Chapter D: L. Moody told this story of missionary self-sacrifice (2)

“The Catch-my-pal Movement” is attracting great public attention
in the northern or Protestant section of Ireland. The nature of
the movement will scarcely be suspected from the designation
which has attached to it in popular speech; it is really an
organization for the reclamation of drunkards. The originator,
who is a Presbyterian layman living at Armagh--Patterson by
name--had no intention of launching a general reform work; he
stumbled into his present great service in a spontaneous attempt
to help a poor fellow whom he found dead drunk at the foot
of an Armagh lamp-post one day last July. By dint of genuine
Christian sympathy and much hard work, Mr. Patterson succeeded
in sobering the man up and persuading him to quit the drink.
Then he sent the fellow to get a drunken “pal” and together they
saved him. The three then went to work for a fourth. By the
time Mr. Patterson had reformed six of the tipplers, he found
to his surprize that he had actually started a “movement.” It
was organized later under the dignified name of “The Protestant
Total Abstinence Union,” but the public has not been able to
remember that title. The main idea of using drunkards to save
drunkards has been so perfectly exprest in the phrase “Catch my
pal” that only that name is known to the “man in the street.”

(2354)

=Personal Influence Pervading the World=--SEE FAITH, A CHILD’S.

PERSONAL PREACHING

Rev. Dr. Samuel M. Zwemer, of Arabia, says that forty years
ago Dr. Talbot Chambers preached a missionary sermon in one of
the New York churches, on a rainy Sabbath, when there was only
one man in the audience. He made an appeal for the payment of
the deficit of the Dutch Reformed Board. That deficit amounted
to $55,000, and $11,000 were needed immediately to meet the
crisis. Before Dr. Chambers went to bed that night there was
a ring at the door, and Mr. Warren Ackerman announced himself
as the man who had heard the sermon that morning. He drew out
his check-book and wrote his check for $11,000. Early in the
morning there was a ring at the door, and there stood Mr.
Ackerman asking for a return of the check which he had given the
previous night. “Now,” Dr. Chambers thought, “he is coming back
because he feels he has given too much, and is giving one-half
of the total amount needed.” But when the check was filled in
the amount was $55,000, the largest single gift ever received
by the Reformed Board. In such fashion does a sense of personal
responsibility enable men to do exceeding abundantly above all
that they are able to ask or think for the kingdom of God.

(2355)

=Personal Touch in Music=--See MUSIC OF DESPAIR AND OF HOPE.

PERSONAL WORK

Our Roman Catholic brethren have a strong hold upon the
cities--and why? Instead of putting a single priest in a great
parish, as we put a single minister, they put a whole corps of
clergy and a company of sisters to come into personal vital
touch with the people, and especially with the sick and the poor.

Campbell Morgan became pastor of Westminster Presbyterian Church
in London with a beggarly attendance at the services. Soon the
building was crowded to the doors. He said: “Do not give me
credit for this great work. Give it to the twenty deaconesses
who have gone from house to house, heart to heart, pleading the
cause of Christ.”

A priest of the Church of Rome says: “We have had very little
anxiety in competition with Protestant church in our great
cities, so long as a single man was both preacher and pastor in
a great parish. But the deaconesses with black bonnets and white
ties, who find their way to the hearthstones of the people,
will win.”--J. P. BRUSHINGHAM, _Pittsburgh Christian
Advocate_.

(2356)

PERSONALITY AS A REDEMPTIVE FORCE

The salvation of the world is not to be by schemes of salvation,
but by saviors, and the saviors of society are persons fit to be
strong, good seed. Why is not social redemption accomplished by
the vast movement of social mechanism, in which we are all so
much involved that every man’s trade--as Robert Louis Stevenson
once said--is that of a joiner? It is because human society is
not a factory, but a field; not a mechanical unity, but a vital
unity; not made of wheels, but made of people. What is needed
in our day, as never before, is not new social machinery, but
new personality, more wisdom, sanity, patience, light, capacity
to control the already elaborate mechanism of the time; and
without these traits the wheels will soon run down and the
work be undone, and the workers be smitten with despair; and
the children of the kingdom will find themselves good people
indeed, but not good seed, fit for the field of the modern
world.--FRANCIS GREENWOOD PEABODY, “The Religious
Education Association,” 1904.

(2357)

PERSONALITY, INFLUENCE OF

Marian Bonsall, who was sent to Japan by _The Housekeeper_
to prepare a series of articles on the home life of that
country, writes as follows of the Empress:

American women read with interest and admiration of the active
part taken by the Empress in Red Cross work during the war, and
of how she spent many hours out of her days in making bandages.
The effect of these bandages upon the wounded soldiers has
been of deep interest to medical and scientific men, for the
soldiers honored by them seemed to rally under a peculiar mental
influence. All other bandages were destroyed after their first
use; those made by the Empress were sterilized and used again
for the simple reason of their effect on the recovery of the
soldiers.

The Empress used to go personally to the hospitals many times,
and visit among the wounded. One of the servants of a friend
of mine in Tokyo, told her of his inability to speak when as a
wounded soldier he had lain in an army hospital and had been
addrest by the Empress. Tho she was so wondrously kind and
gracious he could not thank her, and even had he been able,
he said, he knew no words sufficiently polite. Then he added
proudly, “The Empress could not speak to every one, but the
soldiers are her children.”

