Lesson 1
The Last Stand of the Utes

  I stayed at the quarters of Major R--, whom I knew well.  He was a silent man, seldom speaking of himself or of the many battles during the Civil War in which he had been engaged; but one night, as we sat up late and alone, he told me a story I greatly wanted to hear, the story of the last stand the Utes made, and of his almost mortal wounding.
  The regiment was mounted, and it pressed the retreating Utes so fiercely that once more they stood at bay, in terribly cold and snowy weather.  There was scarcely time to throw up a low line of cover, when they were charged.  With admirable discipline, the Indians held their fire till the mounted men were close to the rifles, and then, with one terrible, accurate volley, they emptied sixty saddles.
  Before the shaken squadron could re-form, night fell.  R--, leading his men, was shot through the lungs, and lay in front of the Indians' line, too far from his command to receive aid.  How long he lay, almost unconscious, he did not know; but as the first shock of his wounding wore off, he realized where he was, and believing himself dying, commended his wife and children and himself to God.  The cold was awful, but the burning thirst, caused by the loss of blood that had poured from the wound made by a bullet through his lungs, was worse.  And so paralyzed was his lips with snow.
  He was fast lapsing into unconsciousness when he became aware of something crawling towards him through the snow.  He could not move an inch, but he could see it coming, nearer and nearer.  Was it a wolf? The terror of it brought him party back to life.  Still nearer it came.  And now he saw it clearly.  It was a crawling Ute.
  Then he knew his last hour had come.  He made a prayer and closed his eyes, waiting to feel the steel at his throat.  He thought that he had bidden goodbye to life, that he was ready for death; but the horror of that moment -- the Major said -- passed all his power to describe.
  He felt the Indian touch him.  He could not even moan.  Then -- he felt an arm passed under his head; it was lifted gently.  A cup of water was pressed to his lips, and he drank.  And his savior crawled away, silently as he had come.
  "Then I knew I should live," said mi friend; "and life seemed very sweet to me." 
  When at length Chief Joseph surrendered, some time after, Major R-- did everything possible to find out something about that Indian.  "I could learn nothing," said the Major, "but that Ute was a better Christian than I."


Lesson 2
The King's New Clothes

  In ages long past there lived an emperor who was excessively fond of new clothes.  He spent at least half of his time looking at his costly robes, and trying on one after another, to see which best pleased his fancy.
  One day there came to his capital two clever rogues who declared that they were weavers, and able to produce a cloth surpassing every other in color and design, but that the clothes made from it had the wonderful property of becoming invisible to any one who was unfit for the office he held, or unworthy of the esteem of his fellow-men.
  "What capital clothes those would be!" thought the king.  "If I wore such clothes, I should be able to see what men in my kingdom were unfit for their posts and unworthy of my confidence.  Yes, I will have a suit of those clothes made directly." So orders were given to the two rogues to begin at once.
  As for them, they put up a loom and pretended to be working; but in reality it was all a pretence.  They demanded the finest silk and the purest gold; these they put in their pockets, and worked at their empty loom from morning till night.
  "I should like to know how he weavers are getting on with my wonderful clothes," thought the king; "but I must send some one whom I know to be both able and faithful, or he will be unable to see anything." So the king called his prime minister, and sent him to examine the marvelous cloth, and to bring him a faithful report.
  Now the minister knew the peculiar property of the cloth, but readily complied with his royal master's wishes, for he felt confident of his own fitness for the high office he had held so long.
  So the old minister entered the room where the two rogues sat working at the empty loom seemed to him quite empty.  "Mercy on me!  I can not see anything at all," he whispered to himself.
  Both the rogues drew his attention to the beautiful cloth they had woven, and asked him if he did not admire the brilliant colors and beautiful design.  While speaking they seemed to be handling something in the loom and to be pointing out its beauties; but the good minister was grieved that he could see nothing.  Thinking it impolite to let it be known that the wonderful cloth was invisible to him, he peered through his spectacles, as if he saw it, and occasionally exclaimed, "Charming!"  "Delightful!" 
  The minister, on returning, spoke of its gorgeous colors and the rare beauty of its design in the same terms as those he had heard from the weavers.
  The king, wishing to put his officers to the test, sent them one after another to witness the weaving, and to bring back a report of the progress made by the weavers.  All of them were received courteously by the two rogues, who dwelt at length on the beauty of the material they had woven, and all of them pretended to be enchanted with what they had witness.
  By this time all the people in the town were talking of the wonderful cloth, which was now supposed to be nearly completed.  Before it was taken from the loom the emperor wished to see it himself.  With a crowd of court officials, including all the statesmen who had previously visited the loom, the monarch entered the hall, where the two cunning rogues were weaving with might and main without warp or woof.
  "What's this?" thought the king.  "Why, I can see nothing at all! This is indeed terrible! Am I, then, unfit to be king?" But as the monarch thought it would be very unwise to confess his inability to see the wonderful cloth, he nodded his head in a contented way, and said aloud, "It is indeed magnificent.  It has our highest approval." 
  The whole retinue stood round the loom with admiring looks, and repeated their sovereign's words.  The ministers present counseled him to wear his new clothes for the first tome at the great procession that was soon to take place.
  "It is splendid -- charming!" went from mouth to mouth.  On all sides there seemed general satisfaction, and the king gave the rogues the title of Royal Court Weavers on the spot.
  In the presence of the court the rogues proceeded to take the clothes from the loom.  They went through all the motions proper for the purpose, and begged to be left for two days to prepare the royal clothes, after accurately measuring his majesty's person.  Before the royal party withdrew, the rogues were busy making cuts in the air with great scissors, and sewing with needles without thread.
  On the appointed day the Royal Court Weavers sought the king's dressing room with the wonderful clothes.  The king entered with his chief attendants, and proceeded to put on his new robes, after removing all his upper garments.  The two rogues, lifting up one arm as if they were holding something, said, "See! here is the waistcoat! here is the coat! here is the cloak!" and so on.
  The two rogues then proceeded to dress the king in the new clothes with the greatest care; the king, on receiving each garment, turned round and round before the mirror, and seemed to be highly pleased expressed their satisfaction, and seemed to gaze on his majesty with admiration.
  The king, arrayed in his new robes, descended the grand staircase to mount his horse and join the procession.  The two attendants, whose office it was to carry the train, stooped down and pretended to be holding something in the air.  They did not dare let it be thought that they saw nothing to hold.
  So the king mounted his horse, and the procession moved forwards.  Every eye was strained to catch a glimpse of the beautiful robes of which so much had been heard, and every one was on the tiptoe of delightful expectation.  Nor did they seem disappointed, for no one wished it to be known that he failed to see the wonderful clothes.  So on the procession moved, amid the delighted applause of the crowd.
  At last a little child cried out in a shrill voice, "How funny! he has nothing on but his shirt."
  These words of simple truth broke the spell, and in a moment more the king in his new clothes was greeted with the mocking cheers of the mob.


Lesson 3
"Like Barley Bending"

Like barley bending
In low fields by the sea,
Singing in hard wind
Ceaselessly;

Like barley bending
And rising again, 
So would I, unbroken,
Rise from pain; 

So would I softly, 
Day long, night long,
Change my sorrow
Into song.

--- Sara Teasdale.


Lesson 4
A Good Investment

  "Will you lend me two thousand dollars to establish myself in a small retail business?" inquired a young man not yet out of his teens, of a middle-aged gentleman, who was poring over his ledger in the counting-room of one of the largest establishments in Boston.
  The person addressed turned towards the speaker, and regarding him for a moment with a look of surprise, inquired, "What security can you give me, Mr. Strosser?"
  "Nothing but my note," replied the young man, promptly.
  "Which I fear would not be enough," replied the merchant, smiling.
  "Perhaps so," said the young man; "but, Mr. Barton, remember that the boy is not the man; the time may come when Hiram Strosser's note will be as readily accepted as that of any other man."
  "True, very true," replied Mr. Barton, mildly; "but you know business men seldom lend money without adequate security; otherwise they might soon be reduced to poverty."
  At this remark the young man's countenance became very pale; and, having kept silent for several moments, he inquired, in a voice whose tones indicated his deep disappointment, "Then you can not accommodate me?"
  "Call on me to-morrow, and I will give you a reply," said Mr. Barton, and the young man retired.
  Mr. Barton resumed his labors at the desk; but his mind was so much upon the boy and his singular errand that he could not pursue his task with any correctness; and, after making several sad blunders, he closed the ledger, took his hat, and went out into the street.  Arriving at the shop of a wealthy merchant in Milk Street, he entered the door.
  "Good morning, Mr. Hawley," said he, approaching the proprietor of the establishment, who was seated at his desk counting over the profits of the week.  
  "Good morning," replied the merchant.  "Happy to see you.  Have a seat.  Any news? How's trade?"
  Without noticing these inquiries, Mr. Barton said, "Young Strosser is desirous of establishing himself in a small retail business, and called this morning to secure of me a loan of two thousand dollars for that purpose.
  "Indeed!" exclaimed Mr. Hawley, evidently surprised at this; "but you do not think of lending that sum, do you?"
  "I do not know," replied Mr. Barton.  "Mr. Strosser is a young man of business talent and strict integrity, and will be likely to succeed in whatever he undertakes."
  "Perhaps so," replied Mr. Hawley, doubtfully; "but I am heartily tired of helping to establish these young aspirants for commercial honors."
  "Have you ever suffered from such a course?" inquired Mr. Barton.
  "No," replied the latter, "for I never felt inclined to make an investment of that kind."
  "Then here is a fine opportunity to do so.  It may prove better than stock in the bank.  As for myself, I have concluded that, if you will advance him one thousand dollars, I will contribute an equal sum."
  "Not a single penny would I advance for such a purpose; and if you make an investment of that kind, I shall consider you very foolish."
  "Mr. Barton was silent for several minutes and then arose to depart.  "If you do not feel disposed to share with me in the enterprise, I shall advance the whole sum myself." Saying which, he left the shop.


Lesson 5
A Good Investment 
(Continued) 

  Ten years have passed away since the occurrence of the conversation recorded in the preceding dialogue, and Mr. Barton, pale and agitated, is standing at the same desk at which he stood when first introduced to the reader's attention.  As page after page of his ponderous ledger is examined, his despair becomes deeper and deeper, till at least he exclaims, "I am ruined -- utterly ruined!" 
  "How so?" inquired Hiram Strosser, who entered the room in time to hear Mr. Barton's remark.
  "The last European streamer brought news of the failure of the house of Perleg, Jackson and Co., London, who are indebted to me in the sum of nearly two thousand dollars.  News of the failure has become general, and my creditors, panic-stricken, are pressing me for payment of their demands.  The banks refuse me credit, and I have not the means to meet my obligations.  If I could pass this crisis, perhaps I could be safe again; but it is impossible; my creditors are pressing me and I cannot much longer keep above the tide," replied Mr. Barton.
  "What is the extent of your obligation?" inquired Strosser.
  "Seventy-five thousand dollars," replied Mr. Barton.  
  "Would that sum be sufficient to relieve you?"
  "It would."
  "Then, sir, you shall have it," said Strosser, as he stepped up to the desk, and drew a check for seventy-five thousand dollars.  "Take this, and when you need more, do not hesitate to call upon me.  Remember that it was from you that I received money to establish myself in business."
  "But that debt was cancelled several years ago," replied Mr. Barton, as a ray of hope shot across his troubled mind.
  "True," replied Strosser, "but the debt of gratitude that I owe has never been cancelled; and now that the scale is turned, I deem it my duty to come to the rescue."
  At this singular turn in the tide of fortune, Mr. Barton fairly wept for joy.  Every claim against him was paid as soon as presented, and in less than a month he had passed the crisis, and stood perfectly safe and secure: his credit improved, and his business increased, while several others sank under the blow, among whom was Mr. Hawley, referred to at the commencement of this lesson.
  "How did you manage to keep above the tide?" inquired Mr. Hawley of Mr. Barton, one morning, several months after the events last recorded, as he met the latter in the street, on his way to his place of business.
  "Very easily indeed," replied Mr. Barton.
  "Well, do tell me how," continued Mr. Hawley.  "I lay claim to a good degree of shrewdness, but the strongest exercise of my wits did not save me; and yet you, whose obligations were twice as heavy as my own, have stood the shock, and have come off even bettered by the storm."
  "The truth is," replied Mr. Barton, "I cashed my paper as soon as it was sent in."
  "I suppose so," said Mr. Hawley, regarding Mr. Barton with a look of surprise, "but how did you procure the funds? As for me, I could not obtain a dollar's credit: the banks refused to take my paper, and even my friends deserted me."
  "A little investment that I made some ten years ago," replied Mr. Barton, smiling, "has recently proved exceedingly profitable."
  "Investment?" echoed Mr. Hawley; "What investment?"
  "Why, do you not remember how I established young Strosser in business some ten years?"
  "O, yes, yes," replied Mr. Hawley, as a ray of suspicion lighted up his countenance; "but what of that?" 
  "He is now one of the largest provision dealers in the city, and when this calamity occurred, he came forwards, and very generously advanced me seventy-five thousand dollars.  You know I told you, on the morning I called to offer you an equal share of the stock, that it might prove better than an investment in the bank."
  During this announcement Mr. Hawley's eyes were bent intently upon the ground, and drawing a deep sign he moved on, while Mr. Barton returned to his place of business with his mind cheered and strengthened by thoughts of his singular investment.


Lesson 6 
The Theory of Relativity

  There were never two men more astounded than Professors Michelson and Morley in the year 1887.
  "There must be a conspiracy of Nature against us," they protested.
  The cause of their astonishment was a most delicate experiment to determine how fast the earth travels.  Scientist knew already with what speed the earth revolves around the sun.  Now Professors Michelson and Morley wanted to know fast the earth is traveling on its way through space.
  Everybody was still bewildered by the Michelson-Morley experiment when suddenly Albert Einstein presented an explanation which burst like a bomb in the midst of our peaceful science, upsetting all our old ideas.  The German youth was only twenty-six years old at the time of his discovery.
  Let us recall what the Michelson-Morley experiment seemed to show.  Apparently the earth is standing still, yet we know it is moving around the sun.
  Certainly, said Einstein.  It is doing both.  It all depends on how you look at it.  Suppose you were born and brought up in the cabin of a large ocean liner, say, one of those powerful vessels that travel through the waters smoothly.  Suppose, too, you were never told you were on a ship or that there was such a thing as an ocean.
  As you sat in the cabin, you saw your father move about from one part of the room to another.  The walls of the room, however, did not move.  Only your father moved when he changed his position.
  You are reading a book.  All at once, the book drops from your fingers.  Thud! Strait down at your feet it falls.
  Now suppose you have a startling adventure.  Your father has by accident left the cabin-door open and, overcome by curiosity, you step forth and find yourself in a strange world -- the deck.  In amazement, you peer over the rail of the ship into the water and observe that the ship is moving across the water, just as your father moved across the room.
  Your ship is approaching a promontory of land.  Roused further by the spirit of adventure, you run to the prow, and as the ship is gliding by, you spring from it to the cliff.  You turn around just in time to get a last glimpse into the cabin.  You see your father drop a book.  Dose it seem to fall straight down this time?
  No.  The cabin is moving; therefore everything in it is moving, too.  The book, as it falls, moves not only downwards but forwards.  Dose the book fall straight? Yes and no; it depends on whether you are inside the cabin or on the land looking into the moving cabin.
  Now tax your imagination heavily.  You are on the sun, and by some miraculous spyglass you look into the same cabin.  How dose the book appear to fall?
  It falls down; then forwards because the cabin is sailing on the ocean; the in curve because the earth is moving around the sun and so around you.  If you were on the star Vega, furthermore, the falling book would have another motion because our whole solar system, of which the sun, the earth, and Vega are a part, is moving forwards as a whole.
  Now, says Einstein, all nature is in continuous motion.  How can we tell it? By comparison only.  Suppose one day you board a train for the seashore.  You put your suitcase up in the rack, sit down, and think what a pleasant time awaits you.  Hours, so it seems to you, elapse.
  "Why doesn't the train start?" you exclaim impatiently, and look out of the window for the cause of the delay.  To your delight you find yourself gliding by the windows of another train.
  "We're off!"
  You are not able to tell that until you compare your train with another.  Suddenly, to your dismay, you find it is the other train that is moving.  Now how do you find that out? By comparing your train with some telegraph poles.  Too bad! And you were enjoying the ride so!
  Suppose, for instance, that some demon began to shove telegraph poles past your window at the rate of sixty miles an hour.  What a jolly ride you would be having! Of curse, you would never get to the seashore, but that has nothing to do with the fact that you would seem to be moving, and at a great rate, too.
  "All motion is relative," says Einstein.  "You can never discover the motion of the earth unless you compare it with some other body in the heavens.  Since Professors Michelson and Morley did not make the comparison with any object in the heavens, they could not find the earth moving."


Lesson 7
To a Young Man About to Visit America

  You have read that the American are an active and rude people, who jostle the stranger in the streets, who have no intellectual interests, who have admirable libraries in which nobody reads, who think only in dollars and announce the price of everything.
  Be reassured.  I have just spent two months in America.  I was treated politely everywhere.  I saw libraries so crowded with readers that I had difficulty in finding a seat, and nobody told me the price of anything, except in the shops.
  It is a bit strange to consider that the country has existed for only two centuries, since the colonists who created it brought with them the entire past of the white race.  Go to the Metropolitan Museum and look at those rooms in which the interiors of eighteen-century American houses have been reconstructed.  You will readily perceive that this is not the art of a primitive civilization, but that of a refined one.  Washington was not a rude pioneer; he was an Anglo- Saxon gentleman.
  So here is my first bit of advice: Go in a sympathetic state of mind, much more disposed to understand than to criticize.  My second is: Spare your nerves.  What is terrible about this country is its incessant agitation.  Being sons and grandsons of pioneers, the Americans have not yet realized that the whole charm of life consists in leisure.
  You have read, among other things, that America is a land so addicted to conformity that, if you wear a hat a bit different from the others, you will be jeered in the streets.  Don't worry.  Dress as you like.  Nobody will pay any attention.  Dress is less important in America than in England.

  But be sure to take a raincoat.  Everything over there is large, even the rain.
  You will be pleased by the railway stations, which are works of art, and by the country stations -- from which you will constantly expect Charlie Chaplin to emerge.
  You will like the locomotive, which have bells on their necks like the Swiss cows.  In the trains without Pullmans you will like the one-class cars.  The passengers stick their tickets in their hats, and the conductor comes and gets them without saying a word; a little boy sells fruit, chocolate, and packages of fried potatoes; and it is impossible to tell the banker from the carpenter.
  Then you will begin to understand in what sense the country is democratic.  It is not so in its institutions.  But the different classes resemble one another in their exterior aspect, in their manner of living.  At the factories the workmen arrive in soft hats.  Before a building under construction you will see lines of motor cars belonging to plumbers, masons and carpenters who are at work there.

  Passage from one social class to another is easier and more rapid than in Europe.  Most of the large businesses are not managed by the sons of those who founded them.  The hopes of each beginner are large.  Manual labor is not scorned.  In the tone of a workman speaking to a member of the middle class there is far less of humility and envy than in Europe.  
  Many years of research and disappointment, of philosophies first admire, then abandoned, have rendered us in Europe prudently skeptical.  Perhaps you will be sorry to find so rarely in America that "soft pillow" of Montaigne -- doubt; for America in the paradise of the creator of theories.
  Refrain from prophesying America's future.  Too many doctors have leaned over her and said, "She isn't sick, but she soon will be." The elements of the problem are so numerous that no human mind can solve it.  Content yourself with observing and describing.
  Above all, be yourself.  Be simple.  They will receive you generously, with a great desire to show you their country in its most attractive aspects, with some concern also as to your European critical sense.  Don't discourage them.  Don't think that everything that is different is absurd.


Lesson 8
Seal Hunting

  Seals may at any season of the year crawl up on the ice to lie there and sleep, but they do it chiefly in the spring and summer -- from March, when the temperature still goes down to thirty or forty degrees below zero, to midsummer, when even on the ice the temperature is forty or fifty degrees above zero (Fahrenheit) and much of the surface is covered with pools of water.
  The seal never crawls hastily out on the ice from his hole or from the water in which he has been swimming.  He is always fearful of polar bears.  When he wants to come up, he spies out the situation by bobbing up from the water as high as he can, lifting his head a foot or two above the general ice level.  This he dose at intervals for some time -- perhaps for hours -- until he concludes that there are no bears around and ventures to pull himself out on the ice.
  Here follows another period of extreme precaution during which the seal lies beside his hole ready to dive in again at the slightest alarm.  Eventually he begins to take the naps that were his desire in coming out of the water.  But his sleep is restless through fear of bears.  He takes naps of thirty or forty or fifty seconds, or perhaps a minute.  Then he raised his head ten or fifteen inches from the ice and spends five to twenty seconds in making a complete survey of the horizon before taking another nap.  A nap of three minutes is long slumber for a seal, although faraway from land and in other regions where bears are few or absent I have seen them sleep for five and six minutes.
  There are only three animals with which seals are familiar -- bears, white foxes, and other seals.  It would not serve the hunter to pretend he is a bear, for that is the one thing the seals fears.  This shows that you must not wear white clothes on the white ice.  If the seal sees something suspicious and white, he will think of a bear and dive instantly.  You cannot very well pretend to be a fox, for it is not much larger than a cat, is very nimble, and continually keeps hopping around.  You would fail in playing that part.  But if you are dressed in dark clothing and are lying flat on the ice, you look at a distance much like a seal, and you will find by trying it that you can imitate his actions successfully.
  You can learn the conventional method of sealing from an Eskimo if you are with a group which practices it, but there are several groups among which it is not use.  In any case you can learn from the seals themselves, for your task is but to imitate them.  Take your field-glasses with you and spend a few hours or days in watching seals from a safe distance, -- that is, 400 or 500 yards.  You are, then, to begin playing seal when you are about 300 yards away.  Up to that point you advance by walking bent while the seal sleeps and dropping on your knees to wait motionless while he is awake.  But at less than 300 yards he might notice you on all fours, and as that is not a seal-like posture, you must begin to crawl ahead snake fashion.  You must not crawl head-on, for a man in that position is not so much like a seal as he is from a side view.
  When the seal first sees you, he becomes tense, raises his head a little higher, crawls a foot or two closer to the water to be ready to dive, and then watches you, intent and suspicious.  If you remain motionless, his suspicious increase at the end of the first minute, and before the third or forth minute is over he plunges into the water, for he knows that no real seal is likely to lie motionless that long.  Therefore, before the first minute of his watching is over, you should do something seal-like.  You are lying flat on the ice like a boy sleeping on a lawn.  The easiest seal-like thing to do is to lift your head ten to fifteen inches, spend ten or fifteen seconds looking around, then drop your head on the ice again.  By doing half a dozen times at thirty or fifty-second intervals you will very likely convince your seal that you are another seal.
  Seals are full of lice, and they are continually rubbing and scratching themselves.  They rub themselves by rolling on the ice, and scratch chiefly with their hind limbs, which are long and flexible and armed with admirable claws.  It is, therefore, advisable for the hunter to roll about a little and to bent his legs at the knees frequently as if scratching with hind limbs.  These actions make an impression upon the seal which in the long run is convincing, and, in eight cases out of ten a good hunter is accepted as a fellow seal that has just come out of hole to sleep.  Possibly, however, some of them may be getting hungry and may decide not to bother to study the new arrival but to take the occasion for getting down and having a feed.  That is motive frequently influences seals we judge from the fact that towards midnight the seal commonly goes down soon after noticing us.  The seal usually comes up on the ice in the early morning or forenoon and goes down to feed towards midnight.
  If you once get your seal convinced, he stays convinced.  He not only does not fear you but even appears to rely on you.  He is always on guard against the approach for a bear.  Seals appear to me to say to themselves: "Over there is a bother seal, and if a bear approaches from that side it will get him before it gets me.  So I can afford to leave that quarter unwatched and can devote myself to guarding against a surprise from the other side." As if he held this view, the seal will give you only a casual glance now and then, and you can approach with great confidence.  You crawl ahead while he sleeps and stop when he wakes up.  If you are careful, if a moderate wind from the direction of the seal covers any noises there may be, you can crawl as near him as you like.  I have known Eskimos to crawl right up to a seal and seize him by a limb with one hand while they stab him a knife with the other.  But they do only rarely, either "for a stunt" or else because they have not the proper hunting gear with them.  Ordinarily as Eskimo hurls his harpoon from a distance of from ten to thirty feet.  I ordinarily shot from a distance of twenty-five to seventy-five yards.


Lesson 9
A Vain Assault 

  The army was now winding between high mountains, along a narrow way by the side of a rushing river, which roared loudly, swollen by the winter rains.  Hour after hour the army pursued its march through wild mountain scenery now all hidden on the folds of night.  At length, after having climbed one considerable eminence, the guide spoke some words to the leader, and pointed down the valley.  The army halted.  All the officers came together, and conversed apart in low voices.  In the valley beneath lay the strong nest of that e Proud bird of the mountains' for whose destruction they come so far.  Dawn was approaching.  Already the dense weight of the darkness was much relaxed.  They could see dimly the walls and towers of the chieftain's stronghold, showing white in the surrounding dusk, or half-concealed by trees.  It was not a castle, only a small town, with walls and gates.
  Then cautiously the army began to descend from the heights.  Silence was ordered for all, not to be broken on pain of death.  Each officer was responsible for the behavior of his own file; he had strict orders to keep the men together, and prevent straying on any pretext.  As they drew nearer, the scaling ladders were unpacked.  The little city as yet gave no sign of alarm; not a cock crowed or dog barked.  No watch had been set, or, if there had been, he slept.  All within, man and beast, seemed plunged in profound slumber.  Some strong parties now separated from the main body, and moved through the trees to the right and the left.  Their object was to surround the city, and cut off all retreat.  There was another gate at the near, opening upon a wooden bridge, which spanned a considerable stream.  There were only two gates to the city, that in front, at which the main body was assembled, and the rear gate, whiter the parties were now tending.  They never got there.  At one moment there was silence, broken only by the murmuring of the stream or the occasional crackling of some rotten twig; and the next the silence rang with the sharp, clear roll of a kettledrum, the explosions so rapid that they seemed one continuous noise --
     'Oh, listen, for the vale profound
     Is overflowing with the sound.'
  As suddenly as that drum had sounded, so abruptly it ceased; some one struck the drummer boy to the earth senseless, perhaps lifeless.  But he had done work.  The roll of a kettle-drum can no more be recalled than the spoken word.  The city, so sound asleep one minute past, was now awake and alive in every fiber.  Bugles sounded there; arms and armor rang, and fierce vices in a strange tongue shouted passionate commands.  Dogs bayed, horses neighed, women cried, and children wept; and all the time the noise of trampling feet sounded like low thunder.  The fume and glare of fast multiplying torches rose above the white walls, which were now alive with the motions of armed men, and presently ablaze with firearms.  The assailants were themselves surprised and taken unawares.  Their various parties were separated.  The original plan of assault had failed and new arrangements were necessary.  The leader bade his trumpet sound the recall, and withdrew his men out of range, with the loss of a few wounded.
  When half-an-hour later a general attack was made on the walls, there was no one to receive it.  They stormed an empty town.  The chieftain, all his men, women, and children, all his animals and the most valuable of his movable property, were seen dimly at the other side of the river, morning up the dark valley with the men of war in the rear.  Pursuit was dangerous, and was not attempted.  The half-victorious army took half-joyful possession of the deserted city.


Lesson 10
The Employment of Time

  The value of time has passed into a proverb, -- "Time is money."  It is so because its employment brings money.  But it is more.  It is knowledge.  Still more, it is virtue.  Nor is it creditable to the character of the world that the proverb has taken this material and mercenary complexion, as if money were the highest good and the strongest recommendation.  Time is more than money.  It brings what money cannot purchase.  It has in its lap all the learning of the past, the spoils of antiquity, the priceless treasures of knowledge.  Who would barter these for gold or silver? But knowledge is a means only, and not an end.  It is valuable because it promotes the development and the progress of man.  And the highest value of time is not even in knowledge, but in the opportunity of doing good.  
  Time is opportunity.  Little or much, it may be the occasion of usefulness.  It is the point desire by the philosopher where to plant the lever that shall move the world.  It is the napkin in which are wrapped, not only the talent of silver, but the treasures of knowledge and the fruits of virtue.  Saving time, we save all these.  Employing time to the best advantage, we exercise a true thrift.  To each of us the passing day is of the same dimensions, nor can any one, by taking thought, add a moment to its hours.  But, though unable to extend their duration, he may swell them with works.
  It is customary to say, "Take care of the small sums, and the large will take care of themselves." With equal wisdom and more necessity may it be said, "Watch the minutes, and the hours and days will be safe." The moments are precious; they are gold filings, to be carefully preserved and melted into the rich ingot.  
  Time is the measure of life on earth.  Its enjoyment is life itself.  Its divisions, its hours, its days, its minutes, are fractions of this heavenly gift.  Every moment that flies over our heads takes from the future and gives to the past, shortening by so much the measure of our days, abridging by so much the measure of usefulness committed to our hands.
  The moments lost in listlessness or squandered in unprofitable dissipation, gathered into aggregates, are hours, days, weeks, months, years.  The daily sacrifice of a single hour during a year comes at its end to thirty-six working days, allowing ten hours to the days, an amount of time, if devoted exclusively to one object, ample for the acquisition of important knowledge, and for the accomplishment of inconceivable good.  Imagine a solid month dedicated, without interruption, to a single purpose, and what visions must not rise of untold accumulations of knowledge, of unnumbered deeds of goodness! Who of us does not each day, in manifold ways, sacrifice these precious moments, these golden hours?
  In the employment of time will be found the sure means of happiness.  The laborer, living by the sweat of his brow, and the youth, toiling in perplexities of business or study, sighs for repose, and grumbles at the law which ordains the seeming hardship of his lot.  He seeks happiness as the end and aim of his life, but he dose not open his mind to the important truth that occupation is indispensable to happiness.  He shuns work, but he dose not know he precious jewel hidden beneath its rude attire.  Others, there are, who wander over half the globe in pursuit of what is found under the humblest roof of virtuous industry, in the shadow of every tree planted by one's own hand.  The poet has said,
     "The best and sweetest far are toil-created gains."
But this does not disclose the whole truth.  There is in useful labor its own exceedingly great reward, without regard to gain.
  Seek, then, occupation; seek to employ all the faculties, whether in study or conduct, not in words only, but in deeds also, mindful that "words are the daughters of Earth, but deeds are the sons of Heaven." So shall your days be filled with usefulness,

     "And when old Times shall lend you to your end, Goodness and you fill up one moment."


Lesson 11
Man is Still a Monkey

  Mr. Mok: As I understand it, these evolutions, from Linnaeus to Darwin, taught that man is descended from a monkey or a monkey-like animal.
  Dr. Gregory: Yes, and we still do.
  M. Mok: How did they know?
  Dr. Gregory: Because of the structural resemblance between man, the apes, and the monkeys.  As a matter of fact, the anatomy of a manlike ape is more that like of the lower monkey forms.  Structural resemblance proves relationship.
  Mr. Mok: But does it prove descent?  How do you know that there were no men on earth long before the monkeys?
  Dr. Gregory:  Are you hinting that the monkeys are descended from man?  Some scientists have seriously entertained that idea, just as some have tried to show that fishes are the descendants of land animals rather the reverse.
  Mr. Mok: I was not thinking at such a possibility.  What would like to know is this:  why my there not have been men, say, in the age of the reptiles?
  Dr. Gregory: You are convinced that man is a backbone creature, aren't you?
  Mr. Mok: He should be.
  Dr. Gregory: Fine.  We have a life record of the backboned animals stretching back over a period of something over four hundred million years.  True, this record is broken, at intervals, but still we have tens of thousands of specimens, actual fossils from hundreds of localities and representing scores of successive stage in the history of the earth.
  Mr. Mok: What good is this huge mass of old bones in proving that man followed the monkeys and not, say, early fishes?
  Dr. Gregory: Because in each rock layer, dating from some definite age, fossils of certain creatures were found and others were not.
  Mr. Mok: In other words, because no human bones were unearthed from the same rock layers hat contained, for example, early reptile fossils, you conclude that there were no people at that time.  I call that negative evidence.  You merely infer it.
  Dr. Gregory: Right.  So far, it is an inference from negative evidence.  But everything we know in science, except that which is directly observed, is known by inference.  It is in that way, for instance, that we know that the sun dose not actually rise and set, but that the earth alternately produces day and night on either of its hemispheres by whirling around on its own axis.  Nobody ever has been the earth whirl.
  Mr. Mox: Clearer than it was before.  Still it seems to me that your anecdote does not fit the case exactly.  Is it not possible that no human remains were found in the earlier rock layers because of earthquakes or other upheavals?
  Dr. Gregory: That would not cause them to be consistently absent for nearly four hundred million years, and consistently present in much later periods.  In the American Museum of Natural History alone there are no fewer that 44,661 catalogued fossil specimens of backboned creatures, and not a single one of them was found in a rock layer in which it did not belong chronologically A broad view of the fossil record of life, of which this collection is only a very small part, shows that the general trend of life's development was from fist to man, and not the reverse.


Lesson 12
The Mill-Water

Only the sound remains
Of the old mill;
Gone is the wheel;
On the prone roof and walls the nettle reigns

Water that toils no more
Dangles while locks 
And, falling, mocks
The music of the mill-wheel's busy roar.

Pretty to see, by day
Its sound is naught
Compared with thought
And talk and noise of labor and of play.

Night makes the difference,
In calm moonlight,
Gloom infinite,
The sound comes surging in upon the sense:

Solitude, company, --
When it is night, --
Grief or delight
By it must hunted or concluded be.

Often the silentness
Has but this one
Companion;
Wherever one creeps in the other is:

Sometimes a thought is drowned
By it, sometimes
Out of it climbs;
All thoughts begin or end upon this sound.

Only the idle foam
Of water falling
Changelessly calling,
Where once men had a work-place and a home.

--- Edward Thomas.


Lessom13
The Murder Can Not Keep His Secret

  I very much regret that it should have been thought necessary to suggest to you that I am brought here to "hurry you against the law, and beyond the evidence."  O hope I have too much regard for my own character, to attempt either; and were I to make such an attempt, I am sure that, in this court, nothing can be carried against the low, and that gentlemen, intelligent and just as you are, are not by any power, to be hurried beyond the evidence.
  Though I could well have wished to shun this occasion, I have not felt at liberty to without my professional assistance when it is supposed that o might be in some degree useful in investigating and discovering the truth respecting this most extraordinary murder.  It has seemed to be a duty imposed on me, as on every other citizen, to do my best and my utmost to bring to light those guilty of this crime.
  Against the prisoner at the bar, as an individual, I can not have the slightest prejudice.  I would not do him the smallest injury or injustice.  But I do not affect to be indifferent to the discovery and the punishment of this deep guilt.  I cheerfully share in the disgrace, how much soever in may be, which is cast on those who feel and manifest an anxious concern that all who had a part in planning, or a hand in executing, this deed of midnight murder, may be brought to answer for their enormous crime at the bar of public justice.
  Gentlemen, it is a most extraordinary case.  In some respects, it has hardly a precedent anywhere; certainly none our New England history.  This bloody drama exhibited no suddenly excited ungovernable rage.  The actors in it were not surprised by any lion-like temptation springing upon their virtue, and overcoming it before resistance could begin.  It was a cool, money-making murder.  It was all "hire and salary, not revenge."  It was the weighing of money against life; the counting out of so many ounces many pieces of silver against so many ounces of blood.
  The deed was executed with a degree of self-possession and steadiness equal to the wickedness with which it was planned.  The circumstance, now clearly in evidence, spread out the whole scene before us.  Deep sleep had fallen on the destined victim, and on all beneath his roof.  A healthful old man, to whom sleep was sweet, the first sound slumbers of the night held him in their soft but strong embrace.
  The murderer enters, through the window already prepared, into an unoccupied apartment.  With noiseless foot he paces the lonely hall, half lighted by the moon; he winds up the ascent of the stairs, and reaches the door of the chamber; of this he moves the lock, by soft and continued pressure, till it turns on its hinged; and he enters, and beholds his victim before him.  The room was uncommonly open to the admission of light.
  The face of the innocent sleeper was turned from the murder, and the beams of the moon, resting on the gray locks of his ages temples, showed him where to strike.  The fatal blow is given, and the victim passes, without a struggle or a motion, from the repose of sleep to repose of death.  It is the murderer's purpose to make sure work, and he yet use the dagger, though it was obvious that life had been destroyed by the blow of the club.
  He even raises the aged arm, that he may not fail I his aim at the heat, and replaces it again over the wounds of the dagger.  To finish the picture, he explores the wrist for the pulse.  He feels it, and ascertains that it beats to longer.  It is accomplished -- the deed is done.  He retreats, retraces his steps to the window, passes out through it as he came in, and escapes.  He has done the murder; no eye has seen him; no ear has hears him; the secret is his own, and he is safe.
  Ah, gentlemen, that was dreadful mistake.  Such a secret can be safe nowhere.  The whole creation of God has neither nook nor corner where the guilty can bestow it, and say it is safe.  Not to speak of that Eye which glances through all disguises, and beholds everything as in the splendor of noon; such secrets of guilt are never safe from detection, even by him.  True it is, generally speaking, that "murder will out."
  True it is, that Providence has so ordained, and does so govern thing, that those who break the great law of Heaven, by seeding man's blood, seldom succeed in avoiding discovery; especially in a case exciting so much attention as this, discovery must and will come, sooner or later.  A thousand eyes turn at once to explore every man, every thing, every circumstance connected with the time and place; a thousand ears catch every whisper; a thousand excited minds intensely dwell on the scene, shedding all their light and ready to kindle the slightest circumstance into a blaze of discovery.  Meantime, the guilty soul can not keep its own secret.


Lesson 14
English Characteristics

  The English seem as silent as the Japanese, yet vainer than the inhabitants of Siam.  Upon my arrival, I attributed that reserve to modesty which I no w find has its origin in pride.  Condescend to address them first, and you are sure of their acquaintance; stoop to flattery and you gain their friendship and esteem.  They bear hunger, cold, fatigue, and all the miseries of life without shrinking; danger only calls forth their fortitude; they even exult in calamity; but contempt is what they cannot bear.  An Englishman fears contempt more than death; he often flies to death as a refuge from its pressure, and dies when he fancies the world has ceases to esteem him.
  Pride seems to be the source not only of their national vice, but of their national virtues also.  An Englishman is taught to love the King as his friend, but to acknowledge no other master than the laws which he himself has contributed to enact.  He despise those nations who, that one may be free, are all content to be slaves; who first lift a tyrant into terror, and then shrink under his power as if delegated from Heaven.  Liberty is echoed in all their assembles; and thousands might be found ready to offer up their lives for the sound, though perhaps not one of all the number understands its meanings.  The lowest mechanic, however, looks upon it as his duty to be a watchful guardian of his country's freedom, and often uses a language that might seem haughty even in the mouth of the great emperor who traces his ancestry to the moon.
  The English, in general, seem fonder of gaining the esteem than the love of those they conversation with.  This gives a formality to their amusements; their gayest conversations have something too wise for innocent enjoyment; though in company you are seldom disgusted with the absurdity of a fool, you are seldom lifted into rapture by those strokes of gaiety which give instant, though not permanent, pleasure.
  What they want, however, in gaiety, they make up in politeness.  You smile at hearing me praise the English for their politeness.  But I must still repeat it, the English seem more polite than any of their neighbors; their great art in this respect lies in endeavoring, while they oblige, to lessen the force of the favor.  Other countries are fond of obliging a stranger, but seem desirous that he should be sensible of the obligation.  The English confer their kindness with and appearance of indifference, and give away benefits with an air as if they despised them.
  Walking, a few days ago, between an English and a French man, into the suburbs of the city, we were overtaken by a heavy shower of rain.  I was unprepared; but they had each large coats, which defended from what seemed to me a heavy downpour.  The Englishman, seeing me shrink from the weather, accosted me thus: "Psha, man, what are you shrinking?  Here, take this coat; I don't want it; I find it in no way useful to me."
  The Frenchman began to show his politeness in turn.  "My dear friend," cried he, "why don't you oblige me by making use of my coat?  you see how well it defends me from the rain; I should not choose to part with it to others but to such a friend as you I could even part with my skin to do him service."


Lesson 15
A Good Citizen

  The world has been trying experiments ever since it was in long clothes, and he who would be wise respecting the future must know something respecting these experiments of the past.  Wise men learn by the experiments of others, says the proverb,, fools learn only by other own.  If the citizen is to be a wise man, and if he is to have a part and a wise part in the government of the nation, it is necessary that he should know something of the experiments which have been made in the past -- that is, of history.  He should understand what is the rise, progress, and development of the human race; where it has succeeded and where it has failed; why succeeded and why it has failed.  He should know in order that he may not repeat to-day the experiments which were the failures of yesterday.  It is necessary in order that he may not repeat to-day the experiments which were the failures of yesterday.  It is necessary in order that he may not think that the methods which did well in one age and under one circumstance must necessarily be applied on another age and under other circumstances.  He must know history because he must know the world's e experience; otherwise he cannot be wise in shaping the destiny of the nation for the future.
  There have been in this world great men.  They have had great thoughts, and have uttered these great thoughts.  They live in some sense immortal in these great thoughts.  The world's true history is its intellectual history, and its intellectual history has been written by its great leaders.  If you ask what Palestine was, you look to its prophets; if you ask what Greece was, you look to its poets and its philosophers; if you ask what Rome was, you look to its great statesmen and jurists; if you ask what Italy was, you think of Dante; of England, you think of Shakespeare; of France, you think of Rousseau or Voltaire or Victor Hugo.  The great men of pas age have done great thinking, and their thoughts live in literature.  The good citizen, he who is to have the power to direct or participate in directing the destinies of a great nation, must know how some thing of these great thoughts of these great men.  He needs to know, not names of books, but the spirit in the books; not the dates of history, but the trend of events in history; not the mere natural forces, but their expression and their coordination; not the names of boundaries and states, but what various countries, especially his own country, in their physical aspect stand for; not mere alphabet and words, but how to use words so as to express the mind that is in him, and how to understand words so that he can comprehend the mind that is in another man.
  One difficulty with our systems of education thus far seems to me to be that we have paid too much attention to the higher education and too little to the broader education.  We need to broaden it at the base even if we have to trim it a little at the top.  For when all the education of a public school system tends towards literary proficiency, and when the boy or girl graduating from the school can do nothing but write school compositions, it is evident that the provision of self-support is not adequate.  Education should be such as to make intelligent workmen; not skilled workmen, but intelligent workmen; not skilled workmen, but intelligent workmen; and there is a great difference between the two.  The workmen in a factory may do a particular piece if work for one or two years and may become a very skilled mechanic in the doing of that one particular piece of work, and yet he may have no intelligence about his work whatever He may not know what is done before or after him in making the finished product.  If he is taken from that particular piece of work, he may be as helpless as if he were a child.  There is many a skilled mechanic who knows haw to de a particular things, if the particular thing is one that he has done fifty times before, but if there happens a new combination of circumstances demanding a variation in the work, the intelligent wife has to stand over him and tell him, the skilled mechanic, how to do it.  We ought in our public school system to give such an industrial education as well make intelligent workingmen.  Then let them go out and become skilled workingmen by practice in their several departments.
  Is this all?  No.  A man may read and write the English language, may know geography and science and history and literature and some from of industry, and all his knowledge may simply equip him to be a greater rascal then he could otherwise have been.  Life is not made up of intelligence; into life enters that which is more important than mere intelligence, -- will and science, -- the ability to know what is right and wrong, the ability to resist the wrong and to do the right.  This is absolutely essential to good citizenship.  To be a good citizen the man must be trained morally.  The better educated he is, the greater peril he may be to society, if moral training has not accompanied intellectual equipment.
  It has been proposed to leave the moral training to the churches and the families, and to assign only the intellectual equipment to the schools.  It was at one time popular thus to divide education into two departments, and to assign all intellectual education to the state and all religious education to the church.  But there is no such division between the intellectual and religious; it dose not exist.  Religion is carrying the right spirit into all life.  We cannot divide man into compartments and direct one institution to develop one compartment and another institution to develop the other compartment, any more than we can draw a dividing line in a tree, and say we will feed this side of the tree with one sort of manure and that side of the tree with another sort of manure.  The whole man must be educated, the whole man must be trained.  It is not enough to teach the man what are the laws of nature and of life, it is also necessary to fashion the affections and the will to move in harmony with those laws, and if it is the function of the state to furnish education in order to make men and women good citizens, and if in the exercise of this function it is the duty of the state to give all that is necessary to citizenship, then it is the duty of the state to fashion the affections and the will in harmony with the great laws of society.


