Thoroughness is all right to talk about, but there is nothing that has been thoroughly done in this world, and it will be a good many years before anything will be thoroughly done. Talk about absolute thoroughness! It is nonsense! We may attain unto it as we attain unto perfection, but we might as well attempt to shoot the moon as to reach thoroughness or perfection in this world. Is there a single college graduate who knows thoroughly anything that he had studied in his college course? Take Latin, which the average college student studies seven solid years. What does he know when he gets through? Can he talk it? Can he even read an author which he has never before seen, with any degree of fluency and acceptability? Then take mathematics. How many students are thorough in it? We venture that the roll-call of college graduates who could be counted thorough in mathematics would be called in an extremely short space of time. Our ideals should be high. This is all right. We should aim at never doing anything in a half-way manner. But the tasks half done, the studies half learned, the books half read, and the work half accomplished constitute by far the largest portion of our lives.—School Journal.
(3232)
THOROUGHNESS IN PREPARATION
One of the remarkable characteristics displayed by Charles E. Hughes in the conduct of his important lawsuits conducted against great corporations on behalf of the people was his complete mastery of the facts entering into the cases. In regard to this characteristic, the following is illuminating as showing his painstaking preparation for his cases:
His habit of thorough preparation made
him one of the most formidable trial lawyers
in New York. When he went into court, he
could usually defeat his adversary not only
on the point directly at issue, but upon
dozens of others that might come up correlatively.
In his search for information he
never limited his investigations to law-*books.
He was once called upon to defend
a patent held by a company manufacturing
a mechanical piano-player. He mastered all
the law points involved, and then began to
work on the mechanism itself. He had an
instrument moved up to his house, and spent
many hours playing upon it, taking it apart,
and becoming entirely familiar with its mechanical
details. When Mr. Hughes appeared
in court, he confounded the experts
by his familiarity with the technicalities involved
and easily won his case.
(3233)
THOROUGHNESS, LACK OF
There are jumping men who always hit the
top bar with their heels and never quite
clear it. There are women whose stitches
always come out, and the buttons they sew
on fly off on the mildest provocation. And
there are other women who will use the same
needle and thread, and you may tug away at
their work on your coat or your waistcoat,
and you can't start a button in a generation!
There are poets who never get beyond the
first verse; orators who forget the next sentence,
and sit down; gold-diggers who buy a
pickax and stop there. There are painters
whose studios are full of unpainted pictures.
And if sluggards ever took good advice,
what long processions we should constantly
meet, slowly traveling on their way to the
ant.—James T. Fields.
(3234)
Thought Before Thing—See Utility as Theistic Evidence.
Thought, Progress of—See Progress Unfinished.
Thoughts, Beautiful—See Literature as
an Inspiration.
Thoughts from the Garden—See Upward Look.
Thrashing, the Effect of a Sound—See
Shaking-up.
Threat Ignored—See Loyalty.
Thrift—See Worth, Estimating.
Tides, Spiritual—See Flood Tide, Spiritual.
Ties—See Christian Unity.
TIME
In a recent address at Princeton University
Gen. Horace Porter, ex-Ambassador to
France, told of a chaplain at West Point
who, on one occasion, facing his audience and
about to begin his sermon, took out his watch
and laying it down deliberately before him
as a monitor, said: "In contemplating the
