A. SERMON. 4
RE REV~
Bras DEEN DERS?
Subject: The Gospel of Christ.
Brooklyn, N. Y.—Preaching at the
Irving Square Presbyterian Church,
on the theme “The Gospel of Christ,
a Partial Message to Its Messengers,”
the Rev. Ira Wemmell Henderson,
pastor, took as his text Romans 1:16,
“For I am not ashamed of the gospel
of Christ.” He said:
The last and perhaps ithe greatest
privilege which our Savior has given
unto us is contained in that com-
mand which, it is reported, He gave
to His disciples nineteen centuries
ago: ‘Go ye into all the world and
preach the gospel to every creature.”
Paul writing, as we have seen, to
the Church at Rome, but a few years
after the death of the Master, has
given to us a record of his personal
and profound conviction of the
worthiness of the good news of the
Christ.
This, the opinion of the pre-emi-
nent evangelist of the Apostolic
Church, still stands unchallenged.
Through all the schisms of the cen-
turies the Gospel has come down to
us as pure and beautiful in its mes-
sage; as strong and as potent in its
power for good, as it was when first
our Master preached, with His own
dear lips, the message of salvation
2d abounding love.
To-day, as we stand just within
the threshold of another century,
with the memories of mighty eras
“ lingering in our hearts, let us glance
over the achievements of the church
of the living God. Let us, as we
stand at the parting of the ways,
when to go forward is to accept new
responsibilities and to receive re-
newed opportunities for service, look
critically at the field before us. Let
us determine what course, as Chris-
tlans, we must pursue. . Let us con-
sider the message of the church to
the men of to-day. Let us decide,
as God may give us power, our duty
as the messengers of the risen Lamb
of God of whose gospel we are not
ashamed.
About the year of our Lord the
thirty-second a certain Pharisee, Saul
by name, journeyed from Jerusalem
to Damascus, ‘‘breathing out threat-
enings and slaughter against the dis-
ciples of the Lord.” His intent was
to bring bound tb Jerusalem all
Christians whom he might find at
Damascus. While on his way and
when but a few hours distant from
Damascus the spirit of God came
upon Saul and a marvelous conver-
sion, worthy of the mission and of
the magnitude of the man, took
place. Saul’s question, ‘Lord, what
wilt Thou have me to do?” was the
mainspring of action in his life. In
the answer of our Lord came a pro-
phecy of that work of evangelization
which was destined to change the po-
litical aspect of the world, and to do
much to ameliorate the social condi-
tions and surroundings of human
kind.
Paul was the first world-evangelist.
His mission was to sow the seed in
all the first century world. - And so
in the outpouring of a grateful heart
—a heart thankful for success as a
spiritual seedsman—Paul declares, “I
am not ashamed of the gospel of
Christ.”
This same gospel it is which
claimed the allegiance of Paul and
which holds the fealty of men in
every clime to-day, which has taught
men the principles of right living and
of eternal truth. To the infiuence
of the gospel is due that esteem for
woman which has raised her from a
chattel to her rightful position as a
forceful factor in society. To the
gospel is largely due that beneficent
scheme of education and that grand-
er conception of the liberty of the in-
dividual.
‘The words of Christ foretold the
doom of slavery. The eternal princi-
ples of the new commandment could
not but be hostile to a systent of hu-
man chattelhocd.
The gentle teachings of the man of
peace have entered into hearts in
every epoch and in every land,
strengthening and meilowing the in-
dividual character and life. Wher-
ever the example of the Christ is fol-
lowed there is prosperity and peace
and purity of heart. Widely spread
throughout a people it has made of
that nation a mighty and a moving
element in the political history of the
world. Applied to the lives of men
and women in whose hearts the love
of God’s law was uppermost it has
given to us our Luthers, our Wesleys,
our Lincolns, our noblest and our
best. ;
But it is within the space of the
past century and a half that the true
mission of the gospel has been com-
préhended and advanced. Little
more than a century is it since our
first plans were considered to send
Protestant missionaries to the East.
To-day we have the missionary of
Christ in every land. The message
of salvation through the Son is reach-
ing round the world.
But let us for the moment forget
the things which are behind and
look rather upon the present condi-
tion of humanity. Let us consider
our duty as those who are ‘‘not
ashamed of the gospel of Christ,” to
carry that gospel into every acting,
longing soul. What application has
the gospel to the needs of to-day?
How can we make it a force in the
lives of men and of nations.
We find ourselves confronted by
- diverse and distracting social condi-
tions. The tendency of the times is
toward congregation in large cities.
The olden country life becomes dis-
tasteful, and men in the rush to gain
a livelihood flock to the cities. Let
us take as an example the City of
New York. Here are some of the
richest of the rich, the poorest of the
poor; palaces, hovels; luxury and: ex-
travagance, penury and destitution;
costly cathedrals erected to the glory
of the living God, and beneath their
very steeples disreputable dives dedi-
cated to all that is bestial in man.
Commercialism is the watchword.
The city, as the land, is money ‘wild.
The spirit of combination is abroad,
and we see huge gatherings of untold
capital to control the industries of
the world.
Capital fears lahor and
combines a st it.© Labor distrusts
the concentration of wealth and at-
tempts, with but moderate success,
to protect itself from its fancied en-
emy. The immensely rich live their
lives with but small care for or
thought of the wretched existences
worked out by their fellows in the
slums. Vice shows it evil head at
every turn. There is in New York a
single square, within the bounds of
which reside over 2000 human be-
ings, who live under the most dis-
heartening conditions. To our shores
have come multitudes from every Eu-
ropean nation, from nearly all the
countries. of the world. We have our
“little Italy,” our German colony,
our French quarter, our Chinatown.
Upon the same page of a daily news-
paper we may read heart burning ac-
counts of the unutterable misery of
multitudes of our poor, and the story
of how one man is attempting to con-
trol the supply of the diamonds, or
the gold, or the steel, or the rubber,
or the railroads of the earth.
Thus, in briefest, are described
some of the conditions that make the
social problem so disconcerting. Let
us consider now our duty as men and
women who love our Lord to carry
His gospel of light and of life to a
world that is so sorely in need of fit.
The prime duty of the church, here
as elsewhere, is to instil into the
hearts and minds of men the neces-
sity and the joy of the presence of
‘the saving power of the Holy Spirit
in ‘the individual life. That's the
spiritual function of the church. The:
ethical duty of the church is to im-
press upon mankind the true relation
of man to man and to God.
Inordertoimpartherfullestinfluence
it is necessary thatthechurch be filled,
individually and collectively, with the
deepest grace and the noblest love
for man. By the exercise of the true
principles of the Christ ideals in the
commonplaces af life, the charge of
inconsistency must be nullified. As
a body and as individuals the church
must be a brotherhood which, meas-
ured by its own ideals, is worthy.
To the church do the people look for
the purest, the most unselfish leader-
ship. That the depth of the spiritual
life within the church is a sure indi-
cation of the height of the morality
of the people is demonstrated by the
ages past. Upon ug as Christian
men devolves the privilege so to mold
the national mind that the law of
the universal brotherhood of man
may become the law of our national
and international life. We must con-
vince the poor of their duty to the
rich; we must convince the wealthy
of the dignity of labor. Ours is the
obligation to hasten the millenium
of peace through the universal appli-
cation of the law of love. To accom-
plish this purpose we must obey, in
our daily lives, that command of the
Master, “Thou shalt love the Lord
thy God and thy neighbor as thy-
self.”
The church must exercise her pre-
rogative as the natural leader in all
moral reform. That reform which
has not the support of the church
must sooner or later fail. She must
insist on a clean public conscience as
the logical sequence of her demands
for purity in the private life. It is
not the province of the church as an
ecclesiastical body to claim temporal
supremacy over the government of
the city or the nation, but it is her
duty as composed of voting individ-
uals to demand, and to enforce the
demand, that municipal and national
government be undefiled. The poli-
tics of our large cities will be only
so bad as the church cares to allow.
In a country where the citizen is
king and the ballot alone is supreme
strenuously to maintain the honor of
the sovereign people should be the
high aim of the church.
The church must, however, keep
strictly in mind the prime object of
her existence. Her mission it is to
preach the good news throughout
the world. In the cities is her mis-
sion most difficult to fulfil. Here, by
reason of the multitudinous obsta-
cles that beset her path, she must
use extraordinary measures to reach
the pedple. It is not enough that the
spiritual needs of the immediate con-
gregation of any church be minis-
tered unto. That the pastor preach
regularly twice upon the Sabbath,
that the exercises of the Sabbath-
school progress without interruption,
that the prayer meetings occur as is
their wont, that the church be prompt
in her financial affairs, is not enough.
A yearly contribution to missions in
the foreign fields and the support of
a city missionary do not constitute
the whole responsibility of any
church.
The grace of the gospel is for all
men. Unto all men must the tidings
be told. To the unhearing and the
uncaring must the inspiration of the
infinite Son be carried. - Christianity
must be proven a practical force in
the common life. For the Christ life
is practical life written large. As the
only correct system of right living,
as the ultimate scheme of salvation
must the gospel“be ‘presented to the |
people. To them we must.show that
the promises of Christ are real, that
Christianity is a synonym for broth-
erly love, for the deepest comsecra-
tion, for the highest purity of life
and motive,- that Christianity is
Christlikeness.
The church must carry to the mul-
titudes of the unsaved a gospel unsul-
lied by her own insincerity and in-
consistency. Her creed must be sim-
ple, her differences dismissed. Her
forces must move in unison toward
the common end. Sect and party
strife must be eliminated. It may
be that the great divisions always
will exist. Always the Catholics and
the variousProtestant denominations.
But like a mighty army in which the
different regiments have each their
duty and their position under a com-
mon generalship, so must the church
in waging the peaceful battles of the
moral war march, side by side, sect
by sect, creed by creed, in full pano-
ply and with solid front, forward to
the victory under the common lead-
ership of the King of Kings, who is
Christ the Lord.
And now a word upon the manner
of the preaching of the good news.
The gospel should be preached at-
tractively. Water street missions
and Salvation Army rooms may suit
the preferences of that class to whose
spiritual natures the workers may
wish to appeal. Wonderful is their
influence and to them be all honor.
The average self-supporting poor
man, however, does not care to feel
under any obligation to the richer
portion of the community for his
spiritual sustenance. He feels, and
all too sadly with some justificatiom,
that the mission-—the very name of
which is distasteful to him—has been
established so that he may have no
cause to intrude his unwelcome pres-
ence upon the mother church. May
God speed the day when the church
will sme her duty in this matter. The
poor, whose only sin is poverty,
whose piety is often more genuine
than that nurtured in a protected
home, should be given substantial
opportunity to worship. The Moody
revivals prove that the common
people respond eagerly and in force
to the appeal of the man in whom
they can see and imagine only love.
The common people heard Christ |
fdly when the learned scorned
We often speak of the wilfulness
of those who listen to our discourses
upon the duty of every man to a&ac-
cept Christ as the personal Savior,
and who do not heed our words. Gen-
erally we console ourselves with the
thought that we have done our duty
at any rate. Perhaps we have. But
are we justified to say that Christ
has been rejected. May it not be
that the rejection has been, not so
much of Christ as of our presentation
.of Him. Might-it not be that another
man with a different personality, with
a different manner of expression,
with a something in his nature that
would bring him heart to heart with
his listener, would convince this sin-
ner, over whom we have tried and
failed, of his absolute dependence
upon the God who gave him life.
The whole power of the ‘body of
Christ must be exerted to save men.
Too often mer are unconvinced
because of our non-appealing presen-
tation of the truths of the Bible
story. Unto all people must the
church of the twentieth century ad-
dress herself. To all men must the
gospel be preached.
But this gospel of the Christ is not
merely a system of ethics, not merely
a scheme of life. It is more. St.
Paul tells us that he is ‘“‘nct ashamed
of the gospel of Christ, for,” says he,
“it is the power of God unto salvation
to every one thatbelieveth.’” Through
it we know not only what God expects
of us, but we have a knowledge of
the nature of our heavenly Father.
Christ came to preach the kingdom.
The outworking in practical life of
the principles of the kingdom will
make such conditions as we have dis-
cussed impossible.
With the entrance of Christ into
the heart man will become right to-
ward God. Being in harmony with
God he will be {in harmony with his
brethren. Let us apply ourselves,
then, steadfastly to spread the gospel
of salvation.
The gospel of our Lord and Sa-
vior Jesus Christ is the urgent, the
immediate need of this world. With-
in its principles are contained the so-
lution of all our most perplexing so-
cial problems. Let us bring our wan-
dering brethren back from the dis-
tant country into the father’s home.
For ourselves let us strive to attain
unto that perfectness which was in
Christ. Enthrone Christ in the hearts
of men and the law of love, which is
the ruling force in the kingdom of
our God, will sway mankind. Then
will come peace and happiness and
joy. For then shall have come to
pass the beginning of the endless life
within God for us all.
Save men to Christ and you have
saved the world.
The church is confronted with the
most stupendous problem with which
she has had to contend since the days
of the apostles. But with the prob-
lem God has given us the power unto
victory. His gospel is our shield, our
buckler, our guide. He doth lead,
we need but follow. Let us then as
men who are ‘not ashamed of the
gospel of Christ” go forth to carry,
that gospel ‘unto every needy soul.
Let us live the Christ life that we
preach. Let the church, relying upon
the promises of our Lord, strike out
boldly into new fields. Praying for
divine guidance and trusting to the
omniscience of divine love, let us find
our duty and live up to it.
“Lift up your eyes and look on the
fields, for they are white already to
harvest.”
Are you ashamed of the gospel of
Christ?
The ‘New’ Theology.
There are two fundamental re-.
spects in which exponents of the
“new” doctrines fail of truth. First,
their conception of sin .omits entirely
the element of guilt incurred by_vio-
lation of the Law of God. “Sin is the
transgression of the law” (1 John
3:4). Second, their insistence on the
immanence of God in all mankind
applies to unrepentent sinners the
privileges and promises which.in
Scripture are reserved only for saints
redeemed and justified.
This confusion of
differ lies at the root of the errors set
forth with so much ill-founded (as
surance. Meantime, alas, the. people
perish for lack of knowledge: —Lon-
don Christian.
Not to Ourselves.
“Tvery hunian life that fails to
hear its message and learn its lesson,
or fails to speak it out, keeping it
locked in the silence of the heart,
leaves this earth a little poorer.”
We cannot live unto ourselves. We
belong to Him. We are the servants
of every man we meet. This is our
privilege, and “if we do it unwilling-
ly,” it is a duty. - We must use or
lose the truth. Our service is the
world’s claim on us, but we owe it to
ourselves to serve. No strong life
was ever cradled in a monastery.
The bread we break for men is twice
blest, and ours is the greater blessing.
—Home Herald.
Stars That Shine at Night.
The promises of God, scattered
throughout the Bible, are like stars
in the firmament; if it were always
day we should not know that the
sky was so full of them, but when
night approaches they begin to skine.
When the night of affliction overtakes
the child of Heaven the promises of
God are seen to shine forth one after
another in the firmament of His
Word.—D. L. Moody.
The Essentials.
Peace and submission are the es-
sentials. The mora! being may
moralize his sufferings by using nat-
ural facts for his own inner educa-
tion. What he cannot change he
calls the will of God, and to will what
God wills brings him peace.—Amiel's
Journal.
“Ten million dollars.
-look positively young.”
“ican Indian:
{ beén so~great a warrior as Osceola,
things- which _| nor, as able a general in the field as
~as- Tecumseh.
among a people with whom organiza-
OUR FUNNY LANGUAGE.
Teanll
You take a swim,
You say you've swum;
Your nails you trim,
But they're not trum;
4nd milk you skim
Is, ppver skum.
When words you speak,
Those words are spoken;
If a nose yoy tweak,
It’s never woken ; i
Nor can you seek
And say you've soken,
§
&
If a ig you spin,
top is spun;
A hare you skin,
Yet ’tis not skun;
Nor can a grin
ever grun.
If we forg et,
Then we've forgotten;
Yet if we bet,
We haven't botten;
No house we let
Is ever lotten;
What we upset
Is not upsotten;
Now, don’t you think
Our language rotten?
=Doroihy 3 McCanless, in the New York
Some men never know when to let
bad luck alone.—Life.
“Is he out of danger?"
doctor still attends him.’
Plain Dealer.
“Are there anysharks around here,
captain?” “I don’t know. Never
stopped at the hotel.”—Life.
“Here’s another battleship talked
of.” “Ah! What displacement?”
"—Puck.
Sons of rich men leave behind them,
As they zipp past those who drive,
Dust and odors to remind them
That it’s lucky they're alive.
—Argonaut.
“He’s perfectly wild over his new
auto.” “Huh! You should see him
under it.”—Milwaukee Sentinel. .
Ring—“Is he a hard man to work
under?” Sting—*“I thought so when
he fell off a ladder onto my head.”—
Judge.
“Do you believe in signs?” “Sure.
How else would people know what
business you were in?”—Baltimore
American.
“You are too young, my dear, to
marry and leave a good home.”
“But, papa, John says that won’t be
necessary.” —Judge.
Sillicus—“How
“No. The
'—Cleveland
can a man tell
‘when he is really in love?’ Cynicus—
“He can’t tell till it’s too late.”—
Philadelphia Record.
“That pretty Alabama girl has a
very mobile countenance.” “Well,
she comes from there, you know.”—
Baltimore American.
Tis often said that money talks,
To this I must agree;
ra all that ever came my way
Soon said “Good-bye” to me.
—Ridgway’s.
She—*“My! what a wicked parrot!
It must have been kept on board a
ship?” He—“No, ma’am; in a gar-
age.”—Yonkers Statesman.
“Dis paper,” said Languid Lewis,
‘“tells erbout a hoss runnin’ away
with a woman, an’ she was laid up
for six weeks.” ‘‘Dat ain’t so worse,”
rejoined Boastful Benjamin. “A
friend uv mine wunst run away with
a hoss an’ he wus laid up fer six
years.”’—~Chicago Daily News.
“What are your opinions on that
question?” ‘My dear sir,” answered
Senator Sorghutn, ‘‘this is no time to
ask a man his opinibns; the chief
use in adjourning Congress is to give
great men a chance to get out among
their constiutents and stock up with
opinions.”’—Washington Star.
“Gracious, my dear,” said the first
society belle, spitefully, “I do hope
you're not ill. You look so much old-
er to-night.”
“I'm quite well, thank you, dear,”
replied the other. ‘‘And you—how
wonderfully improved you are. You
— Philadel-
phia Ledger.
‘= “The Greatest Indian Organizer.
Pontiac . exemplified at once the
best and-the. MQrst t traits of the Amer-
“He seems not to have
Cornstalk,nor so unselfishly a patriot
. But as an organizer
tion i§ almost impossible, and as a
‘master of the treacherous state-craft
of his. race, he. probably ‘surpassed
them all. “As-soon as his death was
known, the French Governor at St.
Louis: sent for his body and buried
it with full martial honors near the
fort, “For a mausoleum,” Parkman
finely says, “a great city has arisen
above the forest hero; and the race
whom he hated with such burning
rancor, trample with unceasing foot-
steps over his forgotten grave. ”’—
From “The Conspiracy of Pontiac,”
by Lynn Tew Sprague, in tue Outing
Magazine.
Our: Vast Dairy Industry.
Thei@airy industry is one of our
greatest industries, turning out, ac-
cording to the last Government Year
Book, a valuation of $665,000,000 of
dairy products annually. This is
larger than any farm crop except
corn. It is larger than the meat indus-
try,and when combined with the total
valuation of dairy cows, $482,000,-
000, -it reaches a total of $1,147,000,-
000. This is a greater value than all
our meat cattle, hogs and sheep. Be-
, sides, it is an industry that tends to
intensify farming methods, and
where people live on small farms
and closely together, it is found nec-
essary, in order to keep up the re-
quired land fertility and realize the
most from farm forage.
Budapest is one of the few clean
cities in the worla.
How Honest Men
Become Criminals
~ ®It is quite possible for a normally
honest man to become a criminal by
suggestion,” was the curious state-
ment made by a well-known New
York detective who was in Washing-
ton recently on business. “I am re-
ferring now to men who permit them-
selves to develop an abnormal inter-
est in the ways of professional crim-
inals.
“I wouldn’t call it a safe thing for
any man to attempt to figure out in
his mind what he would have done to
escape arrest had he been in the boots
of some captured criminal whom he
had read about. But that’s a thing
that thousands of men. who -think
they're honest are doing all the time.
When there’s a big man hunt.on they
follow it with acute interest, put
themselves in the place of the hunted
man, and dope out schemes of escape
for him. A certain percentage of
such calculators are bound to experi-
ence the hankering, sooner or later,
to put their schemes for evading the
officers of the law into practical op-
eration, if only for the foolish pur-
pose of finding out how their plans
will work.
" * x = x = *
“Working in New York now on a
salary of a few dollars a week is a
broken, middle-aged man who used to
be treasurer of a bonding and in-
demnity company at a salary of $10,-
000 a year. This man developed a
queer bug for mental “teacing the
movéments. of fugitives rom justice,
especially embezzlers.
“I was acquainted with this man,
and he endeavored to pump me for
all I knew about such cases. He liked
to talk about the fleeing ones. He
laid out routes for them in his mind.
He knew the extradition laws by
heart and had at his fingers’ ends
every country in the world to which
a pursued man could run without
fear of extradition. Once I gave this
iy a talking to about this hobby of
is.
“ ‘You'd better can that stuff,” I
told him, ‘or it'll begin to fester in
the back of your head and get you
going. I've known such things to
happen, and no man is more than
one-eighth as strong as he thinks he
is. If I didn’t know you pretty well
I'd have my suspicions of Jou as
it is.’
“Well, he only laughed and told
me that he was interested in the sub-
ject just as other fellows were in-
terested in old fiddles or rare postage
stamps or the trim of their whiskers.
“ ‘Anyhow,’ he laughingly added,
‘if I did jump, and you were sent
after me, you'd never be subjected to
the embarrassment of taking me, be-
cause you'd never get me. If I
couldn’t beat all these pin-headed
fugitives in making a safe and sure
getaway, so that none of you would
ever nail me, I'd want to have my
head bagged.’
“Not more than six months after
that he made his jump and I got him
as easy as hot-footing a banana
peddler. I went straight to the little
villa he had taken outside Genoa,
Italy. When I nailed him he was the
most stupefied man you ever saw, for
he’d made his hop at the beginning
of his month’s vacation, and had laid
all his plans with what he thought
was masterly adroitness, according
to his chart, with thirty days’ margin
of time to accomplish the scheme in.
In consideration of his returning most
of the swag he only got eight years.
“That man put himself in the way
of becoming a criminal by suggestion.
His studies of the movements of flee-
ing absconders developed an irre-
sponsibility in him and an ache to put
to the test the getaway plans that he
spent 8o much of his time in doping
out While yet he was an honest man.
* * * * - ® .
“There is no calculating how many
shoplifters, especially young women,
are led to try that sort of thing
through hearing and reading about
professional lifters. Not long ago, in
a New York department store, a girl
was nailed while trying to lift a pair
of inexpensive gloves, The girl had
an account at the store for any
amount that she ¢hose to spend up to
the thousands. 8he wasn’t arrested,
of course, but she was led to the rear
office and chided by the.head of the
firm in a gentle sort of way.
“ ‘Perhaps you should put yourself
in the hands of a specialist for treat-
ment,” he sald to the_girl, who wept
softly. ‘With you, beyond a doubt, it
is kleptomania-—it must be.’
* *No, it isn’t,’ replied the girl with
the utmost candor. ‘It’s not klepto-
mania at all. I don’t believe in such
silliness. I just wanted to see if I
could do it without being caught,
that’s all. A lot of the girls were
talking about shoplifters — they
seemed so fascinating—and the girls
dared me to try. I meant to exhibit
the gloves to them as a trophy and
then send them back to you by mail,
anonymously. You won't ever
breathe a word of it, will you?’ and
the head of the firm, knowing pretty
well which side his bread is buttered
on, of course only tells the story
without using the girl’s name, but
the incident illustrates an occurrence
which is common. Plenty of women
lift things from counters just to see
if they can do it without being
caught, and when they succeed in get-
ting away with it once they try it
again and again, and allow the habit
to become fixed upon them until the
inevitable day of discovery arrives.
“The people who become crim-
inals by suggestion are nearly always
the veriest plugs at any line of work
they take up, for first-rate criminals
are born, not made, by suggestion or
in any other way. When Jimmy
—
Hope, the cracksman, was working
he was just as much of a genius in
his particular line as Paderewski is
said to be at piano thumping or
Saint-Gaudens with the 'sculptor’s
clay.”—Washington Star.
FLORICULTURE FOR CRIMINALS.
An Experiment in the Penitentiary of
New Mexico.
Floriculture as a means of refining
the nature of the hardened criminal
is the remarkable experiment that is
being carried on at the Territorial
penitentiary of New Mexico in Santa
Fe.
