long-lived and healthy, under normal circumstances, while of the brass instrumentalists it was discovered that consumption never claimed a victim among them. Those who have a tendency toward consumption should take easy vocal exercises, no matter how thin and weak their voices may seem to be. They will find a result at times, far surpassing any relief afforded by medicine. Vocal practise, in moderation, is the best system of general gymnastics that can be imagined, many muscles being brought into play that would scarcely be suspected of action in connection with so simple a matter as tone production. Therefore, apart from all art considerations, merely as a matter of health, one can earnestly say to the healthy, "Sing! that you may remain so," and to the weakly, "Sing, that you may become strong."—Boston Musical Herald.
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Singing Stays Panic—See Self-restraint.
SINGLENESS OF PURPOSE
The engineers of Nicholas I showed him
their map of a crooked railway line from
St. Petersburg to Moscow, explaining that it
curved this way and that to take in this and
that important interest or city, but the Czar
took a ruler and drew a straight line between
his two capitals, saying: "Build me
that road."
The secret of the Czar's engineering was simply a single purpose to join the old and new capitals of his empire. The engineers thought of one great interest this way, and another that way; but the Czar had no interests but the one. That may have been poor business, but it was good military engineering, and had it continued in Russian military autocratic government, the Japanese, in the late war, would have had harder work.—Franklin Noble, "Sermons in Illustration."
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Sisterhood—See Graciousness in Women.
SIZE, COMPARATIVE
Many a man who looks large in small surroundings, is dwarfed to a pigmy when placed among his superiors:
Since the Statue of Liberty was erected
the scale of almost everything material has
changed, especially in New York, so that
the colossus does not look even large now.
It was all very well for the Colossus of
Rhodes to straddle the harbor entrance, looking
down on the tiny sailing craft, and pigmy
buildings of its day; it could not look otherwise
than grandiose; but it would have been
swallowed up and lost among the sky-scrapers
and mammoth ocean-liners of twentieth-century
New York, with its huge bridges,
lofty towers, and all-around bigness. Nothing
counts in a work of art but quality.—Boston
Transcript.
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See Comparative, The.
SIZE NOT POWER
John Stuart Mill gives us a wonderful
contrast between man's brief day and the
enduring ages of Neptune, yet Neptune is a
frozen clod, whirling on in eternal ice and
darkness. A little ball of ice can not laugh
nor love nor sing nor curse nor faint nor
die; neither can a big ball of ice named
Neptune. It is man alone who is great, as
the regent under God. The contrast between
the insignificance of man and the greatness
of nature is based on the fallacy that bulk is
greatness. The truth is that bulk is bulk,
and concerns rocks and clods. Size is not
power. (Text.)—N. D. Hillis.
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Skill—See Headwork.
Skill by Experience—See Precautions.
Skill Solving a Problem—See Character
Conditioned by the Physical.
SKILL WITH TENDERNESS
Years ago, in Central New York, lived a Dr.
Delamater, a noted surgeon. It was before
the days of anesthetics. A woman patient
consulted him, and after examination he told
her, with tears in his eyes, that a painful
and dangerous operation was necessary.
"Proceed," said the woman. The surgeon's
success was complete. "Weren't you afraid
when you saw the surgeon affected so?" she
was asked later. "No," she said, "that was
what helped me. Those tears assured me
that the doctor was as tender-hearted as he
was skilful. I could trust such a man."
(Text.)
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SKY, THE
In landscape-painting the sky, it is said,
is the keynote, the standard of scale, and
the chief organ of sentiment; just as the
sky is the source of light in nature, and
governs everything. This led John Constable
