entered the room the children rose and remained standing until father and mother were seated. (Text.)
(2772)
REVERSED ATTITUDE
The moral health of some could be restored only by turning their thoughts and inclinations upside down, as patients are treated according to this description:
In France, when a patient is under chloroform,
on the slightest symptom appearing of
failure of the heart, they turn him nearly
upside down—that is, with his head downward
and his heels in the air. This, they
say, always restores him; and such is their
faith in the efficacy of this method that the
operating tables in the Paris hospitals are
made so that in an instant they can be elevated
with one end in the air, so as to bring
the patient into a position resembling that of
standing on the head.—Scientific American.
(2773)
Reversion of Nature—See Circulation Impeded. REVIVAL In some neglected church-yards there are old inscriptions so moss-grown and weather-beaten that they can no longer be easily deciphered. So there are men who in early life were marked by high and noble principles, which the wear of the world has almost destroyed in them. They need a thorough regeneration to revive the old lines and ideals of duty and character.
(2774)
Like pneumatic tires, the Church needs to be "pumped up" by special efforts from time to time. The same is true of the individual. Pneumatic tires, whether on a bicycle or an automobile, always become more or less deflated in the course of time, even when there is no puncture and the valves are perfectly tight. All cyclists and chauffeurs know that a tire needs pumping up, from time to time, to keep it hard and rigid. This is because the enclosed air constantly tends to escape through the envelop; the phenomenon, which is due to what chemists call osmose, is quite complex and is worth attention. (Text.)—Cosmos.
(2775)
Reviving the Forgotten—See Memory Renewed.
REVOLUTION, CAUSES OF
It becomes us to watch carefully against
crowding society to that point of compression
where the mass of men have nothing to
lose and little to live for, with the balance
rather in favor of dying. Then the last
argument, the bayonet, fails against a people
whom it is of no use to kill. They are the
innumerable majority. A citizen soldiery
sickens at the work of slaughter, and like
the soldiers of France in the Revolution, will
walk over to the mob, guns and all. Then,
what are you going to do? How far are our
great cities from that condition? Go
through the "slums" and see. Look at the
wan faces leaning from high windows for a
breath of what is not the air of heaven. See
the pallid little children in broken rocking-*chairs
sitting out on the balconies of the
fire-escapes, or the five-year-old holding the
two-year-old from falling out as they lean
over the window-sill. Coming on the elevated
road through such a scene one sultry
evening lately, the writer saw a woman
sitting near a window with a look of unutterable
sadness; and, while we looked, a
stout man in shirt sleeves came across the
room, stooped down and kissed her. She
looked up at him pitifully but despairingly,
shook her head, and began wiping away the
tears. Then the swift train whirled us from
where hearts were breaking. It is ill for
such men to reach the point where they
know that no toil, no frugality, no self-*denial
can make things any better to-morrow,
or next year, or ten years hence—that
no work of arm or brain can lift his face
from the grindstone, and that this—or worse—is
all the inheritance he can leave his children.
Then the sight of a carriage with
gold-caparisoned horses, a flash of a diamond,
or the sweep of a silk dress will make
that man clench his fist. Thousands of such
will pull down a Bastile with their bare
hands. And in the midst of all this, social
leaders withdraw into a little clique and
parade and proclaim their fewness—they
are "the Four Hundred."—J. C. Fernald,
The Statesman.
(2776)
Reward for Service—See Courage, Moral.
REWARD, RIDICULOUS
During the heavy rains and floods in the
cantons of Geneva and Vaud at the end of
January (1910), a Swiss railway gate-*keeper
at level crossing named Allaman,
hearing an unusual hissing sound, walked
