LIFE, CONTINUED A few years ago I was walking along the shore of the Susquehanna River, in Harrisburg, Pa., accompanied by the little boy of my friend, Dr. Hill. Night was fast closing down over the earth, when the little fellow looked up and said: "Brother Shannon, where does the river go to, when the night comes on?" I saw at once that the question was big with the wonder and mystery of a child's mind. He had just come from his own home; he saw men and women going home; he saw the birds flying to their homes in the trees, and he wondered if the river had a home, too. Of course, I could have answered that the river has its home in the sea, but I said: "My child, the river flows on just the same through the night as through the day." And men say: "Where does the soul go to when the night of death comes on?" The Master says: "It goes on just the same, thrilled with my joy, united with my destiny, and deathless in my life!"—F. F. Shannon.
(1796)
LIFE, DESIRE FOR LONG The enchanters of China promised the emperors of that country to find an elixir of long life that should efface the irreparable inroad of years. The astrologers and necromancers of the Middle Ages flattered themselves to have discovered the fountain of youth, in which a person had merely to bathe in order to recover his youth. All such dreams were long ago dispelled by the progress of science. Yet, in the heart of most men, there is such a desire to prolong their stay upon the earth that the art of living for a long time has not ceased to impassion a large number of persons who would be willing to endure all the evils of an indefinitely prolonged old age. We have several times had proof of this mania, which Dean Swift has so wittily stigmatized in his second voyage of Gulliver by showing in what a state of abjection the mortals of Laputa lived—those unfortunates who were condemned to survive their own selves through the loss of memory of what they had been. One of the perpetual secretaries of the Academy of Sciences has written a volume to prove that man should consider himself young up to eighty years of age. A noble Venetian named Cornaro spent twenty years in a scale-pan in order to ascertain what alimentary regimen was best adapted to him. We have known old men who, having learned that Mr. Chevreul had never drank anything but water, took the resolution to abstain wholly from wine, hoping in this way to exceed a hundred years. Fortunately, a rag-gatherer, who had reached the same age as the celebrated academician, spared them this sacrifice, by informing his confrére in longevity that he had never drank anything but wine.—La Science Illustrée.
(1797)
Life, Fecundity of—See Propagation, Prolific.
LIFE, FEEDING THE
The Mississippi River, which empties its
wealth of waters into the Gulf of Mexico, is
fed by the Missouri, the Ohio, the Tennessee,
the Red River, and indirectly the Allegheny
and Monongahela, and the Yellowstone and
the Platte. The Amazon River drains an
area of two and a half million square miles,
or the waters of more than a third of all the
South American continent. The River Nile
is almost equally enriched by tributaries.