(2358)

PERSONALITY IS A MYSTERY

Science hath measured man in part; in the laboratory, science
points to an analysis of a man weighing a hundred and fifty
pounds. In one jar are ten or twelve quarts of water, in another
jar the lime, the ash, the carbon, the phosphates, and then a
tiny vial holding a little iodin, and a little phosphorus. But
that row of jars containing all the elements of the body must
not be labeled man. Beyond those jars is a certain immeasurable
element, an impalpable something, an invisible essence, a secret
spirit, a hidden power, that is fenced about with bones and
sinews, but that will suddenly compel you to laugh, to love,
to burn with moral indignation, and will spread out before
you a canvas and dim your eyes with tears; that will wave a
wonder-working wand woven of words, and show you an imperial
palace built yonder upon foundations of clouds, and then with
a stroke dissolve all, and leave not a wrack behind. These
twelve jars, analyzed by science, can not write poems or paint
pictures, or carve altars, or enact laws, or sing lullabies, or
create a Christmas tree.--N. D. HILLIS.

(2359)

PERSONALITY, LOCATION OF

A writer in _The Atlantic Monthly_ says:

The spinal cord runs along the back, with all its ganglia; the
weight of the brain is well behind; yet we are not there. In
other words, the curious thing is that we feel ourselves to be,
not in the region where impressions are received and answered
in the brain, and spinal cord, but where they first meet the
nerve-extremities. We seem to inhabit not the citadel, but the
outer walls. At the point of peripheral expansion of the nerves
of sense, where the outer forces begin to be apprehended by
us as inner--“in front,” where the fingers feel, and the nose
smells and the eyes see--there, if anywhere, we find ourselves
to be.

I have often been interested to notice whereabouts on our
bodily surface another animal looks to find us. The man or even
the little child, looks at the face. Is it because the voice
issues thence? Yet it is the eyes, rather than the mouth that
is watched. Is it because the expression, the signal-station
for the changing moods, is there more than elsewhere? A dog,
also, invariably looks up into the face. So does a bird,
notwithstanding the fact that the food comes from the hand. Why
does he not consider the “I,” so far as his needs are concerned,
to lie in the part that feeds him? But no; he cocks his head to
one side, and directs his lustrous little eye straight to our
own, in order to establish what communion he can with the very
“him” of his master and friend.

It is hardly less pathetic than our own human efforts to pierce,
by the searching penetration of eyes, to the real personality of
each other. We never succeed.

(2360)

=Personality, Multiplex=--See MULTIPLE CONSCIOUSNESS.

=Personality Superior to Misfortune=--See MISFORTUNE,
SUPERIORITY TO.

=Perspective=--See POINT OF VIEW.

=Perturbation=--See BAPTISM.

=Perversion=--See GUIDANCE EVILWARD.

PERVERSION OF GIFTS

Dr. N. D. Hillis, speaking of the perversion of men’s talents to low or bad uses, says:

And oh, the pity of the waste and abuse of these gifts! Oh, the
sorrow of Jesus at these opportunities despised and flung away!
Are roses reddened for the swine to lift its tusk upon? Are
pearls made to be flung in the mire, in which they are trampled
and lost? Is a hospital fitted up as a room in which physicians
and nurses riot, drinking up the precious wines, consuming the
jellies, wasting the soft linens, while wounded soldiers lie in
the darkness without, moaning and dying as their own life-blood
ebbs away in the black night? When Philadelphia, in the morning
after Gettysburg, rushed a relief train to the battle-field, how
would the whole land have quivered with indignation at the news
that the officers in charge had forgotten sobriety and honor,
and looted the train of its gifts, counting the treasure to be
personal to themselves, in utter contempt of heroes wounded and
dying?

(2361)

See WOMAN’S SPHERE.

=Perversity=--See GIRLS, LITTLE, AND SLAMMING DOORS.

PESSIMISM

Carlyle was never a hopeful prophet. He called himself a radical
of the quiet order, but he had none of the hopefulness of
radicalism, nor was it in him to be quiet on any subject that
interested him. There is a good deal of truth in the ironical
remark of Maurice, that Carlyle believed in a God who left off
governing the world at the death of Oliver Cromwell. He saw
nothing in modern progress that justified its boasts, and it
must be owned that his social forecasts have been all too amply
fulfilled. The hopefulness of Emerson positively angered him.
He took him round London, showing him the worst of its many
abominations, asking after each had been duly objurgated, “Do
you believe in the devil now?”--W. J. DAWSON, “Makers
of English Prose.”

(2362)

PESSIMISM IN LITERATURE

A few days ago Mr. Berth, a young New Yorker, committed suicide
in a hotel at St. Paul, Minn. The explanation given for his
rash act is that constant study of pessimistic literature had
affected his mind. Among his books was found a melancholy tale
by Edgar Saltus, in which Berth had marked many depressing
passages. About eighty years ago fashionable society in London
affected great admiration for Addison’s tragedy of “Cato.” After
one of the stage renditions of the play a man named Budgell,
imprest by the closing scene of the play, in which the hero
commits suicide, left the theater and plunging into the Thames
was drowned. On his body was found this couplet:

What Cato did and Addison approves
Must needs be right.

While such susceptibility to pessimistic writing as was shown
by Berth and Budgell is, of course, extremely rare, it is
nevertheless, a fact that an author who depicts life in dreary
colors is sure to exert a most undesirable influence over
many of his readers. The force of this applies to all kinds
of writing. Whether a man pens an epic poem or a newspaper
editorial, the tone of his philosophy is sure to leave its
ultimate effect on those who peruse his words.--New York
_World_.

(2363)

=Pessimists, The, and the Optimists=--See LOADS, BALKING UNDER.

PEST, CONTAGIOUS

_The Survey_, in commenting on Dr. H. G. Beyer’s statement at a recent conference of the New York Academy of Medicine that the fly is “not merely a pest but an epidemic,” says:

One fly lays 120 eggs in the season, and as each of these eggs
takes but ten days to reach maturity, it has been computed
that twelve flies surviving the winter will produce 40,000 the
following summer. When to this estimate of numbers is added the
experimentally proved fact that one fly carries upon his legs
alone anywhere between one and six million bacteria, there seems
little exaggeration in Dr. Beyer’s characterization.

Observation has shown that the fly is omnivorous and ubiquitous,
and that, certain unsanitary conditions being fulfilled,
where-ever the fly is, there also are certain diseases. In
regard to these diseases the most startling evidence is given
for typhoid, but careful experiments have shown that no less
than ten others, among them tuberculosis, carbuncle, cholera,
tapeworm and summer diarrhea, have been spread by flies, and
there is good reason to believe that smallpox, leprosy and
diphtheria might be added to the list.

It is the omnivorousness of the fly, together with his choice of
breeding-places, that makes him a menace to health. A fruitful
source of disease bacteria is damp, decaying organic matter,
and it is just such matter, usually stable refuse, that is used
for a breeding-place by flies. Experiments with young flies
fresh from the breeding-ground showed them to have live bacteria
either on the outside of their bodies or in the digestive
tracts. This same decayed organic matter is also the food of the
fly, but with true democracy of taste he is glad to share man’s
food also, and it is this willingness to take his dessert out of
the sugar-bowl after a dinner of decayed fish that constitutes
his chief danger to man.

(2364)

=Pests=--See BARRIERS; PIRACY, BIRD; REMEDY FOR PESTS.

=Pests, Utilizing=--See INGENUITY.

PEW, IF I WERE IN THE

There are a great many things which can be done by those in the pew to assist the ministry, and to better the Church and her services. Here are a few of them. If I were in the pew:

I would acquire the habit of getting to church on time, for
then I would get the full benefit of the service and would not
disturb others by my late arrival.

I would have my regular seat, and see that it is occupied every
Sunday.

I would have my entire family with me on the same bench.

Upon reaching my seat, I would kneel, or bow the head in a few
words of silent prayer, asking the Lord to prepare my heart for
a season of spiritual worship and the acceptance of the truths
and instructions presented by His messengers.

I would join in the singing with my whole soul, not making it a
mere word or note service, as it often is.

While public prayer is being offered, I would have a personal,
silent prayer of my own to offer. This prayer would be short, so
that, when through with it, I could follow the trend of the one
who is praying aloud.

I would greet every stranger and make him feel that I
appreciated his coming to worship with us.

I would see that every visiting member or stranger is invited
into some home for lodging and entertainment. I would not forget
to be hospitable.

I would frequently invite the minister into my home, feeling
that his presence would increase the spirituality of my family.

I would not criticize the minister, the sermon, or the church,
before my children, or non-church-members. I would exercise the
greatest charity toward them all.

I would frequently remember the minister with little gifts and
tangible assistance, and thus help to share the sacrifices he
makes for the Church--which means me and my family.

I would occasionally call on the minister in his home.

I would not be slow to praise him for his successes, and
encourage him in his efforts. If I had any suggestions for his
improvement, I would make them in a tactful, kindly way.

I would actively cooperate with the minister in every church
work.

I would attend all council-meetings, and endeavor to increase
the spirituality, peace, and prosperity of the Church.--O.
H. YEREMAN, _Gospel Messenger_.

(2365)

PHILANTHROPY

Dr. John Barnardo, who devoted his life to the rescue and cure of poor children, tells the experiences here quoted:

A lady on one occasion came to Stepney in her carriage. A child
was in it. I granted her an interview, and she laid down five
100-pound notes, saying they were mine if I would take the
child and ask no questions. I did not take the child. Again, a
well-known peer of the realm once sent his footman here with
£100, asking me to take the footman’s son. No. The footman
could support his child. Gold and silver will never open my
doors unless there is real destitution.

“It is to the homeless,” said the doctor, “the actually
destitute, that we open our doors day and night, without money
and without price.” (Text.)--_Westminster Gazette_, London.

(2366)

PHILANTHROPY, PRACTICAL

Samuel Saucerman is the originator of the “Trimmer Band,” which
is an unique and effective method of promoting temperance and
thrift in the young, from nine to sixteen years of age. To every
boy in the State of Iowa who will take the pledge to _abstain
from tobacco in every form_, _intoxicating liquor_, _gambling_
and _profane language_, Mr. Saucerman will give $1.00 upon his
joining one of these “Trimmer Bands,” and will pay him _one
cent a day for three years_, and _another_ $1.00 at the end of
that period. Members of these “Bands” are urged to save their
nickels and dimes, which would otherwise be spent for tobacco
and liquor, and also hold monthly meetings to discuss economy,
finance, clean living, and everything in line with industry and
morals. To show good faith, each boy must deposit 50 cents with
his first dollar, and at the end of the three years, even if he
has not himself saved a cent, he will have $12.00. The object is
to establish habits of saving, which will enable every boy at
twenty-one to have saved sufficient to start him in life, or to
go to college.--JAMES T. WHITE, “Character Lessons.”

(2367)

=Photography of Germs=--See INVISIBLE, THE, MADE VISIBLE.

=Physical Ailments=--See REMEDIES, STRANGE.

=Physical Training=--See PLAY AND MORALS.

PHYSICAL WEAKNESS OVERCOME

Rev. W. F. Crafts, Ph.D., writes of the success of scores of men who were born physically defective:

The list includes club-footed Byron, halting Akenside, frail
Spinoza, deformed Malebranche, disfigured Sam Johnson, Walter
Scott, “a pining child”; Sir Isaac Newton, “who might have been
put in a quart pot when born”; Voltaire, who was for some time
too small and weak to christen; Charles Sumner, who weighed
three and a half pounds at birth; Lyman Beecher, who weighed
but three pounds at first, and was laid aside by his nurse to
die; Goethe, Victor Hugo, and D’Alembert, who were so weak at
birth that they also were not expected to live, and also Pope,
Descartes, Gibbon, Kepler, Lord Nelson, Sir Christopher Wren,
James Watt, John Howard, Washington Irving, William Wilberforce,
and many others whom the world has delighted to honor as mental
giants--a list that well-born children could hardly match--whose
bodily weakness in infancy in any but a Christian land would
have marked them as unworthy to be raised to manhood. The study
of such a group ought to be an inspiration to boys handicapped
by any physical weakness, and it also suggests that mind and
will may conquer the most adverse circumstances.

(2368)

=Pibroch, The=--See MUSIC OF DESPAIR AND OF HOPE.

PICTURE, RECORD PRICE FOR

Frans Hals was the hero of the evening at the Yerkes sale at
Mendelssohn Hall, April 7, 1910. His “Portrait of a Woman”
brought the highest price of the evening, $137,000, the highest
price ever given for a picture at a sale in America and $8,000
more than the record-breaking price of the evening before,
$129,000, which was paid for a wonderful Turner.

The dear old Dutch woman whose portrait Frans Hals painted more
than 400 years ago could never have dreamed, if her practical
soul was given to anything in the nature of visions, of ever
being worth, in any form, so very many thousand dollars. She
was the calmest-looking person in the hall when the curtains
were drawn aside and she was revealed sitting quietly in her
big chair, a wide ruff around her plump throat, a close cap
encircling her placid face, one hand at her waist as she sat
primly for her portrait, the other at her side clasping her
Bible.--New York _Times_.

(2369)

=Pictures=--See PIETY.

PICTURES, INFLUENCE OF

It pays to spend thought on the pictures we put on our walls. A
charming woman once said:

“My earliest impression is a picture that hung on the wall over
my bed and which I had to look at the last thing every night
before I went to sleep. It was that of a white horse upon the
back of which was crouched the body of a fierce tiger, with his
teeth and claws embedded in the flesh of the horse. The blood
ran down from the wounds and the whole thing was frightful to
me. I went to sleep every night afraid and very uncomfortable.
This picture is as vivid to me to-day as tho I was looking at
the real thing, and will never be erased.”

If that had been the picture of “The Guardian Angel,” or “The
Evening Prayer,” or some one of the many that are pleasing and
that teach some beautiful lesson, that woman would have had a
happier remembrance, and would be better both physically and
morally.--_Religious Telescope._

(2370)

* * * * *

While we empower the police to put down with a strong hand the
exhibition in shop windows, and the censor of stage plays and
spectacles to interdict the parade in theaters of pictures and
scenes of an “immoral” character, because it is recognized that
these have a tendency to corrupt the mind of youth--and age,
too--nothing whatever is done to restrain the daily increasing
evil of pictorial placards displayed on every boarding, and of
highly-wrought scenes produced at nearly all the theaters, which
not only direct the thoughts, but actively stir the passions of
the people in such way as to familiarize the average mind with
murder in all its forms, and to break down that protective sense
of “horror” which nature has given us, with the express purpose,
doubtless, of opposing an obstacle to the evil influence of
the exemplification of homicide. It does seem strange--passing
strange--that this murder culture by the educationary use of
the pictorial art has not been checked by public authority. We
have no wish to make wild affirmations, but knowing what we
do, as observers of development, we can have no hesitation in
saying that the increasing frequency of horribly brutal outrages
is by no means unaccountable. The viciously inclined are, in a
sense, always weak-minded--that is to say, they are especially
susceptible to influences moving them in the direction their
passions incline them to take; and when the mind (or brain)
is imprest through the senses, and particularly the sense of
sight, in such manner as to produce mental pictures, either in
waking thoughts or dreams of homicide, the impulsive organism
is, as it were, prepared for the performance of the deeds which
form the subjects of the consciousness. We are, of course,
writing technically; but the facts are indisputable, and we
trust they will be sufficiently plain. It is high time that this
ingenious and persistent murder-culture should cease.--London
_Lancet_.

(2371)

PICTURESQUE

Thomas Rowlandson, the artist, at one time in his career
devoted himself to book illustration, in a series of plates on
Goldsmith, Fielding, Smollett, Sterne and other humorists of
his day. It was this that led William Combe, then in a debtors’
prison, and who had never met the artist, to write his humorous
poem, “Dr. Syntax in Search of the Picturesque.”

Ought not every Dr. Syntax of the pulpit or platform go in search of the picturesque? (Text.)

2372)

PIETY

In considering the pictures of sacred subjects produced in the
early ages of faith and simplicity, we must not forget that
the chief intention of the artist was to stimulate the piety
of the spectator, and not to make a “pretty” picture. Thus
it is recorded of the saintly Florentine monk, Fra Angelico
(1387–1455), that before he began the painting of a religious
subject he fasted and prayed, and that while he was at work
on his picture he always remained kneeling.--FREDERICK
KEPPEL, “Christmas in Art.”

(2373)

PILGRIM, THE

Charlotte Wilson, in _Scribner’s_, writes a song of the pilgrim who minds not the hardships or fortunes of the road so he but reaches the goal of the journey:

Ah, little Inn of Sorrow,
What of thy bitter bread?
What of thy ghostly chambers,
So I be shelterèd?
’Tis but for a night, the firelight
That gasps on thy cold hearthstone;
To-morrow my load and the open road
And the far light leading on!

Ah, little Inn of Fortune,
What of thy blazing cheer,
Where glad through the pensive evening
Thy bright doors beckon clear?
Sweet sleep on thy balsam-pillows,
Sweet wine that will thirst assuage--
But send me forth o’er the morning earth
Strong for my pilgrimage!

Ah, distant End of the Journey,
What if thou fly my feet?
What if thou fade before me
In splendor wan and sweet?
Still the mystical city lureth--
The quest is the good knight’s part;
And the pilgrim wends through the end of the ends
Toward a shrine and a Grail in his heart.(Text.)

(2374)

=Pilgrimage=--See JOURNEY TO HEAVEN.

=Pilgrimage, The Mecca=--See MECCA, INFLUENCE OF.

PILOT, NEED OF

A man who spurns the guidance of others or of God is like this self-confident sea captain:

A bright boy went to sea; he loved it and rose to quick
promotion. While quite a young man he became master of a ship.
One day a passenger spoke to him upon the voyage, and asked if
he should anchor off a certain headland, supposing he would
anchor there, and telegraph for a pilot to take the vessel into
port.

“Anchor! no, not I. I mean to be in dock with the morning tide.”

“I thought perhaps you would signal for a pilot.”

“I am my own pilot,” was the curt reply.

Intent upon reaching port by morning he took a narrow channel
to save distance. Experienced sailors on board shook their
heads dubiously, while cautious passengers besought the young
captain to take a wider course. He only laughed at their fears
and declared he would be in dock by daybreak. A sudden squall
swooped down upon them; wild alarm spread throughout the vessel.
Enough to say that the captain was ashore earlier than he
promised--tossed sportively upon the weedy beach, a dead thing
that the waves were weary of, and his ship and freight were
scattered over the angry sea. The glory of that young man was
strength; but he was his own pilot.

(2375)

See CHRIST OUR PILOT.

PIRACY, BIRD

The Buffalo _Evening News_ gives us the following from the city forester of that city:

A war of extermination has been declared against the English
sparrow by the Department of Agriculture, which has just issued
a bulletin on the subject in which this busy, fighting bird
is outlawed as a pirate of the air. It is declared that he
studiously hunts and eats insects which are beneficial to plant
life, while he more or less passes over those which are harmful.
The only good thing he does is to eat the seed of weeds and
prevent their spread. Aside from that there is nothing to be
said in his favor.

More than that, he is murderous. He hunts the nesting-places and
destroys eggs and young bluebirds, house-wrens, tree-swallows
and barn-swallows. The robin, the catbird, and the mocking-bird
he attacks and drives out of parks and shade-trees. He has no
song, but he drives out the song-birds and brings only noise in
return.

After having learned all this about the sparrow after an
extensive investigation, the Department of Agriculture describes
various ways to destroy him.

City Forester Filer said yesterday he has not seen a copy of the
bulletin, but that he agrees with its conclusions. “There is a
good deal of justice in declaring the English sparrow a pirate,”
said Mr. Filer. “These birds were originally imported to New
York to get rid of an insect pest, the linden moth, which that
city was then fighting. The sparrow didn’t like these moths, and
he doesn’t like any caterpillar with fuzz on it, and he took to
the streets for his living. They spread and multiplied very fast.

“The robin is the only other bird we have in Buffalo in numbers
and the sparrows eat their eggs. In the parks we have a few
other varieties, but they are not numerous, and the sparrows are
not as plentiful in the parks as they are in the streets, where
they prefer to get their living.

“Most of the destructive moths, particularly the gipsy, tussock
and browntail, have hairy caterpillars, and the sparrows will
not eat them, so they are no good for that purpose.”

(2376)

=Placards=--See PICTURES, INFLUENCE OF.

PLACE, FILLING ONE’S

Sir Michael Costa was once rehearsing with a vast array of
performers and hundreds of voices, when, in the mighty chorus,
amid the thunder of the organ, and the roll of drums, and the
blare of brass instruments, and the clashing of cymbals, he
suddenly stopt and exclaimed, “Where is the piccolo?” That
little instrument had ceased to play, and the great master of
music missed it.

So in life’s chorus, the least man can make or mar it by faithfulness or neglect. (Text.)

(2377)

PLACE, IN THE RIGHT

The rainbow is one of the most beautiful things in nature. It
is made by a series and succession of falling drops, the series
stretching across the sky, and the successive drops catching
the reflection and refraction left by the drop below. Each drop
has but a minute ray among the millions, and has this but for
an instant as it comes into the right angle with the sun; but
all together and in succession spread wide the beautiful arch
of hope and promise. Each of us is among God’s creatures only
as a single drop in the broad shower, and only for a little
is our opportunity; but if we are in our place and in the
right angle toward God, we may help spread His glory far and
wide.--FRANKLIN NOBLE, “Sermons in Illustration.”

(2378)

PLAGIARISM, DETECTION OF

A man might as well hoist a ladder in a village at noonday and
try to steal the town clock without being observed as to expect
to carry off literary ware in our time and not be found out. The
newspaper editor, scissors in hand and mucilage on the table,
sits up to his chin in exchanges from the four winds of heaven.
Beside that, all the world is traveling now. Fares are so cheap
and transportation so rapid that before every preacher, and
before every lecturer, and before every religious exhorter,
there may sit persons from the most unexpected quarter, and
if they heard three years ago something delivered in New
Orleans which you delivered in Brooklyn, the discovery will
be reported. Quote from all books you can lay your hands on.
Quote from all directions. It is a compliment to have breadth
of reading to be able to quote. But be sure to announce it as
a quotation. Ah! how many are making a mistake in this thing;
it is a mistake that a man can not afford to make. Four commas
upside down--two at the beginning of the paragraph, two at the
close of the paragraph--will save many a man’s integrity and
usefulness.--T. DE WITT TALMAGE.

(2379)

PLAN IN NATURE

There are several hundred thousand different kinds of animals
living on this globe of the different types. Every one of them
has its line of development. Every sparrow begins with the egg,
and goes through all the changes which are characteristic of
sparrow life, until it is capable of producing new eggs, which
will go through the same change. Every butterfly comes from the
egg, which produces the caterpillar, which becomes a chrysalis,
and then a butterfly, laying eggs to go through the same
changes. So with all animals, whether of higher or lower type.
In fact, the animal kingdom as it is now, is undergoing greater
changes every year than the whole animal kingdom has ever passed
through from the beginning until now; and yet we never see one
of these animals swerve from the plan pointed out, or produce
anything else than that which is like itself.--PROF. LOUIS
AGASSIZ.

(2380)

PLAN, LACK OF

Emerson tells that when on a trip to New Hampshire he found
a large building going up in a country town. Struck by its
ungainly and rambling appearance, he asked a man who was working
at it, who the architect was. And the reply was, “Oh, there
isn’t any architect settled on as yet. I’m just building it, you
see, and there’s a man coming from Boston next month to put the
architecture into it.”

(2381)

PLANS, HUMAN, TRANSCENDED

The Rev. W. H. Fitchett says of John Wesley:

Had Wesley done nothing more than preach or write his memory
might have failed. But at this stage Wesley links himself by one
great achievement, not merely to English history, but to the
history of religion. He creates a church! He did not do this
consciously, or of deliberate purpose. He strove, indeed, not to
do it; he protested he would never do it. But as history shows,
he actually did it! And since history is not so much philosophy
teaching by examples as God interpreting Himself by events, we
are entitled to say that Wesley, in laying the foundations of a
new church, did something that, no doubt, outran his own human
vision, but which fulfilled a divine purpose.--“Wesley and His
Century.”

(2382)

PLANT WORSHIP

The plant worship which holds so prominent a place in the
history of the primitive races of mankind, would appear to have
sprung from a perception of the beauty and utility of trees.
Survivals of this still linger on in many parts of Europe.
The peasants in Bohemia will sally forth into their gardens
before sunrise on Good Friday, and falling upon their knees
before a tree will exclaim: “I pray, O green tree, that God may
make thee good.” At night-time they will run to and fro about
their gardens crying: “Bud, O trees, bud, or I will flog you.”
In England the Devonshire farmers and their men will to this
day go out into their orchards after supper on the evening of
Twelfth Day, carrying with them a large milk-pail of cider,
with roasted apples prest into it. All present hold in their
hands an earthenware cup filled with liquor, and taking up their
stand beneath those apple-trees which have borne the most fruit,
address them in these words:

Health to thee, good apple-tree,
Well to bear pocketfuls, hatfuls,
Peckfuls, bushel bagfuls!

simultaneously dashing the contents of their cups over the
trees.--_The Gentleman’s Magazine._

(2383)

=Planting That Multiplied=--See MISSIONARY, A LITTLE.

PLAY AND MORALS

Play is related to morals. As we learn from Judge Lindsey: “The
whole question of juvenile law-breaking--or at least nine-tenths
of it--is a question of children’s play. A boy who breaks the
law is in nine cases out of ten not a criminal. He is obeying
an instinct that is not only legitimate, but vital, and which,
if it finds every lawful channel choked up, will seek an outlet
at the next available point. The boy has no especial desire to
come in conflict with the laws and usages of civilized society.”
Give a boy an opportunity to play at his favorite game, and the
policeman will need, as Mr. Lee puts it, “a gymnasium himself
to keep his weight down.” Give children playgrounds, and the
same spirit and imagination which form rowdy gangs will form
baseball clubs and companies for games and drills. Precinct
captains attribute the existence of rowdyism and turbulence to
lack of better playgrounds than the streets. They break lamps
and windows because they have no other provision made for them.
London, after forty years’ experience, says tersely, “Crime
in our large cities is to a great extent simply a question
of athletics.” “This is not theory, but is the testimony you
will get from any policeman or schoolmaster who has been in a
neighborhood before and after a playground was started there.
The public playground is a moral agent, and should be in every
community.” The play of youth needs careful and scientific
direction, so as to develop active and manly qualities of mind
and character.--GEORGE J. FISHER, “Proceedings of the
Religious Education Association,” 1907.

(2384)

PLAY, COMMENDABLE

Lovely human play is like the play of the sun. There’s a worker
for you. He, steady to his time, is set as a strong man to run
his course, but also, he rejoiceth as a strong man to run his
course. See how he plays in the morning, with the mists below,
and the clouds above, with a ray here and a flash there, and a
shower of jewels everywhere--that’s the sun’s play; and great
human play is like his--all various--all full of light and life,
and tender, as the dew of the morning.--JOHN RUSKIN.

(2385)

PLAY NECESSARY

The child has an artificial occupation named play through games.
Having the food as raw material for the body, that food can
be built into the physique only through the free play of the
legs and arms, through exercise and fresh air. In Prospect Park
we behold the maple bough pushing out a soft growth of one or
two feet, and then the sap coursing through the young growth
furnishes food; then comes the spring and summer winds to give
the sap and the bough its exercise; playing with the leaves in
the air, bending it, twisting it, hardening the young growth,
until it can stand up against the storms of winter. And not
otherwise does the growing child need its exercise. The little
boy flings out his arm with the ball, and so stretches the
arm. Then, when the arm is stretched, along comes the angel of
the blood and drops in a little wedge, so that the stretched
arm can not draw back. Thus the growth is permanent. This is
the function of all the games for little children, to stretch
the blood into the body and then by forcing the arterial blood
into the extremities to make the stretching permanent. One
thing, therefore, is vital, the playground. (Text.)--N. D.
HILLIS.

