seas of melody, into an ecstasy of delight, until the people wept from the excess of their emotions. That girl was Lillian Nordica.—James T. White, "Character Lessons."
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A pious woman, when it was decided to close the prayer-meeting in a certain village, declared it should not be, for she would be there if no one else was. True to her word, when, the next morning, some one asked her jestingly, "Did you have a prayer-meeting last night?" "Ah, that we did!" she replied. "How many were present?" "Four," she said. "Why, I heard you were there all alone." "No, I was the only one visible; but the Father was there, and the Son was there, and the Holy Spirit was there, and we were all agreed in prayer." Before long others took shame to themselves at the earnest perseverance of the poor woman, the prayer-meeting was revived and the church prospered. (Text.)
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See Criminals, Tracing; Persistence.
Perseverance in Saving—See Persistence
in Doing Good.
Perseverance, Unexampled—See Aerial
Achievement.
PERSIA, THE MOSLEM SITUATION IN
Perhaps I can not illustrate the degraded
condition of the people in Persia better than
by referring to the condition of women, because
the key to the condition of the entire
people is the condition occupied by their
women. I will illustrate it by describing the
manner of cultivating rice in northern Persia,
in that portion bordering on the Caspian
Sea. Among the people there, the planter as
a rule marries as many women as he needs
for the cultivation of his rice. They prepare
the fields and sow broadcast in a seed-plot.
These fields are not very large usually. The
women further prepare it for cultivation
by flooding the fields with water and then
by plowing and cross-plowing under the
water, standing in the great pools knee-deep
or more. When the rice has grown
to the height of six inches or more, the
women go out in the early dawn and often
they work with their babes strapt on their
backs. It is necessary for them to transplant
the little blades that have come up in the
seed-plot; so they pull the rice plants up
by the handful and transplant them, a few
plants at a time, working steadily all day
long until the evening twilight deepens and
it is too dark to work any more, when they
take refuge on a little elevation that may
or may not be protected by a booth. There
they remain during the night and are ready
to start work again at the dawn. This they
do, day after day. And when the harvest
has come, and the crops have been gathered
and safely placed in the storehouses, these
women are probably divorced and turned
out to live lives of misery and shame and
degradation, until they may be so fortunate,
as they would consider it, as to become
the wives of other planters.
I will give you another illustration of their condition. Not long ago I was sitting in my study when a department representative came to me and said that, lying out in the open, behind the Legation, was a poor old sick woman; and he thought perhaps I might be able to do something for her, as she needed attention very badly. I went and investigated the case and found a poor, decrepit old woman. I say old woman, for tho she was only about thirty-five years of age, at thirty-five in Persia they become broken down and decrepit. I investigated her case, and my investigation revealed this story. She had been the wife of a certain man and had gradually been getting blind. She had also fallen and broken her hip-joint, and, being no longer able to do his work, he had carried her out in the open desert and left her to die there. We took her in our hospital, where our doctor cared for her; and when they washed her in order to dress her wounds, they found that she had maggoted bed-sores on her body. We did everything we could for her, and God in His mercy relieved her of her physical sufferings. It was His mercy that placed her in our hands for the last few days of her life, in order that she might hear the story of the love of Christ.—Lewis F. Esselst, "Student Volunteer Movement," 1906.
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PERSISTENCE
If the wind is in the east with a blue hazy
atmosphere it seems to affect the fish in
some unaccountable way, and while it lasts
a rise can rarely be got out of them. I
have noticed this hundreds of times, often
when the water was in splendid fishing order,
and the river full of new run fish, but whatever
quarter the wind blows from there is
always a chance while the fly is in the
water, and to insure success the angler
must make up his mind to have many blank
