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EVENING PUBLIC LEDGER-PHIL' ADELPHIA, t MONDAY; MAY 5, JL91&
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Prisoners
In the Dungeon of Humdrum
iDHN PENDEW died of a broken heart. Sixty-four years he had worked for the
City: then he went on the pension roll. "I have nothing left to live for now," he
said to his son. No work, nothing to interest him, only dull, tedious, empty days
ahead. He grew listless and despondent. If was easier to let go of life-than to
hold on, and so he died.
Sixty-four years of pitiless routine: pushed along through the colorless days by the
constant urge of his task that called him from his bed in the morning, sent him to his
lunch at noon, and back again to his home at night to eat and sleep that he might be
ready to repeat the same routine another day.
Faithful, hard-working John Pendew his body was a machine; his spirit was in
chains. Born to be a prince and a ruler in the Kingdom of the Soul, with the breath of the
Living God in his nostrils, he forgot his birthright in the ceaseless grind of a dull, tedious,
monotonous, commonplace routine. Free in the eyes of the law as a sovereign citizen
of America, he buried himself for three score years, an unresisting prisoner in the narrow
Dungeon of Humdrum.
Suddenly he was cast forth, and the world seemed empty to him. Time was his,
with nothing to do it in. The pleasant paths of leisure invited him; books and magazines
offered him the wisdom, the challenge, the inspiration of ages past and the greatest of all
ages the present; the hearts and souls of his wife and children were unknown countries
for him to explore; the greatest war of all the ages was calling millions of his fellows
into its fiery furnace and demanding the moral and material support of every lover of
humanity; the wide world with its myriad needs and fascinations, its throbbing life and
eager reach into the infinite, all were before him but he had "nothing to live for." Free
to refresh his soul with the wonders of earth and heaven, he pined for the old Dungeon
of Humdrum, and died of a "broken heart."
The hope of America the hope of the World hangs on the greater
freedom of mankind. THE LITERAY DIGEST has sounded many appeals
to American citizenship, and always the quick response has come in mighty
volume. Now it sends its challenge to the workers in office, arid study, in
the shop, and in the store, on the farm, and on the railroad, throughoutothe
Nation, to a fuller freedom and a larger life.
Work is the noblest activity of the human body when it is driven by a
soul inspired.
Work is the process by which things are done, whether in the realms of
human endeavor or in the universe of a wonder-working God.
Work translates thoughts and words into acts; wins victories in business,
in politics, in the salvation of a world.
The work-places of America, where men and women strive in toil of
brain and hand, are the foundation of the Nation's strength, the assurance of
her safety, the promise of her power
OR they are the festering sores in which her fatal disease grows and
spreads; they are the dreary prison houses of her people; they are the
threatening symptoms of her fall.
Which shall they be'1
Men and women who love America, it depends on you. THE
LITERARY DIGEST asks you to help lift the work of the Nation to a
higher, nobler, pleasanter plane. "Where there is no vision the people
perish." It is the business of THE LITERARY DIGEST to give American
citizens a richer, broader vision of the things wortli while in life, of the
relation their personal work may bear to these things, of the opportuni
ties America and ihe world are offering in prodigal abundance to the work
ers whose minds are informed and trained, and whose spirits have come out
from the slavery of the commonplace.
Three men are cutting stone up yonder in the Cathedral grounds. "What
are you doing, No. i ?" "I am working for $6.75 a day." "What are you
doing, No. 2 ?" "I am squaring this stone." "What are you doing, No. 3 ?"
"I am helping to build that," and this worker, with mind reaching out
beyond his toil, and with a noble spirit of partnership with the best, points
proudly up to the great, unfinished Cathedral on the hill.
Two million American workers in business, in the professions, and the
trades, are illuminating their toil each week by the inspiration which THE
LITERARY DIGEST brings them every Saturday with its wealth of the
world's news and thoughts.
"What are you doing, Senator Brown?"
"1 am studying the great problem of a League of Nations in order that
I may help to build a world peace. This nation-wide symposium in THE
LITERARY DIGEST is giving me hope of success."
"What are you doing, Governor Smith?"
"I am planning: to organize the people of my State to save it from the
fearful disease of Bolshevism so vividly described in THE LITERARY
DIGEST this week."
"What are you doing, Professor Jones?"
"I am arranging to have my classes take up this historical study of
Poland, past and present, in THE LITERARY DIGEST, and the other
articles on "Nations in Rebirth," which THE DIGEST is running, so that :
our pupils may have their minds broadened by a knowledge of the great
events of the world's reconstruction, and may gain a sympathetic under
standing of their new brothers and sisters who are winning their liberties
"in other lands."
"What are you doing, Pastor Sea ton?"
"I am preparing to put up to my people, with all the power God will give
me, this serious challenge in THE LITERARY DIGEST for, unity and con
secration in dealing with the great responsibilities of the Christian Church
at this critical moment.
"What are you doing, business man, lawyer, banker, shipper, mechanic,
farmer, housekeeper?"
"We are learning the facts of the world's activities, and studying the
opinions of the world's thinkers, as they affect our own busy lives; we are
finding out what America and the rest of the world need in this day of
reconstruction and readjustment; we are considering our part in the mighty
tasks of rebuidling the broken world, and enlarging our sphere of influence.
THE LITERARY DIGEST is telling us all these things every week, and
we find, as we read it, that life is full of things worth while, and that we must
have a very large share in its work and its rewards."
"What are you doing, citizen of Philadelphia and reader of this page?" The
answer is for you to make;- but be assured that if you drink deep each week of
the strengthening tonic and impelling stimulant of THE LITERARY
DIGEST, You Will Never Rot in the Dreary Dungeon of Humdrum.
jrTl&a I I I
Mark of I lam gnam
I Distinction to 1 I BM m m H
I Be a Reader of I H II "Jb H
The Literary III II I
. Digest J H H L a H
iteraryDi
gest
Fer a
Single Dime
at the
News -Stand
Eaoh Week
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FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY (Publishers of the Famous NEW Standard Dictionary) NEW YORK
Copyright, 1919, by Funk & Wagnalls Company, New York
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