4. Only last week a teacher in one of the primary schools of Chicago reported to her principal that a certain little boy in her room was so hopelessly dull and perverse that she despaired of teaching him anything. The child would sit with open mouth and look at her as she would talk to the class, and five minutes afterward he could not or would not repeat three words of what had been said. She had scolded him, made him stand on the floor, kept him in after school, and even whipped him, but all in vain. The principal looked into the case, scratched his head, stroked his whiskers, coughed, and decided that the public school funds should not be wasted in trying to "learn imbeciles," and so reported to the parents. He advised them to send the boy to a Home for the Feeble Minded, sending the message by an older brother. So the parents took the child to the Home and asked that he be admitted. The Matron took the little boy on her lap, talked to him, read to him, showed him pictures and said to the astonished parents, "This child has fully as much intelligence as any of your other children, perhaps more-but he is deaf." 5. Hamlet. Hold you the watch to-night? All. ELBERT HUBBARD. We do, my lord. Ham. Arm'd, say you? All. Arm'd, my lord. Ham. From top to toe? Then saw you not his face? All. My lord, from head to foot. Hor. O, yes, my lord; he wore his beaver up. Hor. Ham. A countenance more in sorrow than in anger. Hor. Nay, very pale. Ham. Hor. Most constantly. Ham. And fix'd his eyes upon you? I would I had been there. Hor. It would have much amaz'd you. Ham. Very like, very like: Stay'd it long? Hor. While one with moderate haste might tell a hundred. Ham. His beard was grizzl'd, no? Hor. It was, as I have seen it in his life, a sable-silver'd. Ham. I will watch to-night, perchance 'twill walk again. SHAKESPEARE. 6. One hot day last summer, a young man dressed in thin clothes, entered a Broadway car, and seating himself opposite a stout old gentleman, said, pleasantly: "Pretty warm, isn't it?" "What's pretty warm?" "Why, the weather." "What weather?" "Why this weather." "Well, how's this different from any other weather?" "Well, it is warmer." "How do you know it is?" "I suppose it is." "Isn't the weather the same everywhere?" "Why, no, no; it's warmer in some places and colder in others." "What makes it warmer in some places than it's colder in others?" "Why, the sun,-the effect of the sun's heat." "Makes it colder in some places than it's warmer in others? Never heard of such a thing." "No, no, no. I didn't mean that. The sun makes it warmer." "Then what makes it colder?" "I believe it's the ice." "What ice?" "Why, the ice, the ice,-the ice that was frozen by-by-by the frost." "Have you ever seen any ice that wasn't frozen ?" "No, that is, I believe I have." "Then what are you talking about?" "I was just trying to talk about the weather." "And what do you know about it, what do you know a'.~** the weather?" "Well, I thought I knew something, but I see I don't that's a fact." "No, sir, I should say you didn't! Yet you come into this car and force yourself upon the attention of a stranger and begin to talk about the weather just as though you owned it, and I find you don't know a solitary thing about the matter you yourself selected for a topic of conversation. You don't know one thing about meteorological conditions, principles, or phenomena; you can't tell me why it is warm in August and cold in December; you don't know why icicles form faster in the sunlight than they do in the shade; you don't know why the earth grows colder as it comes nearer the sun; you can't tell why a man can be sun-struck in the shade; you can't tell me how a cyclone is formed nor how the trade winds blow; you couldn't find the calm-center of a storm if your life depended on it; you don't know what a sirocco is nor where the south-west monsoon blows; you don't know the average rain-fall in the United States for the past and current year; you don't know why the wind dries up the ground more quickly than a hot sun; you don't know why the dew falls at night and dries up in the day; you can't explain the formation of fog; you don't know one solitary thing about the weather and you are just like a thousand and one other people who always begin talking about the weather because they don't know anything else, when by the Aurora Borealis, they know less about the weather than they do about anything else in the world, sir!" "The Weather Fiend." ANON. SIMPLICITY Simplicity is characteristic of all great art. In oratory it has taken the place of the bombast and artificial method of former times, while in dramatic art it has superseded the "old school" style of ranting and wild gesticulation. Charles Wagner acknowledges the difficulty in adequately describing this quality and despairs of ever doing so in any worthy fashion. "All the strength of the world and all its beauty," he says, "all true joy, everything that con soles, that feeds hope, or throws a ray of light along our dark paths, everything that makes us see across our poor lives a splendid goal and a boundless future, comes to us from people of simplicity, those who have made another object of their desires than the passing satisfaction of selfishness and vanity; and have understood that the art of living is to know how to give one's life." Simplicity does not mean repression, but the intelligent use of all the forces of expression in sincere, direct, and spontaneous effort. If the student earnestly seeks the truth and his thinking is genuine, the expression will be free from affectation and unnaturalness. The following examples are selected for this quality of simplicity: EXAMPLES 1. A certain nobleman had a spacious garden which he left to the care of a faithful servant, whose delight it was to trail the creepers along the trellis, to water the seeds in time of drought, to support the stalks of the tender plants, and to do every work which could render the garden a paradise of flowers. One morning the servant rose with joy, expecting to tend his beloved flowers, and hoping to find his favorites increased in beauty. To his surprise, he found one of his choicest beauties rent from the stem. Full of grief and anger, he hurried to his fellow servants and demanded who had robbed him of his treasure. They had not done it, and he did not charge them with it, but he found no solace for his grief till one of them remarked, "My lord was walking in the garden this morning, and I saw him pluck the flower and carry it away." Then, truly, the gardener found he had no cause for his trouble. He felt that it was well his master had been pleased to take his own; and he went away smiling at his loss, because his lord had taken delight in the flowers. "Funeral Sermon." SPURGEON. 2. Be simple, unaffected; be honest in your speaking and writing. Never use a long word when a short one will do. Do not call a spade a well-known oblong instrument of manual industry; let a house be a house, not a residence; a place a place, not a locality, and so of the rest. Where a short word will do, you always lose by using a long one. You lose in clearness, you lose in honest expression of your meaning; and in the estimation of all men who are competent to judge, you lose in reputation for ability. WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 3. A spindle of hazelwood had I; Into the mill-stream it fell one day- Let my mother be told in the village there, That they must pray with folded hands, The soldier is dead-and with folded hands, On the field of battle they dug his grave, The sun looked down on him there and spake: And flowers bloomed thickly upon his grave, "Not so, my hero," the wind replied, "The fight is done, but the banner won, Thy comrades of old have borne it hence, Have borne it in triumph hence." Then the soldier spake from the deep, dark grave: |