own relative who has been transformed into
the cruel grampus, and so must fight for life.—W. Hanna Thomson, M.D., Everybody's.
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Strongest Quality Cultivated—See Advantage, Working to the Best. STRUGGLE Contending with the globe, we are like Jacob wrestling with the angel. The fight is long and hard amid the mystery and the darkness, and the great Power seems reluctant to bless us; but the breaking of the day comes, and we find ourselves blest with corn, wine, oil, purple, feasts, flowers. Ah! and with gifts far beyond those of basket and store—ripened intelligence, self-reliance, courage, skill, manliness, virtue. Of course, man suffers in the conflict, as the patriarch did. When we see the farm laborer bent double with rheumatism, or the collier mutilated by the explosion in the mine, or the grinder with his lung gone, or the weaver with his enfeebled physique, or the seaman prematurely old through his battle with wind and wave, or any of the million workers who carry pathetic signs of the arduousness of toil, we see the limp of the victorious wrestler. In the South Seas the natives lie on their backs and the bread-fruit drops into their mouths. But these make a poor show in the grand procession of the ages. The law of life is truly severe which enjoins that man shall eat bread in the sweat of his face, but in this struggle for life our great antagonist is our great helper; we are leaving barbarism behind us; we are undergoing a magnificent transformation; we are becoming princes of God and heirs of all things.—W. L. Watkinson, "The Transfigured Sackcloth."
(3079)
See Adversity.
STRUGGLE AND GROWTH Life in crystals can be explained by the struggle for existence, which is ardent even here. In fact, if during their growth two crystals come into contact, the weaker will completely disappear, absorbed by the stronger.—Revue Scientifique.
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STUDY OVERDONE
When I see a morning procession of
pallid schoolboys staggering to school under
a load of text-books almost too heavy to
be held together by the strap that encircles
them, or a bevy of young girls, bound on the
same educational errand, more pallid and
more exhausted by the eight or ten pounds
of torture in the shape of grammars, dictionaries,
geographies, arithmetics, geometries
and philosophies, they, too, tug along the
streets, I wish their piles of knowledge
might be reduced one-half, for I can not
but feel that with fewer books there would
be more culture, that too many studies produce
too little scholarship, and that the intellect
which is forced will rarely be expanded.—James
T. Fields.
(3081)
Style—See Personal Element in Literature.
SUBCONSCIOUS ABSORPTION
Coleridge relates in his "Literaria Biographia"
that in a Roman Catholic town in
Germany a young woman who could neither
read nor write was seized with a fever,
during which, according to the priests, she
was possest by a polyglot devil. For she
talked Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, besides
uttering sounds which, tho not understood
by her hearers, had doubtless, meaning, but
belonged to languages unknown to them.
"Whole sheets of her ravings were written
out," says Coleridge, "and were found to
consist of sentences intelligible in themselves,
but having slight connection with
each other." Fortunately, a physician who,
being skeptically inclined, was disposed to
question the theory of the polyglot spirit,
"determined to trace back the girl's history.
After much trouble he discovered that at the
age of nine she had been charitably taken
by an old Protestant pastor, a great Hebrew
scholar, in whose house she lived till his
death. On further inquiry, it appeared to
have been the old man's custom for years to
walk up and down a passage of his house,
into which the kitchen opened, and to read
to himself in a loud voice out of his books.
The books were ransacked, and among them
were found several of the Greek and Latin
fathers, together with a collection of rabbinical
writings. In these works so many of
the passages taken down at the young woman's
bedside were identified that there
could be no reasonable doubt as to their
source."—Prof. Richard A. Proctor, New
York Mail and Express.
(3082)
Subjects a Necessity—See Fame, Qualifying for.
