text:
Page:CTRL0000034607 - Deposition of Ali Alexander, (Dec. 9, 2021).pdf/131

131 your relationship. I don't want to mischaracterize, but it sounds like you said, "The nature of our relationship is to send hyperbolic things to each other, and then we retweet them out, and we promote each other's hyperbolic things"? There is nothing illegal about that or wrong—

I think so.

—with that. I just don't want to mischaracterize what he's saying.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's—he loves comedy, he's extreme. He's funny. He's self-deprecating, and he uses clickbaity things. And, you know, sometimes I'll venture into that territory. Most times I don't, but, clearly, you know, we have some evidence in production that, you know, shows that I sometimes engage in hyperbole and exaggeration and, you know.

. That's very helpful color. Thank you.

 * BY :

Going back to this, or we're going past December 20th to December 21st. We've asked you if you recalled a meeting with Congressional Members and President Trump. You said that you do not recall that meeting, correct?

Correct.

Do you recall receiving a debrief about that meeting?

I don't recall one. I don't—today, right now, I do not recall receiving one. I have—I have volunteered in my testimony that, you know, there was some times, like, for example, when Paul Gosar had a conversation with the President or the White House and then, you know, it would be some big news or something like that.

Okay. But, for this specific situation, you don't recall this debrief from Mr. Gosar?

No, that's a very specific date, and I don't even know that he was there.


text:
Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/213

Rh and English schools found in each thana and in the whole district.

The total number of Bengali, Ooriya, and Persian schools is thus ascertained to be 778; and the proportion of each is also shown. The average number of schools in each thana is 45·7. Each school has a single teacher attached to it; there does not appear to be any instance in which two teachers are employed in the same school. The receipts of the teachers vary from one to seven or eight rupees per month, and the average of receipts by the whole body of teachers is Rupees 1-12-10. The total number of scholars is 10,129, of whom 9,819 are Hindus, and 310 Musalmans, the average number of scholars in each school being thus 13·02.

In the English school both English and Bengali are taught, and it is supported by voluntary contributions from the European and native gentlemen of Midnapore. The teacher receives a monthly salary of 50 rupees, and each scholar pays a monthly fee of one rupee. The number of scholars is 42, of whom 34 are Hindus, 6 Christians, and 2 Mahomedans. In one of the highest classes Christian books are read, it being optional with the scholars to enter it or not.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text:
Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/216

156 majority of the remaining thanas, where schools of learning, in greater or less number, are ascertained to exist.

These thirteen thanas include the whole of the district which contains in all 931 schools of every class, averaging to each thana 71·6. There is no thana without both vernacular schools and schools of Hindu learning, and the number of each is greater than in any of the other districts I have visited.


text:
Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/236

176 conversation, of verbal instruction, and of correspondence, but it is never employed as the language of literary composition.

Second.—Vernacular instruction prevails to a greater extent in the Bengal than in the Behar districts visited. Comparing the two districts of each province that have been most thoroughly investigated. South Behar and Tirhoot are found to contain 365 common schools, and Beerbhoom and Burdwan 1,041. In the latter the proportion of scholars in each school is also greater. In Tirhoot the proportion is 6·3 to each school, in South Behar 10·8, in Beerbhoom 15·4, and in Burdwan 20·9.

Third.—Both in Bengal and Behar the business of teaching common schools is chiefly in the hands of the Kayastha or writer caste. In the Bengal districts this hereditary privilege has been largely invaded by other castes both superior and inferior to the Kayastha, but still so as to leave the latter a decided majority in the class of vernacular teachers. In the Behar districts this privilege is enjoyed in nearly its pristine completeness. The following is a comparison of the number of Kayastha teachers with those of other castes

This is not an idle fact. It is one of the tests that may be applied to judge of the comparative integrity of native institutions and of the comparative condition of the people in different districts. Both the Bengal and Behar districts need an improved system of vernacular instruction; but the former appear to have undergone a social change, partaking of the nature of a moral and intellectual discipline, which removes prejudices still to be met, and provides facilities not yet to be found in the latter.

Fourth.—The reality of this social change in the one class of districts, and its absence in the other, become further apparent by a consideration of the castes by which vernacular instruction is chiefly


text:
Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/237

Rh sought. Hindu society on a large scale may be divided into three grades:—First, Brahmans who are prohibited by the laws of religion from engaging in worldly employments for which vernacular instruction is deemed the fit and indispensable preparation; second, those castes who, though inferior to Brahmans, are deemed worthy of association with them, or to whom the worldly employments requiring vernacular instruction are expressly assigned; and third, those castes who are so inferior as to be deemed unworthy both of association with Brahmans, and of those worldly employments for which vernacular instruction is the preparation. This would exclude the first and third grades from the benefits of such instruction, and in the Behar districts few of them do partake of it, while in the Bengal districts the proportion of both is considerable.

Fifth.—As another point of comparison, it is worthy of note that in each of the Bengal districts a greater or less number of the teachers bestow their instructions gratuitously, and even teachers who are paid instruct many scholars who pay nothing; while in the Behar districts I did not discover any instance in which instruction was given without compensation. The greater poverty of the people in Behar than in Bengal may, in part, explain this fact; but the principal reason probably is that the same religious merit and social consideration are not attached to learning, its possession and diffusion, in the former as in the latter province.

Sixth.—In the preceding details an attempt has been made to describe the various modes in which the teachers of common schools are remunerated, and to ascertain the mean rate payment in each district, reducing all the items to a monthly estimate. The mean rate is—

The returns on this subject are to be taken with some explanations. It is possible that some sources of regular profit to teachers, in themselves insignificant, but to them not unimportant, may have been overlooked; and occasional profits, such as presents from old scholars, are too fluctuating and uncertain to be known or estimated. Teachers, moreover, often add other occupations to that of giving instruction; and when a teacher does not have recourse to any other employment, his income from teaching is most frequently valued chiefly as his contribution to the means of subsistence possessed by the family to which he belongs, since by itself it would be insufficient for his support. When a teacher is wholly dependent upon his own resources, and those are limited to his income in that capacity, the rate of payment is invariably higher.


text:
Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/238

178 Seventh.—The mutual disposition of Hindus and Musalmans towards each other is not an unimportant element of society in this country, and it may be partly estimated by the state of vernacular instruction. In the Beerbhoom and Burdwan districts there are thirteen Musalman teachers of Bengali schools; in the South Behar and Tirhoot districts there is only one Musalman teacher of a Hindi school, and that one is found in South Behar. In the Beerbhoom and Burdwan districts there are 1,001 Musalman scholars in Bengali schools; and in the South Behar and Tirhoot districts 177 Musalman scholars in Hindi schools, of whom five only are found in Tirhoot. The Musalman teachers have Hindu as well as Musalman scholars; and the Hindu and Musalman scholars and the different castes of the former assemble in the same school-house, receive the same instructions from the same teacher, and join in the same plays and pastimes. The exception to this is found in Tirhoot, where there is not one Musalman teacher of a Hindi school and only five Musalman scholars in the schools of that class. As far as I could observe or learn, the feeling between those two divisions of the population is less amicable in this district than in any of the others I have visited.

Eighth.—The distribution of vernacular instruction amongst the different classes of native society, considered as commercial, as agricultural, or as belonging determinately to neither, may be approximately estimated by a reference to some of the preceding details. Commercial accounts only are chiefly acquired by the class of money-lenders and retail-traders, agricultural accounts only by the children of those families whose subsistence is exclusively drawn from the land, and both accounts by those who have no fixed prospects and who expect to gain their livelihood as writers, accountants, &c. The following table shows the number of schools in which each sort of accounts is taught separately, or both together


text:
Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/239

Rh This statement tends to show that vernacular instruction is chiefly sought by the class neither strictly commercial nor strictly agricultural, but it must be considered only an approximation to the truth, for it is evident that scholars who wish to acquire commercial accounts only, or agricultural accounts only, may attend a school in which both accounts are taught. Still if the demand for both accounts was not general, schools in which both are taught would not be so numerous.

Ninth.—Exclusive of native accounts taught in native schools, and Christian instruction communicated in Missionary schools, we have here some means of judging of the extent to which written works are employed in the former and of the nature of those works. The following table exhibits the number of schools in which native written works are, and the number in which they are not, employed:—

With regard to the nature of these works, the employment of the Amara Kosha, the Ashta Sabdi, Ashta Dhatu, Subda Subanta, and the verses of Chanakya as school-books in some of the vernacular schools of the Bengal districts indicates a higher grade of instruction than I had previously believed to exist in those schools. With the exception of the verses of Chanakya, the other works mentioned are grammatical, and their use is said to have been at one time general, which would imply that they are the remains of a former superior system of popular instruction preparatory, in the case of those who could follow it up, to the more enlarged course of learned study. The remaining works used in the common schools rank low as compositions, and consist, for the most part, of the praises and exploits of the gods recognized by the established religion of the country.

Most of the topics noticed under this section would admit of extended illustration, but I have preferred merely suggesting them to the reflection of the readers of this report.


text: Page:Moving Picture Girls at Oak Farm.djvu/7


text: Page:Moving Picture Girls at Oak Farm.djvu/8


text: Page:Moving Picture Girls at Oak Farm.djvu/9


text: Page:Moving Picture Girls at Oak Farm.djvu/10


text:
Page:The Last Judgement and Second Coming of the Lord Illustrated.djvu/239

 meet the Lord in the air." Here, as in the original prediction, the Lord's coming is declared, the attendant angels, the trumpet, and the clouds are plainly spoken of. The gathering together of the elect in the Lord's narrative, is put by the Apostle as "the dead in Christ rising first;" and the circumstance of the elect being gathered from the winds, in the former, is spoken of in the latter, as meeting the Lord im the air. It is, therefore, most plain that the Apostle, when writing to the Thessalonians, was not delivering to them original information on the point, but simply stating, in his own way, that which, he had been informed the Lord had said upon the subject. He was not present when the discourse was delivered, and every one knows how terms suffer and become changed by traditional handling: this being so, the figurative character of the Lord's description is not at all disturbed by the Apostle's paraphrase; and, consequently, any effort to construe it naturally, is to do violence to its proper signification, and to create in the imagination the idea of phenomena which appal reason, defy philosophy, and which never can be realized.

As, then, it is most true that the Lord's description of His second coming to judgment is given in purely figurative language, and as the opinions which are commonly entertained upon this subject are drawn from that description, interpreted in a merely literal sense, it follows that such interpreters have not perceived its true signification. What that is we shall endeavour to discuss and elucidate in another chapter. In the meantime we may observe, that in our view of the case the prediction was never designed to receive any literal fulfilment on the plane of our natural earth, and that the actual scene of the occurrence was to be


text: The Moving Picture Girls at Oak Farm

title: The Moving Picture Girls at Oak Farm


text:
Page:The Last Judgement and Second Coming of the Lord Illustrated.djvu/240

 the world of spirits. It will not, on this account be any less real, because we view the world of spirits, not as a mist or a vapour, but as a substantial and enduring reality. Still, although we believe that the second coming of the Lord and the execution of His judgment will take place there, we also believe that the evidence that they have actually occurred will in due time be made manifest in the world of men; and that it will be found in the great changes which will take place in men's thoughts and actions in regard to spiritual things, and especially in the provision of materials for securing the freedom and enlarging the intellect of the Church. At all events, we affectionately urge upon the reader a careful remembrance of the facts, arguments, criticisms, and suggestions which have now been adverted to. They have been put forth in no other spirit than that of the love of truth, and in the humble hope of exciting the attention of those who will look at the subjects with intelligence and candour.


text:
Page:The Last Judgement and Second Coming of the Lord Illustrated.djvu/242

 230 THE LAST JUDGMENT. AND

Doctrines that are mysterious cannot teach.—The difficulty of a corrupted Church seeing its corruptions.—The inquiry. How is such a Church to be informed of its condition? replied to.—The external continuance of such a Church no proof that it possesses spiritual light and vitality.—Illustrations.—The continuance of the Jewish Church.—Divisions, characteristics of a fallen Church. —None of those divisions acquainted with the true nature of the inspiration of the Word.—The animosities which exist between the two great divisions of the Church.—The mysterious doctrines which are taught by both.—The occasion of the second coming of the Lord to be sought for in the corruption of those doctrines which He taught at His first advent.—Judgment upon a fallen Church requisite to prepare the way for the excellences of its successor.— Hlustrations.—The professing Christian Church, as to light and purity, atan end.—The second coming of the Lord begun.—Resumé and conclusion.

that the doctrines concerning the destruction of the earth, the cessation of the human race, and the resurrection of the material body are not founded in the teachings of the Divine Word, nor countenanced by any known principles of natural philosophy; seeing, also, that there is a region in the spiritual world which is the first common receptacle for the souls of all who die, and, that that region is the scene in which the Lord executes His final judgments upon them,—we are prepared to enter more directly upon the consideration of the subject of the Lord's second coming than we should have been without such information. If those several doctrines had not been considered with a view to a new explanation of them, the popular opinions respecting them would have been continually rising up in the minds of orthodox(?) readers, and interposing obstacles to the right understanding of our views and arguments, by suggesting some seeming evidences against them. These having been anticipated and removed, the way is now open for a freer exposition of our subject. We, therefore, proceed to


text:
Page:The Last Judgement and Second Coming of the Lord Illustrated.djvu/243

 consider the occasion and purpose of the Lord's second coming.

Of these the Lord has given us a remarkable description in the twenty-fourth chapter of Matthew. He therein states as the occasion of His coming, a variety of calamities which would, in the process of time, set in upon the Church He was then engaged in planting. The disciples asked Him what should be the sign of His coming. His answer follows: "Take heed that no man deceive you. For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many. And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. All these are the beginning of sorrows. Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name's sake. And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another. And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many. And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved. And this Gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come." This is the first general group of facts by which the Lord replied to the disciples' question; and it seems to us that their signification is not to be sought for in those outer events of the world which the letter apparently declares, but rather in those inner experiences of the Church, concerning which it is the main object of the Word to treat. Na-


text:
Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/234

174

Thus 80 teachers receive in all rupees 123-4-3, which averages to each teacher rupees 1-8-7 per month.

Among the 80 teachers there are only two that have school-houses, and those are miserable huts,—one built at a cost of five, and the other at a cost of three, rupees. The others accommodate their scholars in verandahs, shops, out-houses, baithak-khanas, &c.

In 80 schools the total number of scholars is 507, giving to each school an average of 6·3. The average age of the scholars at the time that the schools were visited was 9·2 years; their average age at the time when they entered school was 5·03 years, and their average age at the time when they would probably leave school was 13·1 year. The average period passed at school would thus appear to be about eight years.

Of the scholars, five are Musalmans and 502 are Hindus, all of whom were present when the schools were visited. The following are the castes of the Hindu scholars and the number of each:—

Of all the districts I have visited vernacular instruction is here at the lowest ebb, denoted both by the small number of schools and


text:
Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/286

226 both of excess and defect, as will appear from the following comparison:—

The ascertained number of inhabited villages in thana Nanglia and Bhawara is greater, and in thanas Daulatbazar, Culna, and Jehanabad less, than the official number of villages. The excess in the two former may be attributed to the extension of cultivation in the Beerbhoom and Tirhoot districts, leading to the gradual formation of new villages. The causes of deficiency in the three latter I had not the means of satisfactorily investigating, but I have met with individual instances of the abandonment of villages which were popularly ascribed to pestilence, with others caused by the encroachments of the neighbouring river, with others that were attributed to disagreement with European settlers, and with others that were alleged to have arisen from the quarrels of adjoining zemindars leading to excessive exactions from the cultivators.

Second.—The average number of families in each village is an evidence and measure of a comparatively dense or sparse population. The following are the results in the different thanas:—

The extremes are Culna and Jehanabad, the former a populous thana of a very populous district, and the latter a thana of a district not remarkable for the scantiness, but for the dispersion of its population. Intermediate degrees of social aggregation are found in the other three thanas. Compared with the other Bengal districts Beerbhoom is thinly peopled, but it will be observed that the average number of families in each village in thana Nanglia of that district, although the lowest of the Bengal averages, is greater than the highest of the Behar averages, tending to show the


text:
Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/287

Rh comparative sparseness of the population throughout Behar. The cause of this and of other effects will probably be found in the extreme sub-division of landed property in that province; but whatever the cause, the fact is necessary to be known in framing suitable measures for the promotion of general instruction.

Third.—For the purpose of comparison I subjoin in one view the number of persons in each family, taking the different classes of the population collectively and separately—

The average number of persons in each family in the city of Moorshedabad is less than the corresponding results in the Mofussil thanas of the respective districts, and one cause of this will be found in the fact that the number of traders, shop-keepers, and day-laborers who resort to Moorshedabad from the surrounding or more distant districts without their families is great. There are also three classes of women who have no families, and who are found in considerable numbers within the limits of the city jurisdiction, viz., public women; aged women, who reside on the banks of the Bhagarathi on account of the holiness which its waters confer; and widows. The number of widows is alleged to be greater in the city than in the country, in consequence of the greater prevalence of epidemic diseases which are believed by the natives to be more fatal to the male than to the female sex. All these causes, affecting both the male and female population, combine to increase the number of families consisting of one or two individuals, and consequently to lessen the general average of persons in each family in the city. The five Mofussil thanas differ very little from each other,—the lowest average being less than a quarter of a unit below, and the highest less than a half above five persons in each family which may, therefore, be deemed the mean rate. The difference between the Hindu and Musalman


text:
Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/288

228 averages is small, and is sometimes in favour of the Hindu and sometimes of the Mohammadan division of the population. The difference is greatest in the Jehanabad thana, where it is more than half a unit in favour of the Hindus. The Santhal and Dhangar averages in the Beerbhoom district are high compared with the Hindu and Musalman averages of the same district, which may be accounted for by the more peaceable habits of the former classes and the stronger disposition of relations to live together. The number of Native Christian families is so small that no conclusion can be founded on the results exhibited.

Fourth.—The proportion of Hindus to Musalmans and others in the different localities is subjoined—

These proportions must be considered as strictly limited to the localities mentioned, without extending them to the districts to which the respective thanas belong, because the proportions differ not only in different districts, but in different thanas of the same district. The variety of results shows the necessity of a more complete and general census; and the only positive conclusion possessing any value is that which respects the city of Moorshedabad because it embraces an entire and separate jurisdiction. Within that jurisdictifln the proportion is as two Hindus to nearly one Musalman, while in the Daulatbazar thana of the Moorshedabad district the proportion of Musalmans is greater.

Fifth.—The following are the proportions of males to females in the different localities:—


text:
Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/291

Rh I estimated the Rajshahi average at 1, which is in excess of all these averages subsequently ascertained, from which it may be inferred that the number of children receiving domestic instruction in that district was probably over-estimated.

Second.—The limited extent of domestic instruction will appear from a comparison of the number of families, Hindu and Musalman, in which it is, with the number in which it is not, given—

Third.—A comparison of the number of children receiving domestic instruction with the number capable from age of receiving will furnish still more precise data—


text:
Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/292

232 Fourth.—One other step is necessary to arrive at a definite conclusion respecting the number and proportion of the instructed and uninstructed juvenile population, viz., by adding, together the number of children receiving domestic and school instruction, and deducting the aggregate from the total number of children of the teachable age. The number of children given below as receiving school instruction include those who in the city of Moorshedabad and in the thanas specially mentioned receive instruction whether in Bengali, Hindi, Persian, English, orphans or girls’ schools, and exclude the students in Sanscrit and Arabic schools as being generally above 14 years of age and belonging to the adult population. The students of the Nizamat College in the city of Moorshedabad are also considered as belonging to the adult population:—

The last column of the preceding table expresses, as far as mere number and proportion can express, the sum and substance of this report. It shows that, in the Culna thana of the Burdwan district, where the amount of instruction is greater than in any other of the localities mentioned, of every 100 children of the teachable age, 16 only receive any kind or degree of instruction, while the remaining 84 are destitute of all kinds and all degrees of it; and that, in the Bhawara thana of the Tirhoot district, where the amount of instruction is less than in any other of the localities mentioned, of every 100 children of the teachable age, 2 only receive any kind or degree of instruction, while the remaining 97 are destitute of all kinds and all degrees of it. The intermediate


text:
Page:Dante and the early astronomers (1913).djvu/25

 Therefore, for full enjoyment and understanding of Dante's works it is necessary to have a rudimentary knowledge of astronomy.

Many of his readers think that Dante's astronomy is very complicated and difficult to understand. What makes it seem difficult is that in this age we are generally unfamiliar with the skies. We do not eat our breakfast or go to our office by the sun, nor do we watch the stars to see when grouse-shooting begins or the summer holidays end. If it is important for us to know at what hour the sun sets and lamps must be lighted, or if we wish to see a view by moonlight, we consult an almanac. When we think at all of the movements of the heavenly bodies, our notions are usually taken from diagrams and tables, not from what is actually seen in the skies. We only think, for instance, of the seasons as caused by the earth's journey round the sun, and the tilt of her axis: therefore, when Dante speaks of Venus as a Morning Star veiling the Fishes with her rays, or the horn of the Celestial Goat touching the sun, it conveys little, although the seasons of spring and of winter are as clearly indicated as if he had spoken of the blossoming of primroses or the fall of snow. When Cacciaguida, in the heaven of Mars, tells the date of his birth by counting how many times the planet had since then returned to his Lion, those who only think of Mars as circling round the Sun, and have never traced his path among the stars, are at a loss, and think the method very far-fetched. A short description, and especially a little individual watching, of the apparent movements of the heavenly bodies, would put us in a position to realize the meaning of a large number of Dante's astronomical descriptions


text:
Page:Dante and the early astronomers (1913).djvu/26

 and allusions, without any knowledge of any theory.

Others complain that the subject is dull. Dante's astronomy, when interpreted only by means of notes on single passages, is undoubtedly dull—as dull as the history of his own times learned in the same way. But when either subject is studied as a whole these passages acquire a special interest; and they in their turn give new life to the subject they illustrate.

Other readers say that Dante's astronomy is so entirely false and obsolete that it is not worth study. This is hardly true. Where Dante speaks of appearances he is remarkably accurate, far more so than most modern artists and writers of fiction. Where he speaks of the heavens as he supposes them actually to exist, he is interpreting the appearances according to the astronomical theories of his day, with which he was very well acquainted. This interpretation was not correct, but it was an ingenious and beautiful system, and very successful in so far as it enabled astronomers to calculate the positions of sun, moon, stars, and planets for any date. Its main outlines can be explained in a few pages, with the help of a couple of diagrams, but when presented thus, especially to those unfamiliar with the skies, it seems very strange and artificial. To appreciate it at its true worth, we must know just what are the phenomena it was intended to explain, and trace its gradual development out of man's first clear perception that the movements of sun, moon, and stars follow unchanging laws.

The story of this development is of enthralling interest, and after the system had been completed by one of the greatest mathematicians the world has seen, its later history reads like a romance. Though


text:
Page:Dante and the early astronomers (1913).djvu/27

 classical Greek origin, it was almost wholly lost to Europe for many centuries, it returned at last in Oriental dress, and its final form was given by a devout and learned Dominican friar.

It was at this time that Dante was born, and the scholar-poet immortalized the Ptolemaic system of astronomy in his verse, adding to its popularity in his own day, and making it known to thousands of readers since, who might otherwise scarcely have heard of it.

Dante's astronomy, therefore, is of wide and deep significance. To study its history is to learn a chapter in the development of the human intellect; to see the universe with his eyes is to know how it appeared, not only to his contemporaries but to men in many lands and many centuries. The system of Ptolemy was already a thousand years old when Dante studied it, and it continued to be taught long after Copernicus had introduced a truer one; nor has it ever been completely swept away, for much that it taught was accurate. The new astronomy has developed from the old, and bears traces to this day, in its phraseology, its written symbols, and its methods, of the many races and ages which have contributed to its progress.

This book, therefore, is divided into two parts. In the first, I put before my readers the elementary facts which form the foundations upon which all astronomy is based, the movements of sun, moon, stars, and planets, so far as they can be easily observed by the naked eye; then follows a sketch of the attempts which were made to interpret these observations from very early days until Dante's time. Unnecessary technicalities are avoided, but we shall try to enter into the thoughts of past generations concerning the stars, to see why they were interested, how they


text:
Page:Dante and the early astronomers (1913).djvu/28

 worked, what hindered and what helped them in their search for truth.

In the second part, we shall examine Dante's works, and see how familiar he was with the movements of the skies, and how well he understood the theories which in his time were held to explain them. We shall see how astronomy was generally regarded in his day, what books he read, and which authors influenced him most. We shall see how false is the assertion often made that in the Middle Ages men studied astronomy only for the sake of astrology, and how closely the science of the stars was connected with religion and the loftiest speculations of philosophy.

We shall also examine in particular some difficult passages connected with astronomy which occur in Dante's works, but my aim is not so much to explain all the astronomical references as to put the reader in a position to attempt an explanation himself.

My greatest ambition is to share with others the pleasure I have had in learning what Dante knew and thought about the stars, and who were the master builders who had erected through the ages the system so vividly pictured in his immortal poem.


text: Page:Dante and the early astronomers (1913).djvu/29


text: Page:Dante and the early astronomers (1913).djvu/30


text:
Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/305

Rh Burdwan, South Behar, and Tirhoot in the six years beginning with 1829 and ending with 1834:—


text:
Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/306

246

The official returns are made twice every year, embracing the periods from January to June and from July to December, and the above table is merely an abstract of the returns for the six years 1829-34. I at first intended to include a period of ten years in the table, but I found, on examination, that the returns for the two years preceding 1829 were imperfect, and those for the two years following 1834 were framed on a different model, both circumstances preventing, that strict comparison which I was desirous of making, and I therefore limited my attention to the six years for which the returns were complete and nearly uniform.

The relation of crime and instruction to each other may be ascertained by classifying all persons convicted of the same crime according to the kind and amount of instruction they have received. The returns of crime would thus exhibit whether the criminals were entirely destitute of instruction; whether they could barely decipher writing or sign their names; whether they could merely read and write; whether they possessed attainments superior to mere reading and writing, including, moral as well as intellectual instruction; whether they had received a learned education; and in each case whether it was a first or a second conviction; and what was the age and sex of the convict. It is only such returns that can enable us to judge satisfactorily of the effect of the different kinds and degrees of instruction upon the increase, diminution, or modification of crime, and of the consequent obligation on this ground imposed on the governing authority in a State to


text:
Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/307

Rh give to its subjects any particular kind or degree of instruction or to withhold it altogether. Such returns are received by the Government of France from its judicial officers, and it is worthy of the consideration of the British Indian Government whether with the above object the returns of crime in this country should be made to include the information which I have indicated.

In the absence of this detailed information we must look at crime and criminals collectively; not at the amount and degree of restraining influences imposed by education on the individual, but at the number of criminals in the mass and the different kinds of crime of which they have been convicted as compared with the amount or proportion of instruction previously ascertained to exist in society within the same local limits. The preceding abstract statement of crimes committed in five different districts during a period of six years affords the means of making this comparison which is attempted in the following table:—

The statement of the population of the four last mentioned districts is derived from Mr. Shakespear’s Police Report of 1824 to which I have had an opportunity of referring in the Judicial Department, and that of the city and district of Moorshedabad is the result of a census made by Mr. Hathorn in 1829. The proportion of the population above 14 years of age to the population below that age has been calculated from the population returns contained in Section XIII. of this Report, and the estimate of the population above 14 is founded on the proportion ascertained by actual census to prevail in one entire thana of each district, and now assumed to prevail in all the thanas of the same district for the purpose of obtaining an approximation to the total adult population. It was necessary to obtain this approximation, first, because the aggregate number of crimes can be correctly compared, not with the total population of the district,


text:
Page:The venture; an annual of art and literature.djvu/65

 POOR LITTLE MRS. VILLIERS.

"Where is little Mrs. Villiers?" demanded Miss Hooley. The question was prefaced by a disconcerting gaze directed towards the new-comer in the seat opposite—a seat presumably occupied as a rule by the lady of the diminutive.

Mrs. Lawrence concealed a smile. Though her schooldays were now somewhat dim memories, she felt distinctly like the new girl who is expected to apologize for her existence. Glancing down the long table she was aware that a pension bore a ghastly resemblance to a boarding-school, twenty years after. Was "little Mrs. Villiers" the popular girl, she wondered? And if so, on what grounds?

"She's changed her place," volunteered Miss Pembridge, a spare lady, who dressed with the chastened smartness of one ever mindful of her high calling as the niece of a bishop.

"Oh! I'm so sorry. She will be a great loss to our table, dear little thing," exclaimed Miss Mullins. She delivered the remark, amiable in substance, with the air of one hurling a bomb-shell, and Mrs. Lawrence awaited the explosion of the apparently harmless missile with some curiosity. Its effect was almost instantaneous.

"That's entirely a matter of opinion," ejaculated Miss Rigg, her opposite neighbour. The observation was attended by a prolonged sniff, and Miss Mullins' comfortable fat face


text:
Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/299

Rh from the preceding details the proportion of the instructed to the uninstructed adult population—

The total adult population is the population, male and female above 14 years of age, including the students both of Hindu and Mahomedan schools of learning as being generally above that age; and the instructed adult population is the total number of those who were ascertained to possess any kind or degree of instruction from the lowest grade to the highest attainments of learning. The result is a natural consequence of the degree of instruction found to exist amongst the juvenile population, and is confirmatory of the proportions given in p. 232. The Culna thana of the Burdwan district in which the highest proportion of juvenile instruction was found is that also in which the highest proportion of adult instuction is found, viz., about nine in every 100, leaving 91 of the adult population wholly uninstructed. The Bhawara thana of the Tirhoot district in which the lowest proportion of juvenile instruction was found is that also in which the lowest proportion of adult instruction is found, viz., two and three-tenths in every 100, leaving 97 and seven-tenths of the adult population wholly uninstructed. The intermediate proportions have also a correspondence, thana Jehanabad having a proportion of less than five, and thana Daulatbazar a proportion of more than four, in every 100 possessing some kind and degree of instruction, leaving about 95 in the former and 96 in the latter wholly uninstructed; while thana Nanglia has a proportion of five and three-tenths and the city of Moorshedabad a proportion of 7 in every 100 possessing some instruction, leaving 94 and seven-tenths in the former and 92, in the latter wholly uninstructed. Thus in the comparison of one locality with another of the state of adult


text:
Page:The venture; an annual of art and literature.djvu/66

 slowly crimsoned with indignation. While she meditated a sufficiently crushing retort, her opportunity for making it was cut short by the first speaker.

"Where's she going to sit then?" enquired Miss Hooley, refusing macaroni with the air of one wearied with an oft repeated performance.

"There, of course," returned Miss Rigg, sniffing again, as she nodded in the direction of a small table near the wall.

At the table indicated a young man was already seated. His shamefaced manner of glancing about the room while he eat his soup, not only proclaimed him a fresh arrival, but one somewhat overwhelmed by the eternal feminine.

"That's too bad of you," stammered Miss Mullins. "Poor little thing!—under the circumstances too."

"The very circumstances you'd expect it under," returned Miss Rigg, with an acrimony as obvious as her sentence was obscure."

"I agree with Miss Mullins entirely. Potatoes raw again," exclaimed Miss Hooley.

During the course of the dinner, Mrs. Lawrence learnt to disentangle this lady's ejaculations about the food, from the main trend of her conversation, but the effect was at first confusing.

"She's very late," ventured Miss Pembridge diluting with filtered water the dangerous strength of her vin ordinaire.

"Got to dress up for the occasion of course," was Miss Rigg's instant explanatinonexplanation [sic]. "Ah! here she comes, at last.


text:
Page:The venture; an annual of art and literature.djvu/67

 Now you'll see whether I'm right!"

Mrs. Lawrence looked up with interest as the door opened, and noticed that "little Mrs. Villiers" was not only very pretty but also singlarlysingularly [sic] childish in appearance.

Her hair—soft brown fluffy hair, hung in baby tendrils on her forehead and round her little ears, and her wide opened blue eyes had the wondering half startled child-look so touching in baby faces. She was very simply dressed in white muslin, and a row of pink corals round her throat, emphasised her youth, and the charming innocence of her expression. At the door she paused a moment, with an air of hesitation, and a surprised glance to find all the seats at the long table occupied.

Guiseppe, the waiter, darted forward. "Madame is placed at the little table to-night," he explained, leading the way.

"Oh! is my place changed then?" she murmured, following.

"Very much surprised, no doubt," ejaculated the irrepressible Miss Rigg in a triumphant undertone.

"If there's anything I despise it's a spiteful mind. Boiled beef again," said Miss Hooley in something that was intended for a whisper.

Mrs. Lawrence, meanwhile, watched with some curiosity the effect produced upon the grave young man across the room, by the sudden appearance of youth and beauty at his lonely table. He reddened visibly; moved forks and spoons about with nervous hesitation, and kept his eyes fixed upon the rim of his plate.


text:
Page:Moving Picture Girls at Oak Farm.djvu/11

" aboard for Oak Farm!"

"Are we all here; nobody missing?"

"What a relief to get out of the hot city, with summer coming on!"

"Yes, I'm so glad we can go!"

These were only a few of the expressions that came from a motley assemblage of persons as they stood in a train shed in Hoboken, one June morning. Motley indeed was the gathering, and more than one traveler paused to give a second look at the little group. Perhaps a brief list of them may not be out of place.

There were four pretty girls, two of the innocent type that can so easily forget their own good looks; two not so ingenuous, fully aware that they had certain charms, and anxious that they be given full credit for them.


text:
Page:Moving Picture Girls at Oak Farm.djvu/12

2 Then there was a man, with rather long black hair, upon which perched, rather than fitted, a tall silk hat that had lost its first sheen. If ever "actor" was written in a man's make-up it was in the case of this personage. Beside him stood, attired much the same, but in garments that fitted him better, another who was obviously of the theater, as were the two girls who were so aware of their own good looks.

Add to this two or three young men, at least two of whom seemed to hover near the two girls who were innocently unaware of their beauty; a bustling gentleman who seemed nervous lest some of the party get lost, a motherly-looking woman, with two children who were here, there and everywhere; another man who looked as though all the milk and cream in the world had turned sour, and finally one on whose round German face there was a gladsome smile, which seemed perpetual—and you have the main characters.

No, there was one other—a genial man who seemed to be constantly trying to solve some puzzle, and taking pleasure in it.

And these personages were waiting for a train. That was evident. You might have puzzled over their occupation and destination, as many other travelers did, and the problem would not have been solved, perhaps, until you had a glimpse of the markings on their trunks. But when you


text:
The Day's Work

 * The Day's Work (1899), a short story collection by Rudyard Kipling
 * "The Day's Work" (1916), an essay by Thomas Arkle Clark

title: The Day's Work


text:
Page:The venture; an annual of art and literature.djvu/22

 THE MARKET GIRL.

(Country Song.)

Nobody took any notice of her as she stood on the causey-kerb, A-trying to sell her honey and apples, and bunches of garden herb; And if she had offered to give her wares, and herself with them too, that day, I doubt if a soul would have cared to take a bargain so choice away.

But chancing to trace her sunburnt grace that morning as I passed nigh, I went and I said, "Poor maidy, dear! And will none o' the people buy?" And so it began; and soon we knew what the end of it all must be, And I found that though no others had bid, a prize had been won by me. THOMAS HARDY.


text:
Page:Moving Picture Girls at Oak Farm.djvu/13

Rh noted the words: "Comet Film Company," you understood.

"Oh, won't it be just delightful, Ruth!" exclaimed one of the younger girls.

"It certainly will, Alice. I'm just crazy to get out where I can gather new-laid eggs and know they are fresh!"

"Little housekeeper!" exclaimed the man standing beside the one who looked as though he dreamed of nothing else but "Hamlet."

"Well, Daddy dear, won't it be just fine to have fresh eggs?" demanded the one addressed as Ruth. "If Alice thinks it's easy to get them in the city"

"Now Ruth DeVere, you know I was only chaffing!" exclaimed Alice. "But I don't believe you'll get much chance to gather eggs, Ruth."

"Why not?"

"Those two youngsters will claim that as one of their daily—chores—I believe they're called on a farm," and with laughing brown eyes she motioned to the boy and girl who, at that moment, were playing tag around the motherly-looking woman.

"Oh, yes, I suppose Tommy and Nellie will be after them," agreed Ruth, "But I can go with them."

"And jump off the beam in the barn down


text:
Page:The venture; an annual of art and literature.djvu/15

 divergence is quite sufficient to justify us in asking if there are not many things that are really natural, which really appear early and strong in every normal human being, which are not embodied in any of his after affairs. Whether there are not morbidities which are as fresh and recurrent as the flowers of spring. Whether there are not superstitions whose darkness is as wholesome as the darkness that falls nightly on all living things. Whether we have not treated things essential as portents; whether we have not seen the sun as a meteor, a star of ill-luck.

It would at least appear that we tend to become separated from what is really natural, by the fact that we always talk about those people who are really natural as if they were goblins. There are three classes of people for instance, who are in a greater or less degree elemental: children, poor people, and to some extent, and in a darker and more terrible manner, women. The reason why men have from the beginning of literature talked about women as if they were more or less mad, is simply because women are natural, and men, with their formalities and social theories, are very artificial. It is the same with children; children are simply human beings who are allowed to do what everyone else really desires to do, as for instance, to fly kites, or when seriously wronged to emit prolonged screams for several minutes. So again, the poor man is simply a person who expends upon treating himself and his friends in public houses about the same proportion of his income as richer people spend on dinners or hansom cabs, that


text:
Page:Moving Picture Girls at Oak Farm.djvu/14

4 into the hay! Won't that be fun!" cried Alice. "I haven't done that—not in years, when we went once to grandfather's farm. Oh, for a good jump into the fragrant hay!"

"Why, Alice, you wouldn't do that; would you?" asked Ruth, as she straightened her sailor.

"She may—and you may all have to!" spoke the man who seemed in charge of this odd theatrical company.

"How is that, Mr. Pertell?" asked Ruth.

"Well, you know we're going to make moving pictures of all sorts of rural scenes that will fit in the plays, and jumping into a haymow may be one of them," he laughed.

"I refuse to do any such foolishness as that!" broke in the tragic actor. "I have demeaned myself enough already in this farce and travesty of acting, and to jump into a haymow—ye gods! Never!" and he seemed to shudder.

"Oh, I guess you'll do it, Mr. Bunn, or give up your place to someone who will," said Mr. Frank Pertell, the manager, calmly.

The tragic actor sighed, and said nothing.

"Huh! Yes! Jumping around in barns! Some of us will break our arms or legs, that's certain!" exclaimed the man who looked as though all the world were sad. "I know some accident will happen to us yet."


text:
Page:The venture; an annual of art and literature.djvu/16

 is a great deal more than he ought. But nothing can be done until people give up talking about these people as if they were too eccentric for us to understand, when, as a matter of fact, if there is any eccentricity involved, we are too eccentric to understand them. A poor man, as it is weirdly ordained, is definable as a man who has not got much money; to hear philanthropists talk about him one would think he was a kangaroo. A child is a human being who has not grown up; to hear educationalists talk one would think he was some variety of a deep-sea fish. The case of the sexes is at once more obvious and more difficult. The stoic philosophy and the early church discussed woman as if she were an institution, and in many cases decided to abolish her. The modern feminine output of literature discusses man as if he were an institution, and decides to abolish him. It can only timidly be suggested that neither man nor woman are institutions, but things that are really quite natural and all over the place.

If we take children for instance, as examples of the uncorrupted human animal, we see that the very things which appear in them in a manner primary and prominent, are the very things that philosophers have taught us to regard as sophisticated and over-civilised. The things which really come first are the things which we are accustomed to think come last. The instinct for a pompous intricate and recurring ceremonial for instance, comes to a child like an organic hunger; he asks for a formality as he might ask for a drink of water.


text:
Page:Moving Picture Girls at Oak Farm.djvu/15

Rh "Oh, cheer up, Mr. Sneed. The worst is yet to come, Sir Knight of the Doleful Countenance!" exclaimed a fresh-faced young man who carried under his arm a small box, from which projected a handle and a small tube. The initiated would have known it at once as a camera for taking moving pictures. "It will be jolly out there at Oak Farm, I'm sure."

"That's right, Russ! Don't let Mr. Sneed get gloomy on such a fine day!" whispered Alice DeVere. "But when is our train coming?"

"It will be made up soon," Russ Dalwood answered. "Perhaps it is ready now. I'll go and inquire."

The two girls, before spoken of as being too well aware of their own good looks, were talking together at one side of the big concrete platform beneath the train shed. As they strolled about and talked, one of them, from time to time, applied a chamois to her already well-powdered nose, and took occasional glimpses of herself in the tiny mirror imbedded in the top of the box that contained her "beautifier." Occasionally the two would glance at Alice and Ruth, and make remarks.

"Train will soon be ready for us," announced Russ Dalwood, coming back to join the rest of the theatrical troupe which, instead of presenting


text:
Page:The venture; an annual of art and literature.djvu/17

 Those who think, for instance, that the thing called superstition is something heavily artificial, are very numerous; that is those who think that it has only been the power of priests or of some very deliberate system that has built up boundaries, that has called one course of action lawful and another unlawful, that has called one piece of ground sacred and another profane. Nothing it would seem, except a large and powerful conspiracy could account for men so strangely distinguishing between one field and another, between one city and another, between one nation and another. To all those who think in this way there is only one answer to be given. It is to approach each of them and whisper in his ear: "Did you or did you not as a child try to step on every alternate paving-stone?" Was that artificial and a superstition? Did priests come in the dead of night and mark out by secret signs the stones on which you were allowed to tread? Were children threatened with the oubliette or the fires of Smithfield if they failed to step on the right stone? Has the Church issued a bull "Quisquam non pavemento?" No! On this point on which we were really free, we invented our servitude. We chose to say that between the first and the third paving-stone there was an abyss of the eternal darkness into which we must not fall. We were walking along a steady, and safe and modern road, and it was more pleasant to us to say that we were leaping desperately from peak to peak. Under mean and oppressive systems it was no doubt our instinct to free ourselves. But this truth written on the paving-stones is of even


text:
Page:Moving Picture Girls at Oak Farm.djvu/16

6 plays in a theater, posed for them before the clicking eye of the camera, the films later to be shown to thousands in the chain of moving picture playhouses which took the Comet Company's service. "We can go aboard in five minutes!" Russ added.

"That's good," sighed Ruth. "There's is nothing so tiresome as waiting. Which track will it be on, Russ?"

"Number thirteen!"

"What! Great Scott! Track thirteen! I'm not going!" cried Pepper Sneed, who had come to be known as the "grouch" of the company.

"Not going! Why not, I'd like to know?" demanded Mr. Pertell.

"Why—track thirteen—that's unlucky, you know. Something is sure to happen!"

"Well, as we have to get to Beatonville, where Oak Farm is located, and as this is the only road that goes there, I'm afraid we'll have to take that train, whether it's on track thirteen or not," declared Mr. Pertell. "Unless," he added with gentle sarcasm, "you can get the company to switch it to another track."

Mr. Sneed did not answer, but later Paul Ardite, who was one of the younger members of the company, saw the actor tieing a knot in his watch chain, and tossing a penny into a rubbish heap.


text:
Page:Moving Picture Girls at Oak Farm.djvu/17

Rh "What in the world are you doing that for?" demanded Paul.

"Trying to break the hoodoo!" exclaimed Mr. Sneed. "To start out to do new film work on track thirteen! Whew! That's terrible!"

But Paul only laughed.

"Now, is everyone here?" asked Mr. Pertell a little later, when a railroad man, through a megaphone, announced the make-up of the train.

"It seems so," remarked Mr. DeVere, who spoke in a hoarse and husky whisper, difficult to understand. In fact, as you will learn later, it was this affliction that had caused him to be acting for moving pictures instead of in the legitimate drama.

Mr. Pertell took a rapid survey of his little company, and then went off to make sure that the trunks containing the various costumes had been properly checked.

"Funny thing about Beatonville," remarked Russ to Ruth.

"Why so?" she asked.

"Oh, every time I inquired of the brakeman, or starter, where the train for that place left from, they'd laugh. I thought there must be some joke, and I asked about it."

"Was there?"

"Well, not much of one. It seems that Beatonville is about the last place in Jersey that any-


text:
Page:The venture; an annual of art and literature.djvu/18

 greater emphasis, that under liberal systems it was our instinct to limit ourselves. We limited ourselves so gladly that we limited ourselves at random, as if limitation were one of the adventures of boyhood.

People sometimes talk as if everything in the religious history of men had been done by officials. In all probability things like the Dionysian cult or the worship of the Virgin were almost entirely forced by the people on the priesthood. And if children had been sufficiently powerful in the state, there is no reason why this paving-stone religion should not have been accepted also. There is no reason why the streets up which we walk should not be emblazoned so as to commemorate this eternal fancy, why black stones and white stones alternately, for instance, should not perpetuate the memory of a superstition as healthy as health itself.

For what is the idea in human nature which lies at the back of this almost automatic ceremonialism? Why is it that a child who would be furious if told by his nurse not to walk off the curbstone, invents a whole desperate system of footholds and chasms in a plane in which his nurse can see little but a commodious level? It is because man has always had the instinct that to isolate a thing was to identify it. The flag only becomes a flag when it is unique; the nation only becomes a nation when it is surrounded; the hero only becomes a hero when he has before him and behind him men who are not heroes; the paving-stone only becomes a paving-stone when it has before it and behind it things that are not paving-stones.


text:
Page:Moving Picture Girls at Oak Farm.djvu/18

8 one ever heads for. I guess it must consist of the depot and one house—the one where the agent lives. There is only one train a day and the place is so lonesome, the starter said, that the engineer hates to stop there."

"Oh, well, we aren't going there for pleasure—we're going to work," put in Ruth. "Besides, Oak Farm isn't exactly in Beatonville; is it, Russ?"

"No, a few miles out, I believe. Well, it will be a rest for us after the rush of the city, anyhow."

"All aboard!" called a brakeman, and the Comet Film Company, bag and baggage, started for the train that was to take them to new scenes of activity.

"Why do you carry your camera, Russ?" asked Ruth, when she and her sister were seated near the young man, on whom devolved the duty of "filming," or taking, the various scenes of the plays it was planned to produce.

"Oh, I didn't know but what I might see something to 'shoot' it at," he answered, with a laugh. "You know Mr. Pertell sometimes sends films to the Moving Picture Weekly Newspaper—scenes of current events. I might catch one for him on the way."

"I see. Have you ever been to Oak Farm, Russ?"


text:
Page:The venture; an annual of art and literature.djvu/19

 There are two other obvious instances, of course, of the same instinct, the perennial poetry of islands, and the perennial poetry of ships. A ship like the Argo or the Fram is valued by the mind because it is an island, because, that is, it carries with it floating loose on the desolate elements the resources, and rules, and trades, and treasuries of a nation, because it has ranks, and shops, and streets, and the whole clinging like a few limpets to a lost spar. An island like Ithaca or England is valued by the mind because it is a ship, because it can find itself alone and self-dependent in a waste of water, because its orchards and forests can be numbered like bales of merchandise, because its corn can be counted like gold, because the starriest and dreariest snows upon its most forsaken peaks are silver flags flown from familiar masts, because its dimmest and most inhuman mines of coal or lead below the roots of all things are definite chatels stored awkwardly in the lowest locker of the hold.

In truth nothing has so much spoilt the right artistic attitude as the continual use of such words as "infinite" and "immeasurable." They were used rightly enough in religion because religion, by its very nature, consists of paradoxes. Religion speaks of an identity which is infinite, just as it spoke of an identity that was at once one and three, just as it might possibly and rightly speak of an identity that was at once black and white.

The old mystics spoke of an existence without end or a happiness without end, with a deliberate defiance, as they


text:
Page:The venture; an annual of art and literature.djvu/20

 might have spoken of a bird without wings or a sea without water. And in this they were right philosophically, far more right than the world would now admit because all things grow more paradoxical as we approach the central truth. But for all human imaginative or artistic purposes nothing worse could be said of a work of beauty than that it is infinite; for to be infinite is to be shapeless, and to be shapeless is to be something more than mis-shapen. No man really wishes a thing which he believes divine to be in this earthly sense infinite. No one would really like a song to last for ever, or a religious service to last for ever, or even a glass of good ale to last for ever. And this is surely the reason that men have pursued towards the idea of holiness, the course that they have pursued; that they have marked it out in particular spaces, limited it to particular days, worshipped an ivory statue, worshipped a lump of stone. They have desired to give to it the chivalry and dignity of definition, they have desired to save it from the degradation of infinity. This is the real weakness of all imperial or conquering ideals in nationality. No one can love his country with the particular affection which is appropriate to the relation, if he thinks it is a thing in its nature indeterminate, something which is growing in the night, something which lacks the tense excitement of a boundary. No Roman citizen could feel the same when once it became possible for a rich Parthian or a rich Carthaginian to become a Roman citizen by waving his hand. No man wishes the thing he loves to grow, for he does not wish it to alter. No


text:
Page:Moving Picture Girls at Oak Farm.djvu/19

Rh "Yes, I went up there when Mr. Pertell looked it over to see if it would do for our new rural dramas."

"What sort of a place is it?" asked Alice.

"Very nice—for a farm."

"Isn't there something queer about it?" asked Ruth. "I mean wasn't there some sort of a mystery connected with Sandy Apgar, the young farmer who works it? You know we met him in New York," she added to Alice.

"Yes, I remember."

"Mystery?" spoke Russ, musingly. "Well, I believe there is something wrong about the place—not exactly a mystery, though. Maybe it's some sort of trouble. Well, here we go!"

The train had started out into the "wilds of Jersey," as Wellington Bunn, the tragic actor, put it. It was about forty miles to Beatonville, the trip occupying nearly two hours, for the train was not a fast one. The members of the company conversed on various topics in regard to some of the projected plays.

The train had stopped at a small station, and was gathering speed when there suddenly came such an application of the air brakes as to cause several persons in the aisle to fall. Others slid from their seats, or were thrown against the backs of the seats in front of them.

"What is it?"


text:
Page:The venture; an annual of art and literature.djvu/21

 Imperialist would be pleased if he came home in the evening from business and found his wife eight feet high.

The dangers upon the side of this transcendental insularity are no doubt considerable. There lies in it primarily the great danger of the thing called idolatry, the worship of the object apart from or against the idea it represents. But he must surely have had a singular experience who thinks that this insular or idolatrous fault is the particular fault of one age. We are not likely to suffer from any painful resemblance to the men of Thermopylae, the Zealots, who raged round the fall of Jerusalem, to the thunderbolts of Eastern faith and valour who hurled themselves on the guns of Lord Kitchener. If we are rushing upon any destruction it is not, at least, upon this.

G. K. CHESTERTON.


text:
Page:Moving Picture Girls at Oak Farm.djvu/20

10 "What's the matter?"

"An accident—let's get out!"

Before anyone could do anything, though, there was a terrific smash, and amid the wild tooting of a whistle could be heard the crashing and splintering of wood. Then the train came to a stop with a jerk that further scattered the frightened passengers.

"A smash-up!"

"A collision!"

"Oh, let's get out of here!"

No one could tell who was saying these things. They were shouted over and over again.

Russ Dalwood picked himself up from the floor of the car. A glance told him that no member of the company had been more than jarred or shaken, for their car was intact, and no windows were broken.

He helped Alice back to her seat, from which she had slid. Ruth had risen to her feet. Russ caught up his camera and made for the door.

"Oh, where are you going?" cried Alice, nervously clutching her leather purse. "Is any one hurt?"

"I don't know—I'm going to see," answered Russ. "And I'm going to film this smash. I may be able to get some good pictures for our newspaper service, Mr. Pertell," he added, as he hurried out.


text: The Moving Picture Girls at Oak Farm/Chapter 1


text: Index:Isis very much unveiled - being the story of the great Mahatma hoax (IA b24884273).pdf


text: Index:The Sunday Eight O'Clock (1916).pdf


text:
Index:The Sunday Eight O'Clock (1916).pdf/styles.css

.chapter { text-align: center; text-transform: uppercase; font-style: italic; font-size: 120%; margin-bottom: 1.5em; }

.half { text-align: center; text-transform: uppercase; font-size: 120%; }

.poem { font-size: 92%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 2em; }


text: Page:The Sunday Eight O'Clock (1916).pdf/1


text: Page:The Sunday Eight O'Clock (1916).pdf/2


text: Page:The Sunday Eight O'Clock (1916).pdf/3


text: Page:The Sunday Eight O'Clock (1916).pdf/4


text: Page:The Sunday Eight O'Clock (1916).pdf/5


text: Page:The Sunday Eight O'Clock (1916).pdf/6


text: Page:The Sunday Eight O'Clock (1916).pdf/7


text: Page:The Sunday Eight O'Clock (1916).pdf/8


text: Page:The Sunday Eight O'Clock (1916).pdf/9


text: Page:The Sunday Eight O'Clock (1916).pdf/10


text:
Page:The Sunday Eight O'Clock (1916).pdf/11

ROBABLY most of the readers of these brief homilies will close the book with a smile at the little foibles or serious faults of their brother men, possibly known to them by name, at whom the gentle criticisms are pointed. Most of us will believe that we have long ago been promoted from the primer of conduct. We can enjoy the reminiscences of our youthful shortcomings called up by these chapters; the humor, the style, the human sympathy and charity that make for a better common understanding, they all appeal to us. And yet few will fail to admit, quite tacitly no doubt, that we too share the weaknesses of those who inspired the sermons, and that we can use the advice.

They are inspired indeed. For they are all documents of real experience; behind each is at least one episode fresh from the


text:
Page:The Sunday Eight O'Clock (1916).pdf/12

 life of college students, which is quite like the life of mankind in general. The simple, homely truths of existence, the lessons of human intercourse here told us, the sound and helpful and kindly advice are not new in the world, but they must be taught over and over again, and they have not often been 80 well expressed. Because they have been well told, made real and vivid and impressive to the readers of the Daily Illini of the University of Illinois where they have appeared every Sunday for the past year or so, it has seemed desirable that they should be preserved.

Probably no one person needs the guidance or advice offered by many of these little sermons; one might react unfortunately to a reading of all of them at a sitting. But every one of them has gone home to some readers. Many of them have had surprising results. Within a few days after "The Uncertain Mail" first appeared no fewer than forty guilty consciences sought pardon from


text:
Page:The Sunday Eight O'Clock (1916).pdf/13

 the Dean. They had never known that courteous but unsolicited notes should be answered, or they had meant to write, but. . . . And how many, secretly and ashamed, made new resolutions, not because of this one reminder only, but of others as well?

I recall the interested surprise with which Dean Clark told me of the elderly man who called, after reading one of these, to ask what was clearly to him an embarrassingly personal question.

"Dean Clark", he said, "I've lived a long while, and have eaten baked potatoes with a spoon as long as I can remember. I am chagrined, but helpless, as I read your reference to that practice of mine. How then should I eat a baked potato?"

Not all of us will be willing thus candidly to admit how often our foibles are illuminated in the pages of this book.

November, 1916


text: Page:The Sunday Eight O'Clock (1916).pdf/14


text: Page:The Sunday Eight O'Clock (1916).pdf/15


text: Page:The Sunday Eight O'Clock (1916).pdf/16


text:
Page:The Sunday Eight O'Clock (1916).pdf/17

SUPPOSE it seems pretty tough to have to get back to hard work," a freshman said to me as we were sitting together on the train that was bringing me back to the University from a summer of sight-seeing and freedom from office routine. What I said in reply is perhaps beside the mark, but the fact, and my text, remains that the day's work for each of us should have our interest and our best efforts, should bring us a measure of joy, and should not be delayed or done badly because of past pleasures or present allurements.

The boy entering college is likely to have at first a misconception as to what for him the real work of the day is. He has but recently broken away from the attachments and duties of home, and he often falls into a maelstrom of attractions at college. It is not strange, often, that he should frequently


text:
Page:The Sunday Eight O'Clock (1916).pdf/18

 see things out of proportion, and that he should not at once recognize the fact that for him the real day's work is his college work—the assignments which from day to day he will jot down in a friendly note book, as they come from the lips of his various instructors. Other things may be important, but they are only incidental.

A few months ago I saw a body of Scotch Highlanders—five thousand of them—marching away to war. They were farmers, clerks, laboring men of all sorts who had left their regular work, their friends and their families to take up the business of war. Most of them have since met death upon a foreign shore. For many of them there was much joy and comfort and love left behind; for all of them there was sacrifice and privation and the danger of death ahead. But all of these hardships were for them a part of the day's work, and they were going to it with firmness and courage and with faces set. No doubt their minds were


text:
Page:The Sunday Eight O'Clock (1916).pdf/19

 filled with the thoughts of the friends they were leaving behind; they would have been something less than human if they had not thought occasionally of the danger ahead; but whatever they thought or felt there was fight in their eyes, and they marched straight ahead, to the accomplishment of their tasks.

It is with that sort of spirit that the freshman should go to his work. Every day will have its special tasks; these should be done and done within the time assigned for them. He will not always find them easy or pleasant. The soldiers that I saw were carrying guns that, no doubt, galled their shoulders, and heavy knapsacks that seemed like an Old Man of the Sea about their necks; their feet were often blistered and sore, but they marched on; the day's work had to be done.

A young man said to me not long ago in explaining his failures of last year: "My work was very difficult, and I could not get interested in it, so I shirked it." Such a man would make a poor soldier, just as he


text:
Page:The Sunday Eight O'Clock (1916).pdf/20

 made a poor student. Whatever your day's work is you should go to it with courage and vigor. If it is difficult you will get so much the more training out of it if you manage to do it. If it is not to your liking so much the more to your credit if you do it well. All sorts of things will call you away from it, some of them very good in themselves—physical and social pleasures, the picture shows, your new-made friends—but so far as they take your mind off the real business of the day they are bad. The day's work must be done.

And you will find as you address yourself manfully to the task of doing your college work that gradually it will grow easier, gradually your interest and your pleasure in it will increase, and finally you will come, as most men do who have chosen wisely, to look forward to it with real pleasure and to leave it with regret.

September


text:
Page:The Sunday Eight O'Clock (1916).pdf/21

WAS sitting in the office at the close of a tiresome registration week when he came in shyly and apologetically. He was a freshman, two thousand miles from home, he said, and he was sick—too sick to study, too sick to eat.

I inquired as to his symptoms, but they were indefinite, elusive. He was suffering, but his pain was not "localized" as the physicians say. As I suggested remedies, other troubles presented themselves, until finally he broached the subject of going home, and I knew he was homesick. I fixed him up—no matter how. The main point of the story is that he stuck; he fought it out as every manly boy does. He is an instructor now teaching other freshmen, and very likely has forgotten the whole circumstance.


text:
Page:The Sunday Eight O'Clock (1916).pdf/22

 If in all the disorder and confusion of the new duties and the new scenes incident to the opening of college some lonesome freshman has felt the call of home, there is nothing in that to be ashamed of. Perhaps those who have not had these feelings are less to be commended than those who have. It is rather a credit than otherwise to be in love with home.

Before long, if you keep at it, the interest in your daily work will develop, the thing which seemed so chaotic and confused will resolve itself into the orderly and the familiar; friends will spring up, pleasant associations will be formed—associations almost as pleasant, perhaps, as those you had at home, and the pain and the longing will grow less. As I recall them now, the boys who have grown homesick have usually been those who have cared most for the ideals and the principles of home; they have been good boys who, if they stayed, have developed into strong men.


text:
Page:The Sunday Eight O'Clock (1916).pdf/23

 Some day not far distant as you catch a glimpse of a newly formed friend across the green quadrangle stretching in front of University Hall, or as you see "Bart" kick a difficult goal on Illinois Field or Pogue carry the ball across the line for a touchdown, a wave of feeling will rush over you, and you will realize that you are a part of it all, and that it is your college and your campus, and your team, and that it is home here, and you love it.

And the homesick feeling will be gone.

September


text: Page:The Sunday Eight O'Clock (1916).pdf/24


text:
Page:The Sunday Eight O'Clock (1916).pdf/25

WAS ten, I suppose, and the pup and I were wandering across the dry stubble of prairie grass. I was picking my way cautiously in a vain endeavor to save my bare feet from the sharp ends of the dead weeds. The pup—young, curious, and unsophisticated—was making wide excursions in all directions, searing up flocks of quails or nosing in a gopher's hole. I was carrying a jug of water to the men in the hay field; the pup was intent on new experiences.

We had not gone far until we came upon a bumble bees' nest buried under the prairie sod. The bees were not in a good humor.

They were buzzing about petulantly, and, remembering former experiences, I veered to one side. The pup was fascinated. He showed interest, but with head erect he kept at first at a safe distance. Then, his curios-


text:
Page:The Sunday Eight O'Clock (1916).pdf/26

 ity getting the better of him, he drew nearer. A hoary obese bumble bee made a pass at him, and he ran yelping to me.

The temptation to see something new was too great for him, however, and not heeding my voice, he went slowly back, stuck his nose into the hole, and was stung.

It was a sad little pup, with a limp tail and a wry distorted countenance, that trotted dejectedly and thoughtfully at my heels as we wended our way back from the hay fields. He had sought and found adventure, he had seen the world, he had had experience, but he had paid dearly for it.

His is an experience not confined to young and venturesome dogs. It is characteristic of youth. The young fellow just entering college—curious, eager, unsophisticated, full of vitality—finds it hard to avoid the bumble bees' nest. There is the temptation to grow wise, to see a little of life, to approach near enough to these untried dangers to satisfy curiosity and yet not to be stung. Few boys


text:
Page:The Sunday Eight O'Clock (1916).pdf/27

 Stung expect to come out of these derelict excursions any the worse for the experience; they want only to see; but he is the rare exception who does not ultimately feel the sting of shame or disgrace, and physical pain.

The girl who is eager to be a good fellow, who is out for a lark, and who laughs at conventionalities, is running into the bumble bees' nest. She will hardly be able to keep herself from criticism, from vulgar cheap comment, from the sting of a tarnished reputation.

It is a foolish pup that sticks his nose into a bees' nest.

September


text: Page:The Sunday Eight O'Clock (1916).pdf/28


text:
Page:The Sunday Eight O'Clock (1916).pdf/29

DEAR old lady whom I once knew used to say in evidence of the fact that she had not wasted her eighty years, that she had never belonged to a club or been a member of a committee.

Hers was, perhaps, an extreme view to take, and one not likely to be accepted by the impulsive undergraduate. There is no doubt much to be said in favor of belonging to something. To do so may widen one's acquaintance and develop his initiative and increase his responsibility and his power of leadership, but whether it does or not very few fellows who are asked to join anything can find it in their hearts to refuse. It is a sort of flattery which we all fall for.

At this season of the year, however, when clubs are multiplying and lists of prospective members are being prepared, and the


text:
Page:The Sunday Eight O'Clock (1916).pdf/30

 nets are being laid to ensnare the unsophisticated, it is possibly not unwise to sound a soft note of warning. The man who asks you to join something is like a promoter or an insurance solicitor or a book agent. He presents the invitation so skillfully that it seems like a rare privilege that one can not afford to slight, or the opportunity of a life time which one should not neglect. The prospect is alluring, but the cost is sometimes great.

One may belong to too many things. I know a number of undergraduates who belong to so many that they have time for nothing else. The joiner often has no time for his studies and no money to pay his regular bills. All his substance is wasted on his organizations, and all he has to show is a few flunks, some unpaid bills, and a collection of curiously designed pins.

Don't join anything that you haven't time to help, and don't join anything that can not be of some real service to you. A good


text:
Page:The Sunday Eight O'Clock (1916).pdf/31

 many of our undergraduate organizations are groping about with the hope that they may ultimately find some real purpose for existing besides contributing to the support of fraternity jewelers and getting their photographs in the class annual. I am repeatedly besought to suggest some real object in life for a dozen different organizations which have not yet stumbled upon anything worth doing. Joining becomes with many fellows a fad and an obsession. It overshadows every other ambition and desire. It may be good to join something, but it is imbecility to join everything.

September


text: Page:The Sunday Eight O'Clock (1916).pdf/32


text:
Page:The Sunday Eight O'Clock (1916).pdf/33

HEN I was an undergraduate in college and used to go home for the summer to work up a little physical enthusiasm on the farm, Cornelius O'Donnell, a shrewd old Irishman who lived down in the Dutch Flats and with whom we used to exchange work during harvest time, was wont regularly, after he had greeted me and inquired if I were "still down there in college," to propound the question, "Well, what are you goin' to make o' yourself?"

I am not sure that Cornelius thought that in the transformations that go on within college walls it is possible to construct a delicately wrought silk purse out of a sow's ear, but he had the feeling that any serious minded and reasonably intelligent young fellow who was willing to put in four years of good hard work could mould himself into


text:
Page:The Sunday Eight O'Clock (1916).pdf/34

 any desired shape—could make out of himself, almost anything. And he was right.

I have wondered often as I have seen each year the hundreds of new men entering college, what their individual ambition is—what they want to make of themselves. I heard our President say not long ago that it is foolish for a man to waste his time in learning in college what he could pick up at the "Corners"; he should seek something worth while.

Some fellows are satisfied with small accomplishment in college—to be the best dancer on the campus, or the keenest fusser, or the most adroit pool player or the most notorious loafer, or, without scholastic excellence, to shine in some undergraduate activity. They are setting for themselves a low standard.

My old German teacher used to say that one can buy anything from the gods if one is willing to pay what it costs. It is possible, I believe, for every healthy young


text:
Page:The Sunday Eight O'Clock (1916).pdf/35

 fellow to accomplish any reasonable ambition and to make himself about what he wishes. The price of such accomplishment is not infrequently high; it means high ideals, sacrifice, and hard work, and self-control, and self-discipline.

I come back to the old question. What are you going to make of yourself—you who are already some distance along the course? You have the materials and the opportunity to make almost anything you desire. You can become a rounder or a man of stable, reliable character; you can develop into a commonplace loafer who wastes his hours in, playing Kelly pool or penny ante, or you can become a real student who cultivates careful speech and broad interests and habits of self-control, and who does his daily task excellently.

It is up to you; you'll never again have so good a chance as now to make something of yourself.

September


text: Page:The Sunday Eight O'Clock (1916).pdf/36


text:
Page:The Sunday Eight O'Clock (1916).pdf/37

'M looking for a three-hour course to fill up my program for next semester," Gregg said to me yesterday, "Do you know of any snap course?"

Before I answered him, my mind went back to commencement time. We were sitting on the porch talking it over, Frank and I, after the fellows had left. We had been celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary of our graduation from college, and we had had three happy days together with the fellows, some of whom we had not seen since the day we parted after our commencement exercises. We had all been struck by the changes which had come to each of us, and naturally each one had swelled with satisfaction whenever some one intimated that he had changed little.

Mac had been in Arizona most of the time


text:
Page:The Sunday Eight O'Clock (1916).pdf/38

 working cruelly hard in the mines; he was bald and seamed, and crippled with rheumatism. Pete's hair, which had been a riotous bunch of black curls, was entirely white. Fred, who had been slender and smooth cheeked showed a face that bore the mark of hard struggle and a physique that pulled the scales at twice the amount he could manage when he was a freshman. Ed seemed most like himself; brown haired, smooth faced, slender as a boy, he had changed least of all. Life had been a rather easy routine for him; he had not needed money; he had struggled little; he had developed little ambition; he entered only slightly into the reminiscences and the controversies which sprang up; he had no plans for the future, little thought of the past.

After they were all gone some way we decided that Fred had gripped us most of all. He had been a wild, untrained, harum scarum fellow, who cared little for God or for his instructors. He had brought himself to the


text:
Page:The Sunday Eight O'Clock (1916).pdf/39

 front; he was the head of a big engineering plant; he had great ambitions for the future, and he was managing his men and his boys in a masterly way; best of all he had conquered himself, and all the wild passions that seemed to rage through him were under his control. His face showed character and conquest and self-mastery. You could tell by looking at him that he was strong and dependable. He had tried the hard thing and he had made good at it, while Ed was just as he used to be. He had got nowhere; he had no ambition to get anywhere. He had not sacrificed; he had not suffered, and for him there had been no development. And so as we thought it all over we decided that the man who had changed the most had done best. It is struggle that turns the hair gray and eats furrows into the face and bends the shoulders. All these suggest accomplishment and so are venerable and beautiful.

The man who is looking for the snap, for the soft job in college and out of it, is not


text:
Page:The Sunday Eight O'Clock (1916).pdf/40

 likely to get anywhere; a passive unaggressive existence means weakness and stagnation.

"No," I said to Gregg, "I can't think of any snap courses."

September


text: Index:Utopia of Usurers, and Other Essays - Chesterton (1917).djvu


text:
Page:The Sunday Eight O'Clock (1916).pdf/41

RAN into Brown the other night about eight o'clock as I was com ing down Green Street. He was with two or three companions, well known men about the campus. It was a commonplace discussion that they were carrying on, but he was swearing profanely and loudly, mixing his oaths with vulgar gutter talk. I was not shocked, for as a boy I had been thrown with all conditions of the underworld—coal heavers and river rats, and ignorant section gangs, and I had heard the talk of the riff raff that follows a threshing outfit in the —but I was surprised.

You must not class Brown as the ordinary loud-mouthed underclassman. He is a senior who has an educated, religious father and a refined, gentle mother. At home Brown is himself an active member of the leading


text:
Page:The Sunday Eight O'Clock (1916).pdf/42

 Protestant church, and sometimes at vacations he leads the Christian Endeavor meeting. At college he is a prominent man. He was wearing an "I" sweater when I met him, and he is a member of one of the best known organizations of upper classmen. He is not a coarse fellow; he has simply learned to swear as he learned in the grades to chew tobacco—because he thought it was smart and made him appear grown up. He swore at first to let people know, who would not otherwise have suspected it, what a young devil he was, and he swears now because he wants people to realize what an important character he is.

Of course, at home he doesn't swear at his mother or his father or his pastor or at any one or in the presence of any one whom he respects; and at college he is more or less careful who hears him. With his profanity he tries to impress his over-worked landlady and the laundry boy, and he awes under classmen who see a good deal of his swagger


text:
Page:The Sunday Eight O'Clock (1916).pdf/43

 and hear a good deal of his profane talk.

It is a habit easily acquired but not so easily broken. Brown does not stop to think how coarse and vulgar and commonplace it makes him; how irreverent it is. Nor does he realize how every vulgar profane word he utters throws discredit upon his teachers and his father and his mother and himself.

"Every fellow does it" is the excuse offered if one ever stops to offer an excuse. It is a common vulgar fault, too common and vulgar in fact for the college man who has opportunities and training and who, if he is to get far in the world, should have ideals above the low and the profane.

October


text: Page:The Sunday Eight O'Clock (1916).pdf/44


text:
Page:The Sunday Eight O'Clock (1916).pdf/45

'VE seen a good deal in the newspapers from time to time with reference to the certainty that if you drop a letter into the mail box at the corner of your street, it will be delivered to the proper person; but I don't believe it.

I feel somewhat as Mark Twain said he did regarding the notice of his death which he read in a country newspaper; I think the reports have been greatly exaggerated. I've read something to the effect that not more than one letter out of a million ultimately goes astray, and that that one has a good chance of being run to cover by some epistolary sleuth in the dead letter office; but I've watched the thing, and I'll have to be shown.

I had a few hours of unexpected leisure one day last summer, and feeling more than ordinarily kindly toward the human race I


text:
Page:The Sunday Eight O'Clock (1916).pdf/46

 used it to write to a few of the undergraduates who, it seemed to me, had done something that merited attention or was worthy of praise. When I had finished there were fifteen or twenty in all. The summer dragged on, and I was made happy by receiving two acknowledgments, one from McKinley, ashy little country freshman, and a gracious pleasant one from Bullard whom most people at first sight might have thought crude. I should scarcely have expected either to reply.

Now the thing that convinces me that all this talk about the reliability of the mails is wrong is the fact that I did not hear from those other eighteen letters.

Take Burton, for example, who won the western tennis championship. I'm sure that if he had received my congratulations, he would at least have acknowledged the note. He comes from a part of the country where they are fed on courtesy and good form three times a day, and he has an aunt who


text: Page:Utopia of Usurers, and Other Essays - Chesterton (1917).djvu/1


text:
Page:The Sunday Eight O'Clock (1916).pdf/47

 belongs to the Daughters of the American Revolution. A man with a past like that behind him couldn't neglect to acknowledge a simple little note.

There was Stephens, who is really a nice boy and who won the high average in Engineering and was given ninety-three in Rhetoric 1 by an instructor who came from Harvard; and Carlton who was elected to senior society and has had three years of uninterrupted training at sorority open houses; and Fulton whose uncle wrote a book and who is a prize athlete over whom seven organizations went crazy when he entered, and who finally joined the only first class fraternity in college—I'm sure the notes I wrote them were lost in the mails, or I should have heard from them.

Nancy says that I'm wrong in blaming the government, and that probably all these men got the letters that I wrote and failed to answer them through ignorance or carelessness just as some fellows keep their hats


text: Page:Utopia of Usurers, and Other Essays - Chesterton (1917).djvu/2


text:
Page:The Sunday Eight O'Clock (1916).pdf/48

 on when they talk to a woman, or fail to call after they've been invited to dinner, but that doesn't seem reasonable to me.

October


text: Page:Utopia of Usurers, and Other Essays - Chesterton (1917).djvu/3


text:
Page:The Sunday Eight O'Clock (1916).pdf/49

'VE just been up at their country place visiting the Simpkinses," George remarked to me this fall. "Cadillac, motor boat, house party, fine board, no laundry bill, nothing to pay; pretty soft."

I had met Simpkins at the end of August, and he had told me what a grind the summer had been to him. "I've had to work early and late," he said. "That family of mine had a tearing good time up north with their friends, but the bills were tremendously heavy, and you know somebody always has to pay."

The Beta Tau Sigma party, the papers said, had set a new standard for social events in this community. Nothing was lacking to make it a success—cabs, evening clothes (mostly rented), favors, theatre party, seven course luncheon—it cost a


text: Page:Utopia of Usurers, and Other Essays - Chesterton (1917).djvu/4


text:
Page:The Sunday Eight O'Clock (1916).pdf/50

 pretty sum. I wondered who was paying; father at home getting up early and going to bed late? Sister teaching, or clerking, or nursing? Mother going without the new gown or the vacation trip of which she was very much in need? These things more often than otherwise mean sacrifice; for some one has to pay.

Parker cut a pretty wide swath last year in college. He had the latest clothes; he never missed a good show—or a bad one; if anything was going on he could be found sitting in the front row, and there were unpleasant rumors about his associates. I knew his being in college was pinching at home a good deal, but his folks were quite willing to make the sacrifice in order that he might have the advantages that they had been denied. It wouldn't have been so bad if he had paid his part by boning on his college work. Mother could perhaps have afforded to deny herself a spring bonnet if son had needed the money to buy a Phi Beta


text:
Page:The Sunday Eight O'Clock (1916).pdf/51

 Kappa pin; but as it was he finished the year in debt to every one and with a scholastic average of fifty nine. Those who were paying got little for their money.

For every good time you have, for every luxury you enjoy, for every dissipation in which you indulge or graft which you take advantage of, somebody is having to pay. You may charge the account at times, but ultimately the bills come in with interest.

It is better on the whole for each man to pay his share of the bill. No one respects a boy who is always eager to sit in, but who never reaches, or reaches far enough, for the check. He's a yellow sport and an unworthy son if he doesn't play the game fairly, economize occasionally, and square his half of the account by a return of manly character and good scholarship.

October


text: Page:The Sunday Eight O'Clock (1916).pdf/52


text: Page:Utopia of Usurers, and Other Essays - Chesterton (1917).djvu/5


text:
Page:The Sunday Eight O'Clock (1916).pdf/53

NTIL he was forty a neighbor of mine lived a happy, active, useful life. He had a good job at which he earned a salary sufficient to support his family comfortably. He was interested in community affairs, he was a useful citizen, he was enthusiastic over paying for the pretty house he had built, and his future seemed bright and satisfying.

Then, unfortunately, his aunt died and left him fifty thousand dollars. He gave up his job immediately, quit work, and set out to enjoy himself. The income from his legacy was scarcely as much as his salary had previously been, and as his leisure increased his desires multiplied quite disproportionately. He became discontented, nomadic, a lazy, useless citizen, who is happy nowhere. He spends his winters in Florida and his summers camping out in the woods or drift-