Lesson 16
The Discovery of America

  Next morning, being Friday, the third day of August, in the year 1492, Columbus set sail, a little before sunrise, in presence of a vast crowd of spectators, who sent up their prayers to heaven for the success of the voyage, which they wished rather than expected.  Columbus steered directly for the Canary Island, and arrived there without any occurrence that would have deserved notice on any other occasion.  But in such an important voyage every circumstance was attended to.
  As they proceeded, the sign of approaching land seemed to be more certain.  The birds began to appear in flocks, making towards the south-west.  Columbus, in guided in several of their discoveries by the motion of birds, altered his course from due west towards that  point whither pointed their flight.
  But after holding on for several days in this new direction, without better success than formerly, having seen no object during the thirty days but the sea and the sky, the hopes of his companions subsided faster than they had risen; their fears revived with additional force; impatience, rage, and despair appeared in every countenance.
  All idea of obedience was lost.  The officers, who had hitherto agreed with Columbus in opinion and supported his authority, now took part with the man; they assembled on the deck, pleaded with their commander, mingled threats with their pleas, and required him to turn about and return to Europe.
  Columbus perceived that it would be of no avail to employ either or severe measures to put down a mutiny so general and so violent.  He promised solemnly to his men that he would comply with their request, provided they would accompany him and obey his commands for three days longer, and if, during that time, land were not discovered, he would then abandon the enterprise, and direct his course towards Spain.
  Enraged as the sailors were, and impatient to turn their faces again towards their native country, this proposition did not appear to them unreasonable; nor did Columbus hazard much in confining himself to a term so short.  The signs of land were now so numerous and promising that he deemed them unmistakable.  For some days, the sounding line had reached the bottom, and the soil which it brought up indicated land to be at no great distance.  
  The flocks of birds increased, and were composed not only of sea-fowl, but of such land birds as could not be supposed to fly far from shore.  The crew of the Pinta observed a cane floating, which seemed to have been newly cut, and likewise a piece of timber artificially carved.  The sailors aboard the Nina took up the branch of a tree with red berries perfectly fresh.  The clouds around the setting sun assumed a new appearance; the air was milder and warmer, and during the night the wind became variable.
  From all these symptoms, Columbus was so confident of being near land, that on the evening of the 11th of October he ordered the sail to be furled, and the ships to lie to, keeping strict watch lest they should be driven ashore in the night.  During this interval of suspense and expectation no man shut his eyes, all kept upon deck, gazing intently upon that quarter where they expected to discover the land which had so long been the object their wishes.
  A little after midnight the joyful sound of Land! Land! Was heard from the Pinta, which kept always ahead of the other ships.  But from having been so often deceived by false appearances, every man now become slow of belief, and waited in all the impatience of uncertainty for the return of day.  As soon as morning dawned all doubts and fears were dispelled.  From every ship and island was seen about two leagues to the north, whose flat and green fields, well stored with wood, and watered with many streams, presented the aspect of a delightful country.
  The crew of the Pinta instantly began the Te Deum, as a hymn of thanksgiving the God, and were joined by those of the other ships with tears of joy.  This office of gratitude to Heaven was followed by an act of justice to their commander.  They threw themselves at the feet of Columbus, with feelings of self-condemnation, mingled with reverence.
  They implored him to pardon their ignorance and insolence, which had hindered the prosecution of his plan, and passing in the warmth of their admiration, from one extreme to another, they now pronounced the man, who they had so lately abused and threatened, to be a person inspired by Heaven with wisdom and fortitude more than human.
  As soon as the sun arose, all their boats were manned and armed.  They rowed towards the island with their colors flying, and with warlike music.  As they approached the coast, they saw it covered with a multitude of people, whom the novelty of the sight had drawn together, whose attitudes and gestures expressed wonder and astonishment at the strange objects which presented themselves to their view.
  Columbus was the first European who set foot on the new world which he discovered.  He landed in a rich dress, and with a naked sword in his hand.  His men followed, and, kneeing down, they all kissed the ground which they had so long desired to see.  they then took possession of the country for the crown of Castile and Leon with all the ceremonies which it was customary to observe in acts of this kind.


Lesson 17
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

  Mr. Utterson was a lawyer who believed in letting people go to the devil in their own way.  He and Richard Enfield, a man about town, who was at once his distant kinsman and his friend, often walked about the London streets together.  One day they came upon a windowless, two-storied building in a byway.
  Enfield told of seeing a man in this street run into a little girl, knock her down, and walk over her body.  "It sounds nothing to hear, but it was hellish to see," he said.  "I collared the man and held him, and , though he made no resistance, he gave me a look so ugly that set me in a sweat.  He offered to pay damages and came to this house to get the money.  He gave me ten pounds in gold and a check signed by man I knew.  A forgery?  Not a bit of it ? perfectly good!"
  Mr. Utterson asked the name of the man.  Enfield with some hesitation replied,  "His name is Hyde."
  "You see I don't ask you the name of the man who signed the check, for I know it already," said Utterson.
  That night the latter opened his safe and took from it a will which he re-examined with are.  It provided that in case of the death of Henry Jekyll all his possessions were to pas to Edward Hyde, and in case of the disappearance, or unexplained absence for three months, of the said Jekyll, Edward Hyde should step into Jekyll's shoes without delay.  As he studied it the lawyer said, "I thought it madness; now I begin to fear it is disgrace."
  He decided to talk with Doctor Lanyon, a great physician and an old friend of Jekyll.  
  "I see very little of Henry now," said Lanyon.  "He began to go wrong some ten years ago.  He became too fanciful for me."
  Lanyon had never heard of Hyde.
  From that time forwards Utterson began to haunt that doorway into which Hyde had disappeared.  He determined to discover its owner.  At last one night a small, plainly dressed man approached and drew a key from his pocket.  His look suggested deformity, but he did not show it.  Utterson accosted him and said: "Now I shall know you again.  It may be useful."
  Hyde gave his address in Soho, admitted knowing Jekyll and disappeared within.  Utterson turned away convinced that this loathsome little man had some dark hold upon Doctor Jekyll.  In sorrow and in pity he went to call upon Jekyll, who loved just around the corner.  He was away.
  To the servant Utterson said, "I saw Mr. Hyde go in by the old dissecting-room door, Poole.  Is that right when Jekyll is away?"
  "Quite right, sir.  Mr. Hyde has a key."
  Utterson went home with a feeling that some danger menaced his friend Jekyll.
  A year later London was startled by a singularly inhuman murder case.  A housemaid, looking from a window, saw a man who resembled Mr. Hyde strike down her master, a venerable, white-haired man, and trample his body underfoot in a hellish fury.  The old man was Sir Danvers Carew.
  The case come to Utterson, who alone recognized the weapon which the murderer had dropped.  It was a cane which he had himself presented to Henry Jekyll.  It was another link in the chain.  Utterson took an officer to the address which Hyde had given.  The latter was no at home.
  The house was empty, and nothing suspicious was to be seen except a pile of ashes on the hearth, as if many papers had been burned.  Among these the detective discovered a partially burnt check-book.  Following this clue, they located several thousand pounds at a certain bank.
  Hyde did not claim the money.  He had gone away, swiftly and safely.
  The next step was to visit the sinister house, which was in turn a part of Jekyll's property and known as "The Laboratory."  Light fell through a foggy little dome.  At the farther end a flight of stairs led to a large room lighted by three iron-barred windows, which looked on the court.  A fire burned in the great, and there, stooping close to it, sat Doctor Jekyll, looking deathly sick.  He held out a cold hand.
  Utterson asked if he had heard the news.  Jekyll replied that he had heard it cried in the street.
  "Carew is my client," Utterson said, "but so are you, and I want to know what I am doing.  Are you hiding this murderer?"
  Jrkyll swore that he was not, but added: "He s safe -- quite safe.  He will never more be heard of."
  He showed Utterson a letter from Hyde in a queer, upright handwriting.
  As he went out Utterson asked Poole about the man who had brought the letter to his master.  Poole was sure no letter had been handed in.  the letter must have come in by way of the writing, put the two letters side by side.  After careful study he said: "The two hands are in many points identical; they are differently sloped, that is all."
  Utterson's blood ran cold in his veins.  "Henry Jekyll has committed forgery in defense of a ferocious murderer," he said.
  One day Lanyon called on Utterson, looking like a man who had been death-doomed.  He refused to discuss Jekyll.  He would not have his name mentioned.  "I regard him as dead," he said, but would say no more.
  In less then a week Lanyon took to his bed and died.  A day or two after the funeral, a letter from the dead man came by messenger to the lawyer, a letter marked "Private.  Not to be opened till the death or disappearance of Henry Jekyll."
  Utterson did not open the letter, but went at once to call upon Jekyll.  He saw only Poole, who said his master was hardly ever seen outside the room in the laboratory, and that he had grown very silent and sullen.  It seemed that something heavy rested on his mind.
  One evening as Utterson and Enfield went across the court in rear of Jekyll's house they saw the doctor sitting at one of the windows, talking the air, with and infinite sadness of appearance
  Utterson, shocked at his looks, urged him to come down and walk with him.  Jekyll refused sadly.  Suddenly as they both stood looking at him his smile vanished and an expression of terror and despair came upon his face.  He turned away.  The window was thrust down.  Utterson turned and looked at his companion, Enfield.  Both were pale; there was an answering horror in their eyes.
  One night Poole suddenly appeared at Utterson's house.  Her came to say that for a week his master had been shut up in his cabinet and that he was alarmed.  "I can't bear it any longer," he said.
  He could not explain his fears, but begged the lawyer to go back with him.  His face was white and his voice broken.
  Utterson found the entire household in Jekyll's house in a state of panic.  All maids were huddled together like scared sheep.  "I want you to be heard ? but don't go in, sir."
  They knocked on Jekyll's door, but a voice said, "I cannot see any one." 
  When they returned to the kitchen Poole asked, "Was that my master's voice?"  Utterson admitted it was changed.  Poole then opened his heart.  "I believe my master has been made away with," he said.
  Poole thought it strange that the murderer stayed.  He said that the man in the cabinet room had been crying out night and day for help, and had thrown out papers on which were written orders for certain drugs.
  Utterson examined some of these papers, which were agonized pleas for a special kind of salt which he had used and wanted again.  They were all in Jekyll's hand, as Poole admitted.  He also explained that once he had caught sight of the man inside.  "My hair stood up at sight of him.  If that was my master, why had he a mask on his face?  That thing was not my master.  my master was a tall fine man -- that was kind of dwarf."
  They decided to break down the door.
  Poole said, "Once I heard it weeping."  This added to the terror and mystery.
  They stood before the door and Utterson demanded entrance.  A voice from within cried, "For God's sake have mercy."
  "That is not Jekyll's vice ? it id Hyde's," shouted Utterson, and swung his axe against the door.
  Shattering the lock, they rushed in.  on the floor lay the form of a man.  They drew near and turned the body on its back.  It was Edward Hyde, and by his side was an empty bottle.  He was dead.
  Jekyll was not to be found, but the dead Hyde was dressed in what seemed to be a suit of Jekyll's clothes, as they were much too large for him.
  On the table was a confession addressed to Utterson, and a will drawn in his favor.  Lanyon's letter explained the mystery.  Hyde had come one night to his office very ill and asked for some powders which Jekyll had left with Lanyon to be given to Hyde when he should call for them.  Hyde, a small man, with clothes grotesquely large, eagerly seized the powder and mixed a liquid which had quickly turned from purple to green.
  The man drank.  He reeled.  He staggered.  He clutched the table.  he seemed to swell.  His features changed, and there before Lanyon's eyes, pale and fainting, groping before him with his hands, like a man restored to life, stood Henry Jekyll.
  Hyde and Jekyll were inhabitants of the same body.  But the use of a drug he had been able to change from one personality to the other.  Hyde was wholly evil.  Lekyll, the amiable, respected professor, had but to drink that powerful drug to become the hateful Hyde.


Lesson 18
About Books and How to read Them

  All books can be divided into two classes, the books of the hour and the books of all time.  The good book of the hour, -- I do not speak of the bad ones, -- is simply the useful or pleasant talk of some person whom you cannot otherwise with, printed for you.  Very useful often, telling you what you need to know; very pleasant often, as a sensible friend's pleasant talk would be.  These bright friend's pleasant talk would be, these bright accounts of travels; good-humored and witty discussions of questions; lively or pathetic storytelling; firm fact-telling, by the real agents concerned in the events of passing history; all these books of the hour are a peculiar characteristic and possession of the present age: we ought to be entirely thankful for them, and entirely ashamed of ourselves if we make no good use of them.  But we make the worst possible use if we allow them to usurp the place of true books; for, strictly speaking, they are not books at all, but merely letters or newspapers in good print.
  A book is essentially not a talked thing but a written things; and written, not with the view of mere communication, but of permanence.  The author has something to say which he perceives to be true and useful, or helpful, or helpfully beautiful.  So far as he knows, no one else can say it.  He is bound to say it clearly and melodiously if he may; clearly, at all events.  This is the piece of true knowledge, or sight, which his share of sunshine and earth has permitted him to seize.  He would fain set it down for ever; saying, "This is the best of me; this, if anything of mine, is worth your memory."  That is his "writing;" it is, in his small human way, and with whatever degree of human inspiration is in him, his inscription, or scripture.  That is a "Book."
  Books of this kind have been written in all ages by their greatest men.  These are all at your choice.  This court is open to you, with its society wide as the world, numerous as its days, the chosen, and the mighty, of every place and time.  Into that you may enter always; in that you may take fellowship and rank according to your wish.  This court of the past differs from all living aristocracy in this: it is open to labor and to merit, but to nothing else.
  "Do you ask to be the companion of nobles?  Make yourself noble, and you shall be.  Do you long for the conversation of the wise?  Learn to understand it, and you shall never hear it.  But on the other terms? -- no.  If you will not rise to us, we cannot stoop to you.  The living philosopher may explain his thought to you with considerable pains; but here we do not interpret; you must rise to the level of our thoughts if you would be gladdened by them and share our feelings, if you would recognize our presence."
  If the author is worth anything, you will not get at his meaning all at once, not that he does not say what he means in strong words, but he cannot say it all; and what is more strange, he will not, but in a hidden way in parables, in order that he may be sure you want it.
  When you come to a good book, you must ask yourself, "Am I inclined to work as an Australian miner would?  Are my pickaxes and shovels in good order, and am I in good trim myself, my sleeves well up to the elbow, and my breath good, and my temper?"  And, keeping the figure a little longer, for it is a thoroughly useful one, the metal you are in search of being the author's mind or meaning, his words are as the rock which you have to crush and smelt in order to get at it.  And your pickaxes are your own care, wit, and learning; your smelting furnace is your own thoughtful.  Do not hope to get at any good author's meaning without these tools and that fire; often you will need sharpest, finest chiseling, and most patient fusing, before you can gather one grain of the metal.
  Therefore, first of all, I tell you earnestly and authoritatively, you must get into the habit of looking intensely at words, and assuring yourself of their meaning, syllable by syllable, nay, letter by letter.  You might read all the books in the British Museum, if you could live long enough, and remain an utterly ignorant, uneducated person; but if you read ten pages of a good book, letter by letter, -- that is to say, with real accuracy, -- you are for evermore, in some measure, an educated person.  The entire difference between education and non-education (as regards the merely intellectual part of it) consists in this accuracy.  A well-educated gentleman may not know many languages, may not be able to speak any but his own, may have read very few books.  But whatever language he knows, he knows precisely; whatever word he pronounces, he pronounces rightly.
  An ordinarily clever and sensible seaman will be able to make his way ashore at most ports; yet he has only to speak a sentence of any language to be known for an ignorant person; so also the accent, or turn of expression of a single sentence will at once mark a scholar.
  Let, then, the accents of words be watched, but let their meaning be watched more closely still, and fewer will do the work.  A few words well chosen and well distinguished will do the work that a thousand can not, when every one is acting, doubtfully, in the function of another.


Lesson 19
Grand Cairo

     Grand Cairo, 27th Aug., 1779.
  My Dear Friends, -- In coming to this place, we were in great peril, and bade to the sea at the hazard of our lives, the Nile being exceedingly dangerous.  Fourteen persons were lost there the day before we crossed it, a circumstance that of course tended to increase our anxiety on the subject, and which was told me just before I closed my last letter; but for the world I would not have communicated such intelligence.  Our only alternative to this perilous passage was crossing a desert, notorious for the robberies and murders committed on it; where we could not hope for escape, and, from the smallness of our number, had no chance of superiority in case of attack.  The night after we had congratulated ourselves n being out of danger from the Bar, we were alarmed by perceiving a boat making after us, the people said, to plunder, and perhaps, to murder us.  Our Jew interpreter, who, with his wife, slept in the outer cabin, begged me not to move our dollars, which I was just attempting to do, lest the themselves should hear the sound, and kill us all for the supposed booty.  You may judge in what a situation we remained while this dreadful evil seemed about to befall us.  Mr. Fay fired two pistols, to give notice of our being armed.  At length, thank God, we outsailed them; and nothing of the kind occurred again, during our stay on board, though we passed several villages, said to be inhabited entirely by thieves.
  As morning broke, I was delighted with the appearance of the country, a more charming scene my eyes never behold.  the Nile, that perpetual source of plenty, was just beginning to overflow its banks; so that on every side, we saw such quantities of water drawn up for the use of more distant lands that it is surprising any remains.  The machine chiefly used for that purpose s a wheel with earthen pitchers tied round it, which empty themselves into tubs, from which numerous canals are supplied.  Oxen and buffaloes are the animals generally employed in this labor.  It is curious to see how the letter contrive to keep themselves cool during the intense heat that prevails here; they lie in the river by hundreds with their heads just above water, for hours together.
  Situated as I was, the pyramids were not all in sight, but I was assured that those which came under my eye were decidedly the most magnificent.  We went out of our way to view them nearer, and by the aid of a telescope, were enabled to form a tolerable idea of their construction.  It has been supposed by many that the Jews built these Pyramids during their bondage in Egypt, and I rather incline to that opinion.  I understand there is a little flat place on the tops of the larger Pyramids, from which it is supposed that the Egyptians made astronomical observations.  The largest is said to be above five hundred feet high.
  On the 29th, we reached Bulac, the port of Grand Cairo, and within two miles of that city, to my great joy; for on this river, there is either little wind, or else it comes in squalls, so suddenly, that the boats are often in danger of being swamped.


Lesson 20
The Secret of Success

  Mr. Roosevelt once divided success into two kinds: the rare kind which comes to the man who can do what no one else can do, to the genius; and the commoner kind, which comes to the man who has developed ordinary qualities further than most men.  This distinction would be difficult to draw in practice.  There can be no doubt that the genius of Mozart included special powers which in the ordinary man are not only undeveloped, but also non-existent.  But Napoleon also was a genius; and we cannot say that any of his powers do not exist in the ordinary man.  His genius, and even his almost magical influence over men, were only the result of an extraordinary combination and development of ordinary powers.  We cannot say that he had a special faculty such as we find in great artists; and, indeed, Emerson, in his studies of Representative Men, took Napoleon as the man of the world, seeming therefore to insist upon the fact that his genius consisted only of ordinary qualities very highly developed.  Again, men are often born with a very wonderful special faculty, whether for musical composition or chess-playing or mathematics, whom no one would call men of genius.  This technical gift of Mozart is not very uncommon; but we do not call it genius unless it is combined with the les specialized and less easily defined power of using it to express something of moment.  Such gifts are mere tools, whose value depends upon the manner in which they are used, although the man who does not possess them must be continually hampered by the lack of them.  But Mr. Roosevelt, who was addressing an audience mainly consisting of ordinary men, was inclined to insist upon the fact that success in most things can be obtained without these extraordinary gifts.  He took the line of Reynolds, who, in addressing the students of the Academy, almost contended that there was no such thing as genius even in painting, and that a man of ordinary gifts could reach the use of his powers.
  Here we are not far from the idea that genius consists in taking pains.  But, when we say that the right kind of pains must always taken, we leave genius a good deal of its mystery.  For one of the main difficulties in every activity, whether art or statesmanship or science or business, is to take the right kind of pains, to attempt what is best suited to the powers of the individual and also to the object he has in view.
  There is a kind of sagacity needed for this which we cannot analyze, and for the lack of which the most splendid natural gifts are often wasted.  Thus, when Mr. Roosevelt tells us that for great success all we need is the extraordinary development of ordinary qualities, he still leaves us in the dark about the power which some men possess of developing ordinary qualities into an extraordinary efficiency for a particular purpose.  There is a secret of success which he has not analyzed, and which we do not explain when we call it will or energy or character or common sense.  It is not merely will or energy, because there is in it a power of direction which these words do not imply.  Character is a word too vague, and used in too many different senses, to explain anything; and as for common sense, the very fact that it is common prevents it from being the cause of uncommon success.
  In men who succeed greatly, whether we call them men of genius or not, there is often an urgency of desire not be fond in the great mass of mankind.  They seem to know very clearly what they want to do, and from the first employ all their powers in doing it.  By a kind of instinct they plan their lives so that no effort of theirs is wasted, and this is the case whether their success is material or spiritual or scientific or artistic.  When we read the lives of great men we cannot but be struck by the manner in which all kinds of experiences that might in themselves seem to be random, or even disastrous, are utilized in the long run.


Lesson 21
True Heroism

Let others write of bottles fought,
Of bloody, ghastly fields,
Where honor greets the man who wins, 
And death the man who yields;
But I will write of him who fights
And vanquishes his sins,
Who struggles on through weary years
Against himself, and winds.

He is a hero stanch and brave,
Who fights an unseen foe,
And puts at last beneath his feet
His passions base and low;
Who stands erect in manhood's might,
Undaunted, undismayed, -- 
The bravest man who drew a sword 
In foray, or in raid.

It calls for something more than brawn 
Or muscle to o'ercome
An enemy who marcheth not 
With banner, plume, or drum --
A foe forever lurking nigh,
With silent, stealthy tread;
Forever near your board by day, 
At night beside your bed.

All honor, then, to that brave heart, 
Though poor or rich he be, 
Who struggles with his baser part -- 
Who conquers and is free!
He may not wear a hero's crown,
Or fill hero's grave;
But truth will place his name among
The bravest of the brave.

--- Anonymous.


Lesson 22
Tom Jones and the Highwayman

  Tom Jones and his friend Partridge, with their guide, had got about two miles beyond Barnet, and it was now the dusk of the evening, when a refined-looking man, but upon a very shabby horse, rode up to Jones, and asked him whether he was going to London, to which Jones answered in the affirmative.  The gentleman replied: "I should be obliged to you, sir, if you would accept of my company; for it is very late, and I am a stranger to the road."  Jones readily complied with the request; and on they traveled together, holding that sort of discourse which is usual on such occasions.
  Of this , indeed, robbery was the principal topic, upon which subject the stranger expressed great apprehensions; but Jones declared that he had very little to lose, and consequently as little to fear.  Partridge could not help putting in a word here.  "Your honor," said he, "may think it a little; but I am sure, if I had a ’100 bank-note in my pocket, as you have, I should be very sorry to lose it; but for my part, I never was less afraid in my life; for we are four of us, and if we all stand by one another, the best man in England can't rob us.  He can kill but one of us, and a man can die but once ? that's my comfort; a man can die but once."
  Besides the reliance on superior numbers, a kind of valor which has raised a certain nation among the moderns to a high pitch of glory, there was another reasons for the extraordinary courage which Partridge now discovered; for he had at present as much of that quality as was in the power of liquor to bestow.
  Our travelers were now arrived within a mile of Highgate, when the stranger turned short upon Jones, and pulling out a pistol, demanded that little bank-note which partridge had mentioned.  Jones was at first somewhat shocked at this unexpected demand; however, he presently recollected himself, and told the highwayman that all the money he had in his pocket was entirely at his service, and so saying, he pulled out upwards of three guineas, and offered to deliver it; but the other answered with an oath, that would not do.  Jones answered coolly, he was sorry for it, and returned the money into his pocket.  The highwayman then threatened, if he did not deliver the bank-note that moment, he must shoot him, holding the pistol at the same time very near to his breast.
  Jones instantly caught hold of the fellow's hand, which trembled so that he could scarce hold the pistol in it, and turned the muzzle from him.  A struggle then ensued, in which Jones wrested the pistol from the hand of his antagonist, and both fell from their horses on the ground together, the highwayman upon his back and the victorious Jones upon him.  The poor fellow now began to implore mercy of the conqueror; for, to say the truth, he was in strength by no means a match for Jones.
  "Indeed, sir," says he, "I could have had no intention to shoot you; for you will find the pistol is not loaded.  This is the first robbery I ever attempted, and I have been driven by distress to this."
  At this instant, at about 150 yards' distance, lay another person on the ground, roaring for mercy in a much louder voice than the highwayman; this was no other than Partridge himself, who, endeavoring to make his escape from the engagement, had been thrown from his horse, and lay flat on his face, not daring to look up, and expecting every minute to be shot.
  In this posture he lay, till the guide, who was not otherwise concerned than for his horse, having second the stumbling beast, came up to him, and told him his master had got the better of the highwayman.  Partridge leaped up at this news and ran back to the place where Jones stood with his sword drawn in his hand to guard the poor fellow; which Partridge no sooner saw than he cried out: "Kill the villain, sir; run him through the body; kill him this instant."
  Luckily, however, for the poor wretch, he had fallen into more merciful hands; for Jones having examined the pistol and found it to be really unloaded, began to believe all the man had told him before Partridge came up -- namely, that he was a novice in the trade, and that he had been driven to it by the distress he mentioned, -- the greatest indeed imaginable, of five hungry children and wife in the utmost want and misery; the truth of all which the highwayman most vehemently asserted, and offered to convince Mr. Jones of it if he would take the trouble to go to his house, which was not above two miles off -- saying that he desired no favor, but upon condition of proving all he had said.
  Jones at first pretended that he would take the fellow at his word, and go with him, declaring that his fate should depend entirely on the truth of his story.  Upon this the poor fellow immediately expressed so much alacrity that Jones was perfectly satisfied with his honesty, and began now to entertain sentiments of compassion for him.  He returned the fellow his empty pistol, advised him to think of honester means of relieving his distress, and gave him a couple of guineas for the immediate support of his wife and family -- adding, he wised he had more, for his sake, for the 100 pounds that had been mentioned was not his own.


Lesson 23
Rules of Conduct

  Don't walk with an awkward gait.  Walk Erectly and firmly, not stiffly; walk with ease, but still with dignity.  Don't bend as you walk along; walk in a large, easy, simple manner, without affection but not negligently.
  Don't be servile towards superiors, or arrogant towards inferiors.  Maintain your dignity and self-respect in one case, and exhibit a regard for the feelings of people, whatever their station may be, in the other.
  Don't be witty at another's expense; don't ridicule any one; don't disturb in any way the harmony of the company.
  Don't rush for a seat in a railway carriage or at a public entertainment, in utter disregard of every one else, pushing rudely by women and children, hustling men who are or less active, and disregarding every law of politeness.  If one should, on an occasion of this kind, lose his seat in consequence of a little polite consideration, he would have the consolation of standing much higher in his own esteem -- which is something.
  Don't conduct correspondence on post-cards.  A brief business message on a post-card is not out of the way, but a private communication on a post-card is almost insulting to your correspondent.  It is questionable whether a note on a post-card is entitled to the courtesy of a response.
  Don't -- we wish we could say -- fasten an envelope by moistening the gum with your tongue; but this custom is too universally established for a protest against it to be any avail, and, indeed, it is very rarely that any other means of moistening an envelope or stamp is at hand.  To wet the finger and then moisten the gum is a good method.  No one, however, can defend the practice as altogether nice.
  Don't, either in writing or conversation, make a display of foreign phrases -- the practice is only a from of affection; and, avoid it if your correspondent is not acquainted with the language, and therefore not likely to understand the phrases.  To do so is a contemptible assumption of superiority.
  Don't scoff or speak ill of a rival in your profession or trade.  This is in the worst possible taste, and shows a mean spirit.  Have the pride and self-respect to do full justice to the merits of a rival.
  Don't suppose that wearing the hair long, exposing the throat, going about with unbrushed clothes, unclean finger nails, etc., or adopting any fantastic costume, is a sign of the possession of artistic or poetic genius.


Lesson 24
By-Products

  In these days, much of the profit and sometimes the whole of success depend upon utilizing the odds and ends, the so-called "by-products."  The by-product is something apart from the main article manufactured, and yet something that has an actual value of its own.  For instance, in the manufacture of gas there are many by-products; these are obtained from the coal as the latter is made into lighting gas.  And these by-products, including the coke from the coal, actually, suffice to pay the cost of the gas.  All kinds of big business have their by-products, their little odds and ends that pay well.  In Mr. Armor's enormous meat-factory, for instance, there are endless by-products, from the pig's tails which are dried and sold as a delicacy, to the hair of animals, which is made into a powerful, valuable kind of ripe.
  If Mr. Armor neglected making the hair rope, or selling the pig's tail, it would make a big difference in his dividends.  The point for the reader is this: The individual man does not manufacture, as a rule; but we are, all of us, dealers in time.
  Time is the one thing we possess.  Our success depends upon the use of our time, and its by-product, the odd moments.
  Each of us has a regular day's work that he does by routine, in a more or less mechanical way.  He does is clerking, his writing, his typewriting, or whatever it may be, so many hours per day.  And that ends it.
  But what about the by-product, the odd moments?  Do you know that the men that have made great successes in this world are the men that have used wisely those odd moments?
  Thomas A.  Edison, for instance, was hammering away at a telegraph-key when he was telegraph-operator on a small salary.  He didn't neglect the by-product, the odd moments.  He thought, and planned, and tried between messages.  And he worked out, as a by-product of his telegraph job, all the inventions that have given him millions, and given to the inhabitants of the world thousands of millions' worth of dollars in new ideas.
  Benjamin Franklin in his story of his life shows an endless number of such efforts along the lines using the odd moments.  In a hundred different ways he managed to make the extra hours useful and productive.
  What a man does in his odd moments is not only apt to ring him profit; it is apt also to increase his mental activity.  The mind craves a change, and it often does well the unusual thing, out of routine.
  "Letting well enough alone" is a foolish motto in the life of a man who wants to get ahead.  In the first place, nothing is "well enough," if you can do better.  No matter how well you are doing, do better.  There is an old Spanish proverb which says, "Enjoy the little you have while the fool is hunting for more."  Every energetic man ought to turn this proverb upside down and make it read, "While the fool is enjoying the little he has, I will hunt for more."
  The way to hunt for more is to utilize your odd moments.
  Every minute that you save by making it useful.  More profitable, is do much added to your life and its possibilities.  Every minute lost is a neglected by-product -- once gone, you will never get it back.
  Think of the odd quarter of an hour in the morning before breakfast, the odd half-hour after breakfast, remember the chance to read, or figure, or think with concentration on your own career, that come now and again in the day.  All of these opportunities are the by-products of your daily existence.  Use them, and you may find what many of the greatest concerns have found, that the real profit is in the utilization of the by-products.
  Among the aimless, unsuccessful or worthless, you often hear talk about "killing time."  The man who is always killing time is really killing his own chance in life; while the man who is destined to success is the man who males time live by making it useful.


Lesson 25
The School of Difficulty

  Nobody knows that he can do till he has tired; and few try their best till they have been forced to do it.  "If I could do such a thing," sighs the youth.  But he will never do anything if he only wishes.  The desire must ripen into purpose and effort; and one energetic attempt is worth a thousand aspirations.
  "A difficulty," said Lord Lyndhurst, "is a thing to be overcome."  Grapple with it at once; facility will come with practice, and strength and fortitude with repeated effort.  Thus the mind and character may be trained to an almost perfect discipline, enabling it to move with a grace, spirit, and liberty almost incomprehensible to those who have not passed through a similar experience.
  Everything that we learn is the mastery of a difficulty; and the mastery of one helps us to the mastery of others.  Things which may at first sight appear comparatively valueless in education, are really of the greatest practical value, not so much because of the information which they yield, as because of the development which they compel.  Thus one thing leads to another, and so the work goes on through life -- the encounter with difficulty ending only where life or progress ends.
  Nothing is easy but was difficult at first -- not even so simple an act as walking.  The orator who pours his flashing thoughts with such apparent ease upon the minds of his hearse achieves his wonderful power only by mean of patient and persevering labor, after much repletion, and often after bitter disappointments.
  Henry Clay, when giving advice to young men, thus described the secret of his success in the cultivation of his art: "I owe my success in life," said, he "chiefly to one circumstance, that at the age of twenty-seven I commenced, and continued for years, the process of daily reading and speaking upon the contents of some historical or scientific book.  These off-hand, at others in the forest, and not unfrequently in some distant barn, with the horse and the ox for my audience.  It is to this early practice of the art of all arts that I am indebted for the primary and leading impulses that stimulated me onwards, and have shaped and molded my whole subsequent destiny."
  Curran, the Irish orator, when a youth, had a strong defect in his speech, and at school he was knows as "Stammering Jack Curran."  While he was engaged in the study law, and still struggling to overcome his defect, he was stung into eloquence by the sneer of a member of a debating club, who characterized him as "Orator Mum;" for Curran Had not, on a previous occasion, been able to utter a word.  But the sneer raised his pluck, and he replied with a triumphant speech.
  This discovery in himself of the gift of eloquence encouraged him to proceed in his studied with additional energy and vigor.  He corrected his speech by reading aloud, emphatically and distinctly, the best passages in our literature, for several hours every day, studying his features before a mirror, and adopting a method of gesticulation suited to his rather awkward and ungraceful figure.  He also proposed cases to himself, which he detailed with as much care as if had been addressing a jury.  Curran commenced business with the qualification which Lord Eldon stated to be the first requisite for distinction as a barrister -- that is, "to be not worth a shilling."  We need no say how Curran's perseverance, energy, and genius eventually succeed.
  The most highly educated men are those who have been the most resolute in their encounters with difficulties.  Extreme poverty has been no obstacle in the way of men devoted to the duty of self-culture.  There are many illustrious names which might be cited to prove the truth of the common saying, that "it is never too late to learn."  It is not men of genius who move the world and take the lead in it, but men of steadfastness, purpose, and untiring industry; and it is the youth who does his best, though endowed with inferior mental powers, that ought above all others to be praised.


Lesson 26
A Soldier's Dream

Our bugles sang truce, for the night-cloud had lower'd,
And the sentinel stars set their watch in the sky;
And thousands had sunk on the ground over-power'd,
The weary to sleep and the wounded to die.
When reposing that night on my pallet of straw, 
By the wolf-scaring faggot that guarded the slain,
At the dead of the night a sweet vision I saw,
And thrice ere the morning I dreamt it again.

Methought from the battle-field's dreadful array 
Far, far I had roamed on a desolate track:
'Twas autumn -- and sunshine arose on the way
To the home of my fathers, that welcomed me back.

I flew to the pleasant fields traversed so oft
In life's morning march, when my bosom was young;
I heard my own mountain- goats bleating aloft,
And knew the sweet strain that the corn-reapers sung.
Then pledged we each other, and fondly I swore, 
From my home and my weeping friends never to part;
My little ones kiss'd me a thousand times o'er,
And my wife sobb'd aloud in her fullness of heart.

"Stay -- stay with us -- rest! -- thou art weary and worn!" -- 
And fain was their war-broken soldier to stay; -- 
But sorrow return'd with the dawning of morn,
And the voice in my dreaming ear melted away.

--- Thomas Campbell.


Lesson 27
The Octopus

  In floated along over the coral reef in the Seychelles Islands of the Indian Ocean one morning at dawn.  A small canoe with a native fisherman attracted my attention ahead.  He was a youth perhaps sixteen years of age, though his body was as big as that of an average white boy of eighteen or nineteen.  Floating nearer, I notices that he was naked except for a small loincloth, and that he kept leaning over the side of his canoe, peering intently through the water to the reef only a few feet beneath him.
  When I was about thirty yards from him he suddenly dives over the side of the canoe with a gentle splash.  I thought he must be trying to pick up the broken mooring line of some fish-trap he had there, so I paid little attention to him.  But when I saw apposite his boat, I was aware that all might not be well.  The fisherman had not yet come to the surface again.  In the water by the canoe was violent commotion, as if a struggle of some sort were going on.
  As I was wearing only a pair of short trousers, with no shirt or shoes, I was ready for action if needed.  I decided to stand by until the struggle stopped.
  "Sharks!"  The though t flashed through my mind.
  "No, impossible," argued my reasoning brain; "the water is much too shallow, and we are on the inner reef with an ebbing tide."
  For a few more seconds the water boiled and churned, stirring up sand and cloudiness.  Then appeared a head, which spluttered, took a deep breath, and finally was followed by a body trying to regain its feet.  A thrill of horror shot through me; round the body were the tentacles of an octopus.
  Another violent struggle, and the boy was on his feet in the coral, as many hand drew the knife from the sheath in my belt.  Held at arm's length he had the body of an octopus clutched in his left hand.  Its tentacles, some three to four feet long, writhed about him.  One after another his right hand tore them free, but they were eight and he had only one hand to use.
  Shouting to him that was coming with a knife, I seized the paddle.  But I did so he called back, "It's right.  I can manage him.  Leave it to me, sir."
  I felt only too inclined to do so.  The sight fascinated me.  I had a sensation of unspeakable horror.  The octopus looked like a great spider; and a man was in its clutches.  At the length of an arm, the octopus with tentacles waving, now one, now another, fastened about its victim.  As the boy wrenched the tentacles away, they gave a sound, as of tearing stiff silk.  Red marks covered his body.  Now one smashed down over his face, only to be torn off in a second.  Now they were on his back, now on his shoulders, at once.
  I felt sick at the sight, sick at the hideousness of the thing.
  The boy was trying to free his right arm so as to reach to the body of the octopus.  There is a kind of pouch there.  If a hand can reach this and invert it, the brute dies at once.
  The fight went on.  I could see that the octopus was helpless, but the boy did not seem in much better case.  Now that it had o hold on the rocks of coral it could exert no leverage on the boy, but he, in his turn, needed all his strength to hold it at arm's length of these creatures in out of all proportion to their size.  But the boy knew all about this game, and gradually the strokes of the tentacles grew less, the struggles less violent.
  The sight of such a fight had fascinated me into a kind of dreaminess.  It seemed an unreal product of imagination.  I lost count of time.  Even so does a large snake fascinate its prey.  The boy was winning -- gradually.
  A sudden spring on his part and quick play of the hands, a wrench, and the tentacles dropped, a lifeless mass.  He had got "home" on the pouch and inverted it.  The horror was dead.
  "I don't like those brutes," said I.
  He smiled looking at the jelly-like mass: "It will make good soup, sir."


Lesson 28
Industry and Application  

  Accident does very little towards the production of any great result in life.  Though what is called "a happy hit" may be made venture, the old and common highway of steady industry and application is the only safe road to travel.  Close attention and painstaking industry always mark the true the greatest worker.
  The greatest men are not those who "despise the day of small things," but those who improve them the most carefully.  Michael Angelo was one day explaining to a visitor at his studio what he had been doing to a statue since his previous visit.  "I have retouched this part, polished that, softened this feature, brought out that muscle, given some expression to this lip, and more energy to that limb."  "But these are trifles," remarked the visitor.  "It may be so," replied the sculptor, "but recollect that trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle."  So it was said of Nicholas Poussin, the painter, that the rule of his conduct was that, "Whatever was worth doing at all, was worth doing well"; and when asked, later in life, by a friend, by what means he had gained so high a reputation among the painters of Italy, he emphatically answered, "Because I have neglected nothing."
  Although there are discoveries which are said to have been made by accident, if carefully inquired into, it will be found that there has really been very little that was accidental about them.  For the most part, these so-called accidents have only been opportunities carefully improved by genius.
  The fall of the apple at Newton's feet has often been quoted in proof of the accidental characters of some discoveries.  But Newton's whole mind had already been devoted for years to the laborious and patient investigation of the subject of gravitation; and the circumstance of the apple falling before his eye, was suddenly apprehended it, and served to flash upon him the brilliant discovery then bursting on his sight.
  The difference between men consists, in a great measure, in the intelligence of their observation.  "The wise man's eyes are in his head," say Solomon, "but the fool walks in darkness."  It is the mind that sees as well as the eye.  Where unthinking gazers observe nothing, men of intelligent vision penetrate into the very fiber of the phenomena presented to them, attentively nothing differences, making comparisons, and detecting their underlying idea.
  Many, before Galileo, had seen a suspended weight swing before their eyes with a measured beat; but he was the first to detect the value of the fact.  One of the attendants in the cathedral at Pisa, after refilling with oil a lamp which hung from the roof, left it swinging to and fro; and Galileo, then a youth of only eighteen, nothing it attentively, conceived the idea of applying it to the measurement of time.  Fifty years of study and labor, however, elapsed before he completed the invention of the pendulum, an invention of which the importance, in the measurement of time and in astronomical calculations, can scarcely be overvalued.
  It is the intelligent eye of the careful observer which gives apparently trivial phenomena their value.  So trifling a matter as the sight of sea weed floating past his ship, enabled Columbus to put down the mutiny which arose among this sailors at not discovering land, and to assure them that the eagerly-sought New World was not far off.  There is nothing so small that it should remain forgotten; and no fact, however trivial, but may prove useful in some way or other if carefully interpreted.
  It is the close observation of little things which is the secret of success in business, in art, in science, and in every pursuit of life.  Human knowledge is but an accumulation of small facts, made by successive generations of men; the little bits of knowledge and experience carefully treasures up by them growing at length into a mighty pyramid.  Though many of these facts and observations seem in the first instance to have but slight significance, they are all found to have their eventual uses and to fit into their proper places.
  It is not accident, then, that helps a man in the world, but purpose and president industry.  These make a man sharp to discern opportunities and turn them to account.  To the feeble, the sluggish, and turn them to account.  To the feeble, the sluggish, and purposeless, the happiest opportunities avail nothing -- they pass them by, seeing no meaning in them.  But if we are prompt to seize and improve even the shorter intervals of possible action and effort, it is astonishing how much can be accomplished.

  With perseverance, the very odds and ends of time may be worked up into results of the greatest value.  An hour in every day withdrawn from silly pursuits would, if profitably employed, enable any man of ordinary capacity very shortly to master a complete science.  It would make an ignorant man a well-informed man in ten years.  We must not allow the time to pass without yielding fruits, in the form of something learned worthy of being known, some good principle cultivated, or some good habit strengthened.


Lesson 29
Catching Baboons

  In one of our regular hunting-grounds lived the great brown baboon.  The rugged and barren rocks of this region resound with the cries of these baboons, who wander about in herds of a hundred or more.  They often come down for food to the palm-woods which border the banks of the river, or pay a highly unwelcome visit to the natives' corn plantations.  Our station was situated on the Gash, a rain-stream which contains water during the rainy season, while during the rest of the year its course is marked by a streak of glistening sand.  Our camp lay just beneath the Sahanei Mountains, and close to a great cluster of rocks which swarmed with baboons.  Here and there pools of water were left n the dry river bed.  Close to our station were several such pools, which the baboons used as drinking places.
  The first thing to be done was to stop up all the drinking pools, save one, with thorn bushes.  They took to the remaining one readily, for in the whole time we had been there, we had been careful not to interfere with or frighten them in any way, so that they were quite unsuspicious of any trap.  We encouraged them still further by scattering corn about the pool -- a proceeding which was so much appreciated that the older animals would often keep away the young until they themselves had devoured it.
  When through confidence had been established with the baboons, the time came for setting the traps, which were to make them our guests, and eventually also emigrants.  The trap is a fairly simple contrivance.  The base is circular, about two and a half yards in diameter, and is composed of tough rods twisted together.  Round the outer edge of this base, at intervals of about a foot, are fixed stakes, learning inwards so as to meet together at the top.  The framework thus constructed is interwoven with branches of trees, tied together with cord; and the whole structure then makes a solid cage, of considerable weight, somewhat resembling a native's hut in appearance,
  When it has been completed it has to be conveyed to its proper place in the neighborhood of the drinking pool.  Here one side of it is left open, propped up with a strong stick, and the baboons are gradually drawn into it by leaving corn inside.  When they have become thoroughly accustomed to the trap, the final stage in the proceedings commences.  In the darkness of night a long cord is attached to the pole which holds the trap open.  It is carried along, buried loosely in the sand, until the other end reaches a high-place, whence a good view of the cage can be obtained.  Then comes the tragedy.  A blazing noonday sun drives the thirty baboons chattering down to their drinking hole.  Some of the biggest males, who have already secured a monopoly of the corn, enter the trap and commence their fears.  The hunter awaits his opportunity.  It soon comes.  There is a pull on the cord, the trap closes with a bang, and three great baboons are fairly caught.
  Then there follows a scene, both comical and painful, which baffles description.  For a moment the astounded prisoners sit benumbed with terror and are unable to move; then they anxiously begin to seek an exit.  The herd outside, no less surprised, flee at the first alarm; but they soon return and gather round the trap.  With ear-splitting yells, they urge the captives to find their way out.  Some of the boldest jump right on to the top of the trap and appear to carry on an excited conversation with their friends inside.
  The hunters, however, cannot afford to wait while this scene is going on, for baboons are endowed with great strength and would soon break through the walls of the cage.  On the approach of their captors they show all the signs of extreme terror, and endeavor to force their heads through the walls.  And now, may easily be imagined, comes the really critical and dangerous part of the performance, namely, to take the animals out of the cage and secure them.  The hunters are provided with long stakes, forked at the end, which they push through the branched forming the cage-wall.  With the forked ends they catch the baboon's neck, and pin him to the ground, when all the baboons have been thus secured the upper part of the cage is removed, and the creatures are firmly bound.  First their jaws are fasted with strong cord; then their hands and feet are tied; and lastly, to make assurance doubly sure, each animal's whole body is wrapped up in cloth, so that the captive has the appearance of a great smoked sausage!  The parcel is then suspended form a pole carried by two persons, and conveyed triumphantly to the station.
  These great baboons have strong nerves.  No wonder!  They neither smoke, drink, nor do any work, and always live in the fresh summer air.  So after a brief period of exhaustion, followed by a day or two of quite, they recover their normal spirits.  The large males must, however, be carefully watched.  They are very angry and jealous, and will probably kill any other kind put in to keep them company.  Even females are likely to have a poor time of it, for the males keep all the food to themselves and allow the females to go hungry.  It is on account of the selfishness of the males that female and young baboons are so rarely caught in the cage by means of bait.  When by chance a female or a young one does get in, it is usually allowed to escape again.


Lesson 30
Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata

  It happened at Bonn.  One moonlight evening I called upon Beethoven, for I wanted to take a walk, and afterwards sup with me.  In passing through some dark, narrow street he paused suddenly.  "What sound is that?  It is from my sonata in F!" he said, eagerly.  "Hark! How well it is played!"
  It was a little, mean dwelling, and we paused outside and listened.  The player went on; but in the midst of the finale there was a sudden break, then the voice of sobbing.  "I can not play any more.  It is so beautiful, it is utterly beyond my power to do it justice.  Oh, what would I not give to go to the concert at Cologne!"
  "Ah, my sister," said her companion, "why create regrets when there is no remedy?  We can scarcely pay our rent."
  "You are right; and yet I wish for once in my life to hear some really good music.  But it is of no use."
  Beethoven looked at me.  "Let us go in," he said.
  "Go in!" I exclaimed.  "What can we in for?"
  "I will play to her," he said, in an excited tone.  "Here is feeling -- genius -- understanding.  I will play to her, and she will understand it."  And, before I could prevent him, his hand was upon the door.
  A pale young man was sitting by the table, making shoes; and near him, leaning sorrowfully upon an old-fashioned piano, sat a young girl, with a profusion of light hair falling over her bent face.  Both were cleanly but very poorly dressed, and both started and turned towards us as we entered.
  "Pardon me," said Beethoven, "but I heard music, and was tempted to enter.  I am a musician."
  The girl blushed and the young man looked grave -- somewhat annoyed.
  "I -- I also overhead something of what you said," continued my friend.  "You wish to hear -- that is, you would like -- that is -- shall I play for you?"
  There was something so odd in the whole affair, and something so comic and pleasant in the manner of the speaker, that the spell was broken in a moment, and all smiled involuntarily.
  "Thank you," said the shoemaker; "but our piano is so wretched, and we have no music."
  "No music!" echoed my friend.  "How, then, does the Fraulein -- ?"
  He paused and colored up, for the girl looked full at him, and he saw that she was blind.
  "I -- I entreat your pardon!" he stammered.  "But I had not perceived before.  They you play by ear?"
  "Entirely."
  "And where do you hear the music, since you frequent no concerts?"
  "I used to hear a lady practicing near us, when we lived at Bruhl two years ago.  During the summer evenings her windows were generally open, and I walked to and fro outside to listen to her."
  She seemed shy; so Beethoven said no more, but seated himself quietly before the piano, and began to play.  He had no sooner struck the first chord than I knew what would follow -- how grand he would be that night.  And I was not mistaken.  Never, during all years I knew him, did I hear him play as he then played to that blind girl and her brother.  He was inspired; and from the instant when his fingers began to wander along the keys, the very tone of the instrument began to grow sweet and more equal.
  The brother and sister were silent with wonder and rapture.  The former laid aside his work; the latter, with her head bent slightly forwards, and her hands pressed tightly over her breast, crouched down near the end of the piano, as if fearful lest even the beating of her heart should break the flow of those magical, sweet sounds.  It was as if we were all bound in a strange dream, and only feared to wake.
  Suddenly the flame of the single candle wavered, sank, flickered, and went out.  Between paused, and I threw open the shutters, admitting a flood of brilliant moonlight.  The room was almost as light as before, and the moonlight fell strongest upon the piano and player.  But the chain of his ideas seemed to have been broken by the accident.  His head dropped upon his breast; his hands rested upon his knees; he seemed absorbed in meditation.  It was thus for some time.
  At length the young shoemaker rose, and approached him eagerly, yet reverently.  "Wonderful man!" he said, in a low tone, "Who and d what are you?"
  The composer smiled as he only could smile, benevolently, indulgently, kingly.  "Listen!" he said, and he played the opening bars of the sonata in F.
  A cry of delight and recognition burst from them both, and exclaiming,  "Then you are Beethoven!" they covered his hands with tears and kisses.
  He rose to go, but we held him back with entreaties.
  "Play to us once more -- only once more!"
  He suffered himself to be led to the instrument.  The moon shone brightly in through the window and lit up his glorious, rugged head and massive figure.  "I will compose a sonata to the moonlight!" he said, looking up thoughtfully to the sky and stars.  Then his hands dropped on the keys, and he began playing a sad and infinitely lovely movement, which crept over the instrument like the calm flow of moonlight over the dark earth.
  This was followed by a wild, elfin passage in triple time -- a sort of grotesque interlude, like the dance of sprits upon the sward.  Then came a swift agitate finale -- a breathless, hurrying, trembling movement.  Descriptive of flight and uncertainty, and vague, impulsive terror, which carried us away on its rustling wings, and left us all in emotion and wonder.
  "Farewell to you!" said Beethoven, pushing back his chair and turning towards the door -- "farewell to you!"
  "You will come again?" asked they, in one breath.
  He paused, and looked compassionately, almost tenderly, at the face of the blind girl.  "Yes, yes," he said, hurriedly, "I will come again, and give the Fraulein some lessons.  Farewell!  I will soon come again!"
  They followed us in silence more eloquent than words, and stood at their door till we were out of sight and hearing.
  "Let us hasten back," said Beethoven, "that I may write out that sonata while I can yet remember it."
  We did so, and he sat over it till long past daybreak and this was the origin of that moonlight sonata with which we are all so fondly acquainted.


Lesson 31
The Radio

  The radio, as we know it to-day, is the result of many different discoveries and inventions.  The beginning was made by James Clerk Maxwell, a Scotchman, who, a little after 1870, brought cut his theory of electro-magnetic waves as an explanation of heat and light.  It had long been known that sound is the result of air waves vibrating more than twenty times and less than twenty thousand times a second, and that most persons are not able to hear vibrations at rates outside these limits.  It is also know that light waves and heat waves vibrate many billion times a second.  One part of Maxwell's theory is that there are also electromagnetic waves which vibrate too slowly to be seen as light or to be felt as heat.
  Following Maxwell's work in 1886, Heinrich Hertz, a German professor, made some apparatus that produced these waves and helped to prove the theory.  His method of producing these waves laid the foundation for modern radio.
  A number of scientists experimented with the Hertzian waves, and Guglielmo Marconi, an Italian, brought out his first invention in wireless telegraphy in 1896.
  His first messages were sent over a distance of about one hundred years, but he soon extended the range to ten miles.
  In the meantime Sir Oliver Lodge, an Englishman, had discovered the fact that these wireless messages could be etuned' to different wave lengths.  There are Hertzian waves of all lengths from one meter to thirty thousand meters or more.  "Tuning" means the use of a certain wave length, say three hundred for example, instead of using waves of all  lengths together.  Marconi found that by tuning his messages he could send them much father.  The result was that, after more experimenting he was able, on December 12, 1901, to send the first wireless message from England to St. Johns, Newfoundland.
  This was wireless telegraphy.  The message was a series of short and long buzzes used like the dots and dashes of the old-fashioned Morse telegraph.  Many further experiments and inventions were made before we could have radio, or wireless telephony.  The main difficulty was that the vibrations of radio waves are at such a rate that they cannot be perceived by our senses; they are too rapid for us to hear and not rapid enough for us to see.  
  Professor John A. Fleming saw that if we ever were going to have a wireless telephone, we should need some sort of apparatus like a valve which would cut down these very fast vibrations, at "radio frequency," to vibrations we could hear.  For this purpose he brought electric lamp/ which had been invented by Thomas A.  Edison.  Two years later Dr. Lee DeForest invented his three-element tube, a kind of radio valve, that is wonderfully sensitive.
  When we know a stone into a calm pool of water, little waves spread out in an expanding circle on the surface of the water.  When we shout to some one across the street, we send out sound waves which spread in all directions like an expanding spherical shell.  The waves fade out gradually as they travel on.  every one within reach of these waves, in any direction, hears what we say.  Somewhat the same thing happens in radio broadcasting.  But the sound waves set up by a human voice could not carry even one mile unassisted, while the radio broadcasting range is hundreds of thousands of miles.  The voice must be helped, somewhat as it is in ordinary telephoning, by being translated into electrical waves, which are later translated back into sound waves.  But instead of sending these waves along a wire, the broadcasting station sends out Hertzian waves, which spread out in all directions like a series of rapidly expanding spherical shells.  These high-frequency waves are called "carrier waves," and the process of impressing sound waves upon them called "modulation."  The modulated carrier wave travels out in all directions at a tremendous speed.  About one hundred and eighty-six thousand miles or three hundred million meters a second -- the same speed for all Hertzian waves as for light.  This speed would take them around the entire earth more than six times in a single second.
  When the modulated carrier wave strikes your aerial, it induces currents that travel through your receiving set and, after being amplified or strengthened, are translated back again into the sound waves which you hear from your loud speaker.
  How is all this accomplished?  Let us se if we cannot trace the voice of a singer through the different processes from the time he signs in the broadcasting studio to the time when you hear the voice from your speaker.
  The singer stands near a microphone, in which there is a thin steel disk.  As the sound waves strike this disk, they cause it to vibrate at varying speeds -- now fast, now slower -- according to whether the note sung is a high one or a low one.  The vibrating of the steel disk varies the strength of an electric current passing through the micro phone, and causes this current to assume, in a way, the characteristics of the sound waves themselves.  This electric current is amplified or strengthened and is passed on to modulate the carrier wave.
  The carrier wave is being sent in all directions from the transmitting antenna or wires on top of the station.  It is vibrating many thousand times a second, according to the wave length of the station.  If you interrupt that wave entirely, it stops.  If you only partly interrupt it, it still vibrates at the same speed, but not so strongly.
  This just what the amplified current from the microphone does.  It interrupts, or partly interrupts, the carrier wave, according or weak.  It makes scores or hundreds of interruptions a second, according to whether the tone is low or high in pitch.
  As the current from the microphone represents the sound waves of the singer, the radio waves that strike our receiving aerial carry impulses of the same frequency and relative size as the original sound waves created by the singer in the studio.
  Now, how does our radio set turn these electrical waves back into the sound waves that we hear?  First, their effect must be amplified, for the waves which reach our aerial are weak.  It has been estimated that all the energy received in the average aerial from the average broadcasting station during a period of twenty years would amount to less than the energy expended by a common house fly in climbing up a wall a distance of one inch.  So the currents set up in this aerial are transformed into stronger currents, and also they are put through a process that practically brings their vibrations back to the frequencies of the sound waves in the broadcasting studio.  This is done by a tube called the "detector."  Even yet the electric current is very weak; so it is amplified again by other tubes and more apparatus.
  As we cannot hear electric currents, we must use either ear phones or a loud speaker to turn the current into sound waves again.  As the electric current, similar in its vibrations to the sound waves of the singer in the studio, passes through the coils of an electro-magnet in the ear phone or speaker, it causes a vibrating disk to vibrate, agitating the air about it and creating the sound waves that we hear.
  When an address or a program of music is broadcast by more than one station at the same time it is usually transmitted to the various stations by telephone wire.
  By a series of long-distance telephone lines and a radio station on each side of the Atlantic Ocean, a notable advance in the use of the radio was made in 1926.  late in that year ordinary telephone conversations were made possible between America and England, -- just twenty-five years after Marconi's first trans-Atlantic wireless telegram, -- and the regular commercial use of this transatlantic telephone service was begun early in 1927.


Lesson 32
Clouds

  Clouds are peculiarly suggestive on account of the ambiguity of their shapes and their constant changes.  Nothing, indeed, in nature so closely resembles the mysterious operations of thought, ever ceaseless in their motions and ever varying in their combinations, -- now passing from a shapeless heap into a finely marshaled band; then dissolving into the clear atmosphere as a series of thoughts will pass away from our memory; then slowly forming themselves again and recombining in a still more beautiful and dazzling mass in another part of the sky; now gloomy, changeable, and formless then assuming a definite shape and glowing with light and beauty; lastly fading into darkness when the sun departs, as the mind for a short period is blotted out in sleep.
  It is remarkable that in the evening, after the hues of sunset have faded to a certain point the clouds are sometimes reilluminated before darkness comes on.  Before the sun declines, the clouds are grayish tipped with silver.  As he sinks, the gray portion become brown and the silvery edges of a yellow or golden hue.  While the brown is resolved into purple, the yellows deepen into vermilion and orange.  Every thin is constantly changing into a deeper one, until the sky is decorated with every imaginable tint except green and blue.  When these colors have attained their greatest splendor, they gradually fade until the mass of each cloud has turned to a dull iron-gray, and every beautiful tint has vanished.
  We might then suppose that all this glory had faded.  After s few minutes, however, the clouds begin once more to brighten; the whole scene is gradually reilluminated, and passes through another equally regular gradation of more somber tints, consisting of olive, lilac, and bronze, and their intermediate shades.  The second illumination is neither so bright nor so beautiful as the first.  But I have known light that was shed upon the earth to be sensibly increased for a few moments by this second gradation of hues, without any diminution of the mass of cloud.
  Men of the world may praise the effects of certain medical stimulants that serve, by benumbing the outward senses, to exalt the soul into reveries of bliss and untried exercises of thought.  But the only divine joy proceeds from contemplating the beautiful and sublime scenes of nature as beheld on the face of the earth and the sky.  It is under this vast canopy of celestial splendors, more than in any other situation, that the faculties may become inspired without madness and exalted without subsequent depression.
  The blue heavens are the page whereon nature has made some pleasant revelations of the mysteries of a more spiritual existence; and no vision of heaven and immortality ever entered the human soul but the Deity responded to it upon the firmament in letters of gold, ruby, and sapphire.


Lesson 33
Knowledge: Its Pleasures and Rewards

  It is noble to seek Truth, and it is beautiful to find it.  It is the ancient feeling of the human heart that knowledge is better then riches; and it is deeply and sacredly true.  To mark the course of human passions as they have flowed on in the ages that are past; to see why nations have risen, and why they have fallen; to speak of heat, and light, and the winds; to know what man has discovered in the heavens above and in the earth beneath; to hear the chemist unfold the marvelous properties that the Creator has locked up in a speck of earth; to be told that there are worlds so distant from our own, that the quickness of light, traveling from the world's creation, has never yet reached us; to wander in the creations of poetry, and grow warm again with that eloquence which swayed the democracies of the Old World; to go up with great reasoners to the First Cause of all, and to perceive, in the midst of all this dissolution and cruel separation, that there is one thing unchangeable, indestructible, and everlasting; -- it is worth while in the days of our youth to strive hard for this great discipline; to pass sleepless nights for it; to give up for it laborious days; to spurn for it present pleasures; to endure for it afflicting poverty; to wade for it through darkness, and sorrow, and contempt, as the great spirits of the world have done in all ages and all times.
  A life of knowledge is not often a life of injury and crime.  Whom does such a man oppress? with whose happiness does he interfere?  Whom does his amition destroy? and whom does his fraud deceive?  In the pursuit of science he injures no man, and in the acquisition he does good to all.  A man who dedicates his life to knowledge, becomes accustomed to pleasure which carries with it no reproach: and there is one security that he will never love that pleasure which is paid for by anguish of heart -- his pleasures are all cheap, all dignified, and all innocent; and, as far as any human being can expect permanence in this changing scene, he has secured a happiness which no malignity of fortune can ever take away, but which must cleave to him while he lives, increasing every good, and diminishing every evil of his existence.

  I solemnly declare, that, but for the love of knowledge, I should consider the life the meanest hedger and ditcher as preferable to that of the greatest and richest of men; for the fire of our minds is like the fire which the Persians burn in the mountains -- it flames night and day, and is immortal, and not to be quenched.  Upon something it must act and feed -- upon the pure spirit of knowledge, or upon the foul dregs of evil passions.
  Therefore, when I say, in conducting your understanding, love knowledge with a great love, with a vehement love, with a love equal to that with which you love life, I say but love innocence; love virtue; love purity of conduct; love that which, if you are rich and great, will sanctify the blind fortune which has made you so, and make men call it justice; love that which, if you are poor, will lender your poverty respectable, and make the proudest feel it unjust to laugh at the meanness of your fortunes; love that which will comfort you, adorn you, and never quit you -- which will open to you the kingdom of thought, and all the boundless regions of conception, as an asylum against the cruelty, the injustice, and the pain that may be your lot in the outer world.
  Therefore, if any young man here have embarked on his life in the pursuit of knowledge, let him go on without doubting or fearing the event: let him not be discouraged by the cheerless beginning of knowledge, by the darkness from which she springs, by the difficulties which hover around her, by the wretched habitations in which she dwells, by the want and sorrow which sometimes journey in her train; but let him ever follow her as the Angel that guards him, and as the Genius of his life.  She will bring him out at last into the light of day, and exhibit him to the world comprehensive in acquirements, fertile in resources, rich in imagination, strong in reasoning, prudent and powerful above his fellows in all the relations and in all the offices of life.


Lesson 34
My Country

The love of field and coppice,
Of green and shaded lanes,
Of ordered woods and gardens,
Is running in your veins;
Strong love of grey-blue distance,
Brown streams and soft, dim skies ? 
I know but cannot shore it,
My love is otherwise.

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains;
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror ? 
The wide brown land for me!

The tragic ring-barked forests
Stark white beneath the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains,
The hot gold hush of noon.
Green tangle of the bushes
Where lithe lianas coil,
And orchid deck the tree-tops
And ferns the crimson soil.

Core of my heart, my country!
Her pitiless blue sky,
When sick at heart, around us
We see the cattle die -- 
But then the grey clouds gather 
And we can bless again
The drumming of an army, 
The steady, soaking rain.

Core of my heart, my country!
Land of the rainbow Gold,
For flood and fire and famine
She pays us back threefold.
Over the thirty paddocks,
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze.

An opal-hearted country,
A willful, lavish land -- 
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand -- 
Though earth holds many splendors,
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country
My homing thoughts will fly.

--- Dorothea Mackellar.

---
Capital is condensed labor.  It is nothing until labor takes hold of it.  The living laborer sets free the condensed labor and makes it assume some form of utility or beauty.  Capital and labor are one and they will draw nearer to each other as the world advances in intellect and goodness.
--- David Swing.


Lesson 35
He Trapped Three Bandits with a Microscope

  On a night in October 1923, southern Pacific Express Train No.  13, speeding southwards across the Klamath range in Southern Oregon, had just entered the Siskiyou tunnel near the California border, when bandits crawled forwards from the locomotive tender and covered the engineer and fireman with revolvers.  Forcing the engineer to half the train, they shot both men down in cold blood.  Then they blew up one end of the mail car with dynamite, killing the mail clerk.  A brakeman they killed with another bullet.  
  When police arrived, the bandits had escaped into the mountains without their spoil.  Four innocent men had been murdered; and the only clue to slayers was exactly three grains of salt.
  These were in a bag which had been wrapped around a shoe of one of the bandits.  The bag had been painted with pitch from a fir tree, apparently to destroy scent in case of pursuit by police dogs.
  Several days later a chemist bent over a microscope in a laboratory at Berkeley, Calf.  He was Edward Oscar Heinrich, an expert in criminal investigation, and an instructor in the University of California.  The object his investigation was the three bits ob salt.  And, building step by step from what they revealed under the microscope, he was able shortly to emerge from his laboratory with the starting announcement:
  "One of three men who committed this crime was a left-handed, brown-haired woodsman, not more than twenty-five years old, about five feet eight inches all, thick-set, scrupulous in his personal habits, clean shave.  He had recently been working in Northwestern Oregon or Western Washington in the camps where fir trees are felled!"
  Experienced detectives, doubtful at first, lived to be convinced.  For to-day, as the result of that remarkable description, and after a four-year manhunt extending to many corners of the world, the three bandit slayers -- Hugh, Ray and Roy d'Autremont -- are in prison, beginning life sentences for murder.
  And all from three grains of salt!  How was it possible?
  To begin with, chemical analysis revealed to Heinrich that the salt was of a peculiar variety used in artificial salt licks for cattle.  Following this lead, he visited several cattle farms.  Near one of these, and close to a salt lick, he came upon a cabin hidden in a deep canyon.  Within were scattered fragments of bags of the same texture as that picked up at the scene of the crime.  These, likewise, were stained with pitch from Douglas fir trees, which grew about the place.
  In the cabin, too, Heinrich found a towel on which were comparatively fresh wipings of hair and later from shaving.  Studying the hair under a microscope, he determined that towel has been used by three different men.  Then comparing the shavings with standard tables showing the condition of human hair at various ages, he learned that all of the men were under twenty five years of age.  Moreover, bits of skin from the towel showed that the men were of light complexion and of probable Latin ancestry.
  Another search of the scene of the crime brought to light a pair of overalls.  More grains of salt in the pockets and more pitch stains gave evidence that they had been worn by one of the bandits.  They indicated to Heinrich also that the criminals were woodsmen; for the owner of the overalls had worn them over the tops of his boots, instead of tucked in, as cattle-men and farmers wear them.
  From their size and cut, Heinrich likewise estimated the stature of the wearer.  And, from the location of pitch stains on the overalls, he reasoned that the wearer was left-handed.  The finding of many finger-nail parings led to the conclusion that the man was scrupulous about his appearance.
  It remained now to find a man answering the description.  A bulge in a pocket of the overalls showed that a revolver had been carried there.  Eventually a revolver was found in a bush near the cabin.
  The revolver was traced to a dealer in Oregon, whose records showed he had sold it to one "William Elliot" a short time before the hold-up.  Comparison of marks in the gun barrel with those on the murder bullets established that this was the weapon that had killed the trainmen.
  Detectives traced "William Elliot" to a little house in Eugene, Ore., where lived the father of the d'Autremont boys.  Additional evidence -- hair, bits of cloth, finger prints -- gathered in the d'Autremont cottage and examined by the chemist, established the identification.
  Photographs and descriptions of the brothers were broadcast throughout the United States and in other lands.  Rewards were offered.  Months passed.  And then, one afternoon at Manila, an infantry sergeant stepped before a private, stripped him of his arms, and sent him to the guardhouse.  The private was Hugh d'Autremont.  A few months later Ray and Roy were arrested in Ohio.


Lesson 36
Last Days of Ulysses S. Grant

  General Simon Buckner paid a visit to his old classmate and conqueror.  "It is a purely personal visit," he said to General Grant.  "I wanted you to know that many Southern officers sympathize with you in your sickness and trouble."
  "I appreciate your calling highly," the Northern commander wrote in reply.  "I have witnessed since the war, harmony -- harmony and good will between the sections...... We now look forwards to a perpetual peace at home and a national strength which will screen us against any foreign complications.  I believe myself that the war was worth all it cost us, fearful as that was.  Since the war I have visited every state in Europe and a number in the East.  I know, as I did not before, the value of our institutions."
  As General Buckner passed out of the house the newspaper reporters fell upon him, eager to know what was said.  "I cannot tell you", he said.  "The visit was purely personal; and besides," he added, with eyes dim with tears, "it was too sacred.  Without General Grant's I cannot speak."
  After reaching New York General Buckner received a dispatch from General Grant permitting the interview to be made public.  When it appeared that the interview might ad to the harmony and good will between the North and the South, Grant was eager to have it sent and wide.  Throughout all his later life he had two great desires: one, to put down the rebellion; and when that was done, then his whole heart went out towards the done, then his whole heart went out towards the task of reconstructing the nation.  And so, now, though having gone away into a mountain to die, he still desired that every word of his should make for a united that every word of his should make for a united and peaceful nation.
  His wish was gratified.  The words he wrote went to North and South as messengers of peace.  Again he said, "Let us have peace."  And, standing there on the high ground between earth and the things beyond the earth, his words had all the force of a command and a benediction.
  In ever increasing calm and ever decreasing sensibility to pain, he drifted towards the shadowed world.  "I have admonitions that the doctors know not of," he wrote slowly upon his tablet; "I think it doubtful that I shall last longer than the end of the month."  Despair had no place in the growing serenity of his manner.  There was a lofty courage which laid hold upon great conceptions of human destiny.  He subscribed to no creed, but he had an unspeakable faith integrity of the universe.  He had no map of the unseen land towards which he was marching; but he believed it to be a better land than this, and that light and the guidance of reason would be present there as in the world he was leaving.  He did not know, but had no fear.
  His consideration and his instant courtesy never left him.  His gratitude for little kindnesses was very touching.  His physicians could look upon it only with tears.
  On the 22nd of July 1885, he expressed a wish to be in a bed.  His bones were weary of the chair in which he had spent night and day during months of ceaseless suffering.  The physicians looked at each other significantly.  He was transferred to his bed, and as he stretched out his tired limbs and lay full length at last, he drew a sigh of relief and smiled.  He left the delicious restfulness of the bed as he used to do when a boy after a hard day's work.  That knew it to be his deathbed is certain; but it was none the less grateful because of that -- it was the more grateful by reason of that.
  "Does it seem good to be in bed?"
  "So good.  So good," he whispered in reply.
  A deep sleep fell upon him almost at once, but the physicians read the advance of death in the labored breathing and fluttering pulse.  Slowly the blood ceased to warm the body.  The lower limbs grew cold as marble, and the breathing grew ever quicker and lighter.  The lower cell of the lungs were closing.  Life was retreating to the brain.
  The family at last were all there.  The loyal wife sat often by his side, where she could touch his face and press his hand.  His eldest son, erect, calm, and soldierly, scarcely relaxed his painful watch.  It was a long and terrible watch, and, when midnight came, it was evident that death was present in the room at last.  The great soldier lay in a doze but still responded to the parting words of love from his wife and daughter by opening his eyes in a peculiarly clear, wide, penetrating glance.  This was only momentary.  Each time it was more difficult to penetrate beneath the freezing flash to the living soul.  At two o'clock of the morning Colonel Grant laid his hand on the dying man' forehead and said: "Father, would you like a drink of water?"
  In reply, Grant whispered, "Yes."
  At three o'clock colonel grant again approached the bedside: "Father, is there anything you want?"
  "Water," whispered the dying man, and this was his last word.
  He could not swallow; but when his wife placed a sponge in his mouth he closed his lips upon it and seemed relieved by the trickling moisture.
  All danger of a violent death was over.  He was passing peacefully away, his face calm and unlined by pain.  His body, wasted and weary, composed itself for final rest.  The coldness crept slowly but surely towards the faintly-beating heart.  The birds sang outside, and the sun rose, warming the earth; but no waking and no warmth came to the Great Commander lying so small and weak beneath his coverlet.
  At seven minutes past eight, in the full flush of a glorious morning, he drew a deeper breath, and then uttered a long, gentle sigh, like one suddenly relived of a painful burden.  In the hush which followed, the watchers waited for the next breath.  It did not come.  The doctor stole softly to the bedside, and listened; then rose and said in a low voice: "It is all over."
  Ulysses Grant was dead.
  The pomp and pageantry of the funeral which followed surpassed anything ever seen in America.  The wail of bugle, the boom of cannon, the tramp of columned men were all of martial suggestiveness -- ceremony for which Grant cared little; but if his spirit was able to look back towards its outworn body, it must have been glad to see Joseph Johnston and Simon Buckner marching side by side with their old classmates, Philip Sheridan and William Sherman.  Over the body of Grant, the great warrior of peace, the North and the South clasped hands in a union never again to be broken.  It is well that on the majestic marble tomb erected to cover his dust, on a wall looking to the South, these words should be carved: LET US HAVE PEACE; for they express more completely than any other symbols could do, the inner gentleness and patriotism of the man.


Lesson 37
Television

  My interest in television began a few weeks ago when I heard over the air a sound like a buzz-saw with a couple of teeth missing.  I was visiting a friend who experiments in short wave reception.  He accidentally tuned in the funny buss-saw noise.  He told me the ear-splitting wail was pictures coming over the air and he pointed to the television program in the daily paper.
  I'd read about television experiments, but actually hearing the signals over the air was what brought the thing to life for me.  I determined to investigate and as the first step, I succeeded in getting an invitation to visit W2XCR, where I found out how television programs are put on the air.
  At first, as I walked into the television studio, I thought I was in the wrong place.  I had expected to find a room filled with strange and complicated looking machinery.  Instead it was tastefully draped and with the exception of two small standards supporting the photo-electric cells, it looked quite like any radio studio, several of which I had previously visited.  All of the mechanical equipment for picking up pictures was in an adjoining, smaller room that resembled a motion picture booth.
  Most of the space not occupied by studio equipment was filled with people who, like myself, had been invited to the opening night.  In the reception room invited to the opening night.  In the reception room several of them were grouped around a piece of several of them were grouped around a piece of apparatus upon the front of which I noticed a pinkly glowing spot.  As I moved closer, it become a picture of a man's head.
  I could see him smile and turn his head from side to side.  Then looked through the glass windows that separated the reception room from the studio proper and there in front of some apparatus was the man himself.  I had seen my first television picture, for the small outfit we were looking at was the studio's monitor set.  It was turned to reproduce whatever was being televised in front of the big machine.
  After all the celebrated persons present had appeared before the machine and their smiles had been sent out on the air, there followed a brief talk on the equipment used.  It did not, however, go into the details I wanted, so after the crowd had left I interviewed Harold Higginbottom, the engineer in charge of the station.  He was kind enough to answer the questions that were buzzing around in my head.
  "Mr. Higginbottom," I began, "you said the subject's face was scanned by means of a disk.  Could you show me the disk and tell me just how it works?"
  "Do you know how ordinary broadcasting is done with a microphone?" he asked as he switched on a light over the scanning mechanism and swung open a door that covered a large thin metal disk painted dull black on both sides.
  "I do after a fashion," I replied.  "The microphone takes the voice or music vibrations and turns them into electrical vibrations and these are pumped up to pretty high intensity and then applied somehow to the carrier wave of the station.  I'm afraid I couldn't explain just how that is done."
  "You don't have to," he said.  "You've got the main facts.  Television, after all, is only piece-meal broadcasting.  We really don't send pictures at all; only tiny little pieces of pictures one after the other.  All the scanning disk does is to break up the picture into these tiny pieces so that we can broadcast them."