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the fundamental principles into molds and have them forever after in cast-iron rigidity and indestructibility is surely, we imagine, a consummation devoutly to be wished.

But soon we encounter unexpected and vexatious and puzzling difficulties. Truth has a way of losing its trueness by the very act of being exprest. Exprest, or squeezed out, it does, indeed, too often become; and nothing but an empty husk, a hollow form, remains. How often one has the vaguely haunting and curiously baffling sense that, if one were to say a certain thing, that thing would immediately cease to be so; and, that if one had only refrained from a certain other utterance, the thought intended would not have lost, so unaccountably, its quality of truth! In other words, how many times does truth show itself to be of a nature quite too shy to be caught and tamed, too slippery to be grasped, too elusive to be held fast! To take a homely illustration, Mrs. Smith says to Mrs. Brown, "I am more polite than you," and straightway an assertion that might have been true, if unuttered, becomes glaringly false. An able lawyer was once arguing a case in court when the judge interrupted him by declaring, "That is not the law." "It was the law, your Honor, until your Honor spoke," was the two-edged rejoinder. Some such ironical retort is constantly being flung back at us by the inscrutabilities that we attempt to fathom. We know not well (tho we are learning) the subtle ways they "keep, and pass, and turn again."

"Outworn creeds" is a phrase familiar to all. