suh. If you do not like it you have a means of obtaining satisfaction, suh. No No'therner like you can talk to me like that, suh."
Harriman retired. Next morning, when the same milkman arrived, Harriman greeted him with a low bow. "You are right," he said. "Take the milk in the front way and leave it on the piano." (Text.)
(2504)
Recently I read the experience of a yachting party on the Mediterranean. A sudden storm had come up and threatened to overwhelm the boat. One of the two women on board lost her head completely and seemed crazed by fear. Suddenly she cried out to the other woman sitting calmly beside her: "You know you are as frightened as I am. Why don't you show it, too?" "Oh, yes, I am frightened," replied the other woman, "for I know the danger we are in. But, if we are going to die, do let us at least die like ladies." And that appeal to pride wrought a complete change in the frightened woman, she became calm and even spoke words of encouragement to the others.—M. O. Simmons.
(2505)
There was once a proud little Icicle who stood all alone out in the cold. She wore a dress that sparkled like diamonds, but for all that, no one cared to go near her. The snowflakes were having a game of tag in the sky. Nearer and nearer the earth they played until some of them espied Miss Icicle.
"Do come and play with us!" they cried.
But the proud Icicle shook her head. "No," she said, "you are entirely too common to play with me; I am a princess."
"I'll show the world what you are, you silly thing," called Grandfather Sun from his cloud chariot. So he sent some of his children, the Sunbeams, to breathe on Miss Icicle's head. This made her feel so sick that she wept great tears. The more she wept the thinner she grew, till at last a tiny pool of water was all that was left. (Text.)
(2506)
A gourd wound itself around a lofty palm, and in a few weeks climbed to its very top. "How old mayest thou be?" asked the gourd. "About a hundred years," was the reply. "A hundred years and no taller! Only look, I have grown as tall as you in less than a hundred days," said the puffed-up gourd. The stately palm calmly replied: "I know that well. Every summer of my life a gourd has climbed up my body and spread over my branches, as proud as thou art, and as short-lived as thou shalt be."
(2507)
See Vanity.
PRIDE IN ONE'S TASK
The following is told of John F. Stevens, who was appointed by President Roosevelt to take charge of the Panama Canal:
Sometime in the seventies, and somewhere
in Arizona, both the time and place where
the Apaches were very seriously on the warpath,
it became necessary to send a message
across a hundred or two miles of desert.
There was offered a reward of five hundred
dollars to the man who would carry it. The
peril was undeniable and nobody seemed to
consider the reward worth the probable cost
of it. But presently John Stevens undertook
to deliver the message. He eluded the
Apaches and made the journey successfully
on foot, but declined the five hundred dollars.
The thing had been there to do; he
preferred to do it for its own sake. (Text.)—American Magazine.
(2508)
Primitive Organisms—See Choice in Primitive Organisms.
PRINCIPLE
One Sunday morning in Genoa a woman
whom British people love stood by the dying
bed of a man whose memory the world
reveres. Josephine Butler stood by the bedside
of Garibaldi, the old hero's gaunt figure
still clothed with the scarlet tunic which recalled
the day when ten thousand "Garibaldis"
swept on to victory and liberty with
his name upon their lips. And the dying
man said to the living woman:
"Never forget that tho we pass away and the leaders of a cause fall one by one, principles never pass away. They are worldwide, unchangeable and eternal."—Charles F. Aked.
(2509)
The Rev. W. F. Crafts tells this story of a clerk who stood by his principles:
Stephen Girard, the infidel millionaire of
Philadelphia, one Saturday bade his clerks
come the following day and unload a vessel
which had just arrived. One of the clerks,
who had strong convictions and the power
to act upon them, refused to comply with the
