Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers Part 38

If he does so he will feel the eye smart. The eyeball will become inflamed, and sight for a moment will be difficult.

Then let him dilute the whiskey with water--four or five parts water to one of whiskey. That dilution, rubbed into the other eye, instead of irritating it, will act as a gentle stimulant.

It will produce an agreeable effect.

When your friend has experimented with the whiskey "straight" and diluted, deliver to him this little lecture:

"One drop of pure whiskey on your eyeball makes it hard to use the eye. That gla.s.s of whiskey that you are now pouring into yourself would blind you absolutely, at least for a time. If straight whiskey has such an effect on the covering of the eyeball, must not its effect be equally injurious to the covering of the stomach and intestines, which is the same as that of the eye?

"If diluting your whiskey makes it so much better as an eye-wash, would not diluting it make it better also as a 'stomach-wash'?"

One other thing: When you argue with a drunkard don't tell him that any man can cure himself if he will "only be a man." The drunkard knows that that is not so. Tell him, on the contrary, that not one man in fifty, not one woman in a hundred, can overcome the drink habit.

He will wink his tired eyes at you and say: "I want you distinctly to understand that I'm one in a hundred." Tell him how difficult it is--not how easy--and thus stir up his ambition.

Above all, when you start out to admonish or despise the victim of bad habits, just remember that you have no notion whatever of what you criticise. Not one drunkard in a hundred has will power to cure himself. Not one "virtuous" man in a thousand has imagination enough to realize the drunkard's temptation and suffering. We offer to your consideration this other extract from Lecky's book, quoted above:

"The great majority of uncharitable judgments in the world may be traced to a deficiency of imagination. * * * To realize with any adequacy the force of a pa.s.sion we have never experienced, to conceive a type of character radically different from our own, *

* * requires a power of imagination which is among the rarest of human endowments."

WHAT ARE THE TEN BEST BOOKS?

An interesting discussion progresses in Chicago. Mr. Sam T.

Clover has asked this startling question:

"If you were bound for a desert island, and could take with you only ten books, which ten books would you select?"

Whoever is refined and well read in Chicago seems to have answered Mr. Clover's question. Mr. Clover introduces each guesser with a graceful speech; then the guesser solemnly names ten books.

The selections are, from the moral viewpoint, admirable. The Bible is omitted rarely, and the Rubaiyat never. It is amazing to see how many inhabitants of Cook County would be unhappy on a desert island without Col. Omar. ----

It may not be permissible for a Yellow Editor to break into a Cook County literary fiesta. We dislike to run the risk--but we shall run it.

First we remark that a man living on a desert island needs no books at all.

Reading books is an idle occupation unless you make your reading profitable to other human beings, and that you cannot do on a desert island.

The trouble with many readers is this: They read as though they WERE on a desert island. They sop up literature or facts as a sponge sops up water; then, like human sponges, do nothing with their wisdom. They read for themselves; they read to increase their egotism and self-approval, and for no other purpose. ----

But, after walking into an intellectual parlor above our station in life, it certainly does not become us to be finicky.

We'll tell as quickly as possible what it is that surprises us:

NOT ONE COOK COUNTY THINKER MENTIONS A BOOK ON ASTRONOMY.

A man on a desert island has a little sand, some goats and a few miles of ocean around him--nothing else in sight.

But above him, and on the low plains of the horizon, the great universe is spread out. Vega flashes overhead, beckoning to this little solar system that is rolling on toward her.

The old, benevolent stars look through cold s.p.a.ce at our little sun that was not even hatched in their yesterday.

The Milky Way, that Mississippi of the sky, rolls across the thousands of billions of miles of s.p.a.ce.

The messenger-boy comets go on their long, elliptical errands.

The colored planets and moons, the nebular ma.s.ses and the cold, dead worlds lying in the silent morgue of eternity tell the wonderful story of cosmic grandeur.

We should think that a man on a desert island, living constantly in contemplation of G.o.d's real work, would want to study that work.

The greatest book ON MEN that ever was written on this earth is but an a.n.a.lysis of the emotions of imperfect human minds. A good ASTRONOMY is a guide book of G.o.d'S kingdom.

Many Cook County litterateurs select Carlyle for a desert island companion. Have they not observed that Carlyle's mind was fixed on contemplation of the universe?--"the eternal silences" were his friends. And when he seeks monkeyfied human soldiers, booted and spurred, he asks, "What thinks Bootes of them, as he leads his hunting dogs across the zenith in a leash of sidereal fire?"

O, Cook County thinkers, inhabitants of a small corner of this small ant-hill, drop your alcohol-loving tentmaker--Omar--forget your half-hearted fondness for Milton. Buy "Ball's Story of the Heavens," or even some simpler astronomy; spend four dollars and four weeks finding out how grand is our real home, the boundless, beautiful universe.

THE MARVELLOUS BALANCE OF THE UNIVERSE--A LESSON IN THE TEXAS FLOOD

A tidal wave and hurricane combined have destroyed thousands of lives in one small corner of the globe.

After the first excitement and horror, the creditable outpouring of help, there should be thankfulness in the hearts of the many millions who live on safely.

Do you ever think of the wonderful protection, the marvellous precision in celestial mechanics that guard you as you travel through s.p.a.ce? ----

The oceans, seas and lakes contain water enough to cover the entire surface of the earth to a depth of six hundred feet, if the earth's surface were actually round.

In huge reservoirs, which we call oceans, the earth's waters are stored for our use. Those vast volumes of water rest on the surface of a whirling sphere travelling through s.p.a.ce at fearful speed. The slightest derangement, the slightest lack of balance in our motion round the sun, the slightest shifting of the poles, and mountains of water miles high would sweep over the continents and wipe out--not only one small city--but the entire human race. ----

Our existence here requires a precision so great that our minds can but feebly grasp it. Change the temperature of your body by but a few degrees and you die. But you travel through s.p.a.ce safely, with a freezing ocean of ether about you. You travel in company with suns that throw out endless billions of degrees of heat. You are protected in a travelling hothouse, regulated exactly to suit your feeble strength and all your wants. ----

Did you ever see the small, black nose of a pug dog pressed against the window of a flying express train?

Have you ever seen that pug barking at the landscape whirling by?

Have you ever reflected on the utter inability of that pug to realize the marvellous intelligence and power that are whirling him along as he barks and wags his tail and enjoys himself calmly?

Kind reader, you and all of us, whirling along in this magnificently conducted express train called the earth--whirling onward to a destiny worthy of our habitation--are so many poor little pug dogs looking out at nature's marvels and looking out with less than pug-dog appreciation.

THE EARTH IS ONLY A FRONT YARD

The philosophers, political economists, lawmakers, editors, sociologists, and all the other would-be deep thinkers of this earth, are really engaged in a pretty small business.

We are like a swarm of human beings cast away on some desert island. This earth is our island, a little island in s.p.a.ce, and it is a desert island and a badly arranged island in more ways than one. Many of us lack good dwellings, some of us lack food, all of us are worried about the future. The island is infested with mosquitoes and with diseases that we have not learned to conquer. There are many criminals on it that prey upon the honest people--criminals at the top and criminals at the bottom of society.