In a well equipped, thoroughly,
modern conservatory, which has been
constructed in the prison, some of
the most desperate criminals In
America care for a profusion of flow-
ers of many kinds. General interest
is taken in the conservatory among
the 250 convicts in the penitentiary,
and it is no uncommon thing, says
the Santa Fe correspondent of the
Los Angeles Times, to see a “lifer”
caring for a lily or a rose.
Since the convicts in the New Mex-
ico penitentiary took up this new,
work the morale of the institution
has greatly improved. “ There is hard~
ly a convict in the institution who
does not welcome a chance to work
among the flowers. Bouquets are
clipped and taken to lonely cells and
dried flowers are carefully pressed
between the leaves of books from the
penitentiary library.
Superintendent H. O. Bursum has
been quick to recognize the good
that the conservatory is doing, and
every convict who desires to work
among the flowers has opportunity to
while away time in the greenhouse.
Assistant Superintendent Garrett
is enthusiastic on the subject of flori-
culture in penal institutions.
“There are few natures, no matter
how bad they may appear to the
world in general, that do not respond
to the refining influence of flowers,”
said this official recently. “An hour
in the greenhouse beats ‘any number
of hours in solitary confinement when
it comes to making a convict tract-
able. He forgets for a moment that
he is in prison. He fusses around
among the flowers and his brain is
soothed by the sound of the foun-
tain. Time flies rapidly instead of
dragging, and the poor chap actually
enjoys_life. He takes the remem-
brance of 'all this to his cell with him
perhaps in the form of a bouquet.
He sings or whistles cheerily and his
good spirits prove infectious. Thus,
unconsciously, he assists in raising
the general morale of the prison.
“If convicts were given more such
work to do in their idle hours—more
gardening and raising flowers instead
of moodily pacing the prison yard in
quest of exercise, or being kept peg-
ging at contract labor all day, there
would be fewer tragedies in peniten-
tiaries—fewer attempts to break out
and fewer officials sac¢rificed in doing
their duty. Anything that ¢an take
a convict’s mind off himself is a great
advance in prison methods, Our little
greenhouse has done more good than
all the dark cells and other means of
punishment ever devised.”
Rapid Transit Car Cleaning.
“How long does it take to clean
the windows of one of our cars?’
said a railroad man at the Reading
Terminal. “Well, just as long as it
takes one man to clean one of the
windows. That is not very long, is
it? The fact is, the pressure on the
rolling stock of all railroads is so
great now that when a train comes
in enough men are put to work
cleaning it to enable it to take its
place in an outgoing train in a few
minutes. As you can see for your-
self, there is a man on the ladder of
every window of this car—and every
man is working as rapidly as he can
to glean his particular window.
When he’s done they are all done
and the windows are cleaned. The
same crew then tackles another car,
going over it in the same way. A
few minutes does the job.”’—Phila-
delphia Record.
BAINES]
Reason For the Heavenly Ladder.
A young lady who taught a Sun-
day-school class of young boys was
often nonplussed by the ingenious
questions sometimes propounded by
her young hopefuls.
One Sunday the lesson touched on
‘the story of Jacob's dream, in which
he had a vision of angels descending
and ascending a ladder extending
from Heaven to earth. One inquiring
youngster wanted to know why the
angels used a ladder, since they all
had wings. At a loss for a reply,
the teacher sought to escape the dit-
ficulty by leaving the question to the
class.
“Can any of you tell us why the
angels used a ladder?” she asked.
One little fellow raised his hand.
“Please, ma'am,” he said, “p’r’aps
they was moulting!” — Harper's
Weekly.
Indian Philosophy.
The other day Elsie, the oldest liv-
ing Tonkawa Indian, was making
some purchases in one of our hard-
ware stores, and the enterprising
salesman called her attention to a
washing machine which he said
would make “Blue Monday” a day
of ‘pleasure. Old Elsie admired the
gayly painted machine, but when she
was made to understand for what
purpose it was intended she sniffed
the air in contempt. “Me no wash.
Pale race wash, wash—all time wash.
Wash Monday, Monday, Monday,
heap ‘wash. Indian no wash; all
time dirty. Pale face wash; all tims
dirty, too.”—Tonkawa (Okla.) News.
The phrase ‘‘sinuosity of explana-
tion” is Mr. Cleveland's own coinage,