(2386)

PLAY, SIGNIFICANCE OF

When things become signs, when they gain a representative
capacity as standing for other things, play is transformed from
mere physical exuberance into an activity involving a mental
factor. A little girl who had broken her doll was seen to
perform with the leg of the doll all the operations of washing,
putting to bed, and fondling, that she had been accustomed to
perform with the entire doll. The part stood for the whole;
she reacted not to the stimulus sensibly present, but to the
meaning suggested by the sense object. So children use a stone
for a table, leaves for plates, acorns for cups. So they use
their dolls, their trains, their blocks, their other toys.
In manipulating them, they are living not with the physical
things, but in the large world of meanings, natural and social,
evoked by these things. So when children play horse, play
store, play house or making calls, they are subordinating the
physically present to the ideally signified. In this way, a
world of meanings, a store of concepts (so fundamental to all
intellectual achievement), is defined and built up.--JOHN
DEWEY, “How We Think.”

(2387)

PLAYFUL ATTITUDE, THE

Playfulness is a more important consideration than play. The
former is an attitude of mind; the latter is a passing outward
manifestation of this attitude. When things are treated simply
as vehicles of suggestion, what is suggested overrides the
thing. Hence the playful attitude is one of freedom. The person
is not bound to the physical traits of things, nor does he
care whether a thing really means (as we say) what he takes
it to represent. When the child plays horse with a broom and
cars with chairs, the fact that the broom does not really
represent a horse, or a chair a locomotive, is of no account.
In order, then, that playfulness may not terminate in arbitrary
fancifulness and in building up an imaginary world alongside
the world of actual things, it is necessary that the play
attitude should gradually pass into a work attitude.--JOHN
DEWEY, “How we Think.”

(2388)

PLAYTHINGS, EARTH’S

He begged me for the little toys at night,
That I had taken, lest he play too long,
The little broken toys--his sole delight.
I held him close in wiser arms and strong,
And sang with trembling voice the even-song.

Reluctantly the drowsy lids drooped low,
The while he pleaded for the boon denied.
Then, when he slept, sweet dream, content to know,
I mended them and laid them by his side
That he might find them in the early light,
And wake the gladder for this joyous sight.

So, Lord, like children, at the even fall
We weep for broken playthings, loath to part,
While Thou, unmoved, because Thou knowest all,
Dost fold us from the treasures of our heart;
And we shall find them at the morning-tide
Awaiting us, unbroke and beautified.

--_Ainslee’s Magazine._

(2389)

PLEASANT LOOKS

If one does not believe that his countenance adds to or detracts
anything from the lives or expressions of others, let him pause
for a moment before that now celebrated “Billiken.” It is almost
impossible to look at the little imp and not smile. The Japanese
teach their maids in the hotels, and those also in higher walks
of life, the art of smiling. They are compelled to practise
before a mirror. One can not stay long in Japan without being
inoculated with the disposition to “look pleasant.” The “look
pleasant, please,” of the photographer goes deeper than the
photograph plate.

No one wants to associate long with an animated vinegar cruet. A
disposition is easily guessed from the angle of the corners of
the mouth; a disposition is molded by compelling those angles to
turn up or down. If a merry heart maketh a glad countenance, it
is also true that a glad countenance maketh a merry heart--in
the one who has it and in the one who beholds it. “Iron
sharpeneth iron. So a man sharpeneth the countenance of his
friend.”--_Baptist Commonwealth._

(2390)

=Pleasure a Deceiver=--See SLAVES OF PLEASURE.

PLEASURE, ETHICS OF

Mrs. Wesley discusses with exquisite good sense the whole ethics
of pleasure:

“Would you judge of the lawfulness or unlawfulness of pleasure
take this rule: Whatever weakens your reason, impairs the
tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God, or
takes off the relish of spiritual things--in short, whatever
increases the strength and authority of your body over your
mind, that thing is sin to you, however innocent it may be in
itself.”

The wisest of casuists might find it difficult to better that
interpretation of human duty!--W. H. FITCHETT, “Wesley
and His Century.”

(2391)

PLEASURE, MOCKERY OF

In the days of the Inquisition cruel men deceived the prisoner,
as pleasure and sensualism deceive the young now. With soft
words the jailer promised the prisoner release on the morrow.
When the appointed hour came he opened the door and pointed down
the corridor, and oh, joy of joys! yonder was the green sward,
cool with grass, and gay with tulips and crimson flowers. With
a shout of joy the prisoner ran forward to cast himself upon
the cool ground, but lo! it was a mockery, a delusion, a lying
deceit. What afar off seemed grass was really sheet-iron painted
in the similitude of verdure. What looked like red tulips and
crimson flowers was iron beaten into the similitude of blossoms
and heated red hot by flames underneath. Where coolness was
promised scorching was given. The vista promised pleasure; it
gave pain. And when a man or a woman looks upon the worldly
life, with all its pleasures of appetite and physical sense,
from afar off, it wears a brilliant aspect and a crimson hue.
But near at hand the scene changes, and lo, the honey is bitter,
all the fountains of peace are poisoned.--N. D. HILLIS.

(2392)

PLEASURES, POISONOUS

A gentleman in Paris desired to buy a ring, and, as he tried
on several rings in the jeweler’s store, he noticed one that
was set with tiny eagle’s claws. The next day his hand began to
swell. The doctor told him that he was poisoned, and on inquiry
he found that the old ring came from Italy, and was once used
for poisoning an enemy. For four centuries that particle of
poison had remained between the eagle’s claws.

Watch the rings of pleasure which the world offers, there are within them the eagle’s claws with the poison. Those pleasures may sparkle with fascination and seem greatly desirable, but they mean death in the end. The poison is subtle; the claws are concealed; but at last poison and claws do their fatal work.

(2393)

=Pledge=--See LOYALTY.

PLEDGE-KEEPING

The Archbishop of York, at a recent meeting, told how, when he
was at Portsmouth, he had induced a working man to sign the
pledge. The man said: “Ah, sir, I won’t be able to keep this
pledge. Every night I have to pass ten public-houses, and my
mates are with me, and we treat each other.”

The archbishop said, “Do you think it would help you if I were
to see you home?”

At this the meeting broke out into a cheer.

“Don’t cheer that,” said the archbishop; “that is the kind of
work which the clergy are doing every day.” The man replied, “If
you could only see me past these houses, I should get home all
right.”

(2394)

PLUCK

What a characteristic story of poverty and pluck is that of
Andrew Carnegie! His father, a Scotch weaver who worked with
hand-looms, thrown out of employment by improved machinery,
came to Pittsburg when “Andy” was but ten years of age. The boy
went to work as a bobbin-boy at $1.20 a week. At thirteen he
was promoted to the post of engineer of the factory engine. At
fourteen he became telegraph boy, and was promoted at sixteen,
for quick intelligence, to the post of telegraph operator at
a salary of $300 a year. About this time his father died, and
the support of the family devolved on him. He soon got a dollar
a week extra for copying telegrams for the papers, which he
called his “first bit of capital.” His salary went for household
expenses, but the dollar surplus he invested wisely, first in
the express business, then in sleeping-cars, and, finally, as an
outcome of his management of transportation in the Civil War, in
a plant to manufacture iron railway bridges. And so by alertness
and economy and untiring energy he came to be the world’s most
distinguished manufacturer and philanthropist, putting as much
talent into giving as he had before put into getting.

(2395)

See COURAGE IN LIFE; STEDFASTNESS.

POET APPRECIATED

“If ‘W,’ at Haverhill, will continue to favor us with pieces as
beautiful as the one inserted in our poetical department to-day,
we shall esteem it a favor.” This note appeared in the _Free
Press_, of Newburyport, Mass., June 8, 1826. The “W” referred
to was John G. Whittier, then in his nineteenth year, and the
editor of the _Free Press_ was William Lloyd Garrison,
then in his twenty-first. “W” did continue to “favor us” with
pieces quite as beautiful as the one inserted in the _Free
Press_ in 1826; indeed, with pieces more and more beautiful,
of a wider and deeper application to American life, until he was
recognized--tho not till after many years--as the chief of the
purely American poets, indebted to America and its life in the
highest degree for his equipment in song.

The first piece of “original poetry”--we are told by the sons of
Mr. Garrison, in their admirable life of their father--was found
lying near the door in the office of the _Free Press_. The
editor, having a strong tendency to tear “original” sin--verse
or otherwise--to pieces, says he had a momentary impulse to
dispose of this in that way, without reading it; but summoning
the resolution so needful in an editor, he read the poem and
published it. He had the courage, moreover, to inquire about
the writer, and found him to be a “Quaker lad who was daily at
work on the shoemaker’s bench, with hammer and lapstone, at
East Haverhill. Jumping into a vehicle, I lost no time,” says
the editor, “in driving to see the youthful rustic bard, who
came into the room with shrinking diffidence, almost unable to
speak, and blushing like a maiden.” The parents of the lad were
poor, “unable to give him a suitable education,” and unwilling,
as being unable to, let him indulge in the unprofitable but
delightful pursuit of verse-making. “Poetry will not give him
bread,” they said, as many a father has had to say. But the
poet, proverbially “born, not made,” is not easily unmade, since
nature presides at the birth and fosters her own.--_Journal of
Education._

(2396)

=Poetry and Religion=--See RELIGION AND POETRY.

POETRY, POPULAR POWER OF

Poetry is not always the possession of the mart and street, but in the case of a favored few who write, there is this high compliment of approval, as the following suggests:

Walter Camp was talking about football at a dinner at the New
York Athletic Club.

“Had we not reformed our football,” he said, “it would have
fallen into grave disrepute--into such grave disrepute as
surrounded cricket and football both during the Boer War, when
Kipling wrote his poem about

“‘The flannel fools at the wicket,
The muddied oafs at the goal.’

“That poem hit the English ‘footers’ hard. One of the English
‘footers’ during their visit to us told me how he was walking
one day to his club in football clothes, when a newsboy hailed
him.

“‘Paper, sir?’

“The footballer walked on; whereupon the boy yelled after him:

“‘Yah, ye muddied oaf! Like as not ye can’t even read!’”

(2397)

=Poet’s Insight=--See VIEWPOINT, THE.

POINT OF VIEW

The ancient Athenians demanded a last statue by their great
sculptors, Alcamenes and Phidias. When the two Minervas were
unveiled in the public square, the people declared the statue of
Alcamenes to be perfect, believing it to be living. The judges
were about to award the prize. Phidias calmly approached the
tribunal and said: “Is it not for the top of a column the chosen
statue is designed?” “Certainly,” replied the magistrates.
“Then,” said Phidias, “is it not from the effects produced by
its height that judgment should be pronounced?” The statues were
raised to their positions by machinery. The Minerva of Alcamenes
lost her charms in the ascent. The statue of Phidias, which had
shocked the spectators by its massive, unpolished appearance in
the Forum, from the column’s height took on such grandeur and
majesty that the multitudes shouted with one accord, “Phidias is
the sculptor of the gods!” (Text.)

(2398)

* * * * *

In “Stories of English Artists” we are told that Gainsborough’s
pictures can only be properly appreciated when viewed at the
right distance. As Sir Joshua Reynolds remarked in one of his
famous “Discourses,” all those odd scratches and marks which on
close examination are so observable in Gainsborough’s pictures,
and which even to experienced painters appear rather the effect
of accident than design, this chaos, this uncouth and shapeless
appearance by a kind of magic at a certain distance assume form,
and all the parts seem to drop into their proper places.

No doubt the apparent chaos and disorder of human events and careers, and of the natural world, would fall into order and express to us God’s wise designs if we could place ourselves at the right point of view!

(2399)

* * * * *