Some friends were one evening sitting together in a happy circle listening to a phonograph as it reproduced the voices of a quartet of famous singers. Some of the listeners had ears sensitive to musical sounds and they shuddered at one point when a false note occurred. As often as the record returned the discordant jarring of that false note came in with repellent effect. In the midst of the beautiful strain this spoiled the harmony at each recurrence. It is so with character. A false moral concept unless corrected goes on forever producing falsehood in the life. (Text.)
(2203)
See Self-confidence.
Nothing Lost in the Universe—See Conservation. NOTORIETY Only persons of cheap character would be likely to resort to such a device as the following: With more than 10,000 persons intently watching proceedings, George Lenfers and Miss Ora D. Williams were married on the top of the gas company's new giant smoke-*stack, 222 feet from the ground, at high noon the other day. The streets and alleys for five blocks in every direction were jammed and high roofs were dotted with spectators as far as the eye could reach. Thomas Englehard, the builder of the huge pile of concrete and steel, clasped a belt about the bride's waist and tied a rope to a ring in it. The other end of the rope he tied about his own waist and proceeded with the girl up the ladder. The groom followed with Rev. C. J. Armentraut, pastor of the Emanuel Presbyterian Church. (Text.)
(2204)
NOURISHMENT FROM BENEATH The soul that has its roots struck deep in the soil of God's providence will live and flourish in the most hostile moral climates of this world. Did you ever see a watercress-pond in the midst of winter? It is a very attractive sight. With the thermometer far below the freezing-point, and with deep snow covering the ground and the branches of the trees, the patch of watercress stands out in striking contrast—a spot of vivid green like a carpet on the surface of the pond. That the plants are able to grow and flourish under such apparently impossible conditions of weather is due entirely to the warm springs which feed the pond. The water welling forth from the warm heart of the earth saves them from freezing. (Text.)—Louis Albert Banks.
(2205)
NOVELS GOOD AND BAD To so affect a reader that his course of life becomes altered, must prove that the moving influence of fiction is strong indeed. With a weapon of such power placed in our hands, it rests with us to say how it shall be employed. If it has been used, carelessly so that low, selfish thoughts have been developed, it is our duty and joyous privilege to so write that lofty, noble sentiments shall rise and grow, tearing out all evil from the heart, as a growing tree splits a rock that once held it as a tiny seed in its moss-lined crevice. If the novel has inspired doubts as to the value, the grandeur, and joy of living, fostering that slow, insidious canker of pessimism which like the poisoned arrows of the Indian permeates the system with its virus, the novel must now be made to bring calm peace by presenting noble lives of heroism, self-forgetfulness and service by a high ideal consistently followed.—Book Chat.
(2206)
See Time, Precious.
NOVELTY, THE PASSION FOR
There's a race of men that don't fit in,
A race that can't stay still;
So they break the hearts of kith and kin,
And they roam the world at will.
They range the field and they rove the flood,
And they climb the mountain's crest;
Theirs is the curse of the gipsy blood,
And they don't know how to rest.
If they just went straight they might go far;
They are strong and brave and true;
But they're always tired of the things that are,
And they want the strange and new.
—Robert W. Service, "The Spell of the
Yukon."
(2207)
NOW, DO IT
When you've got a job to do, do it now!
If it's one you wish was through, do it now!
If you're sure the job's your own, just tackle
it alone; don't hem and haw and groan—do
it now! Don't put off a bit of work, do it
now! It doesn't pay to shirk, do it now!
If you want to fill a place, and be useful in
the race, just get up and take a brace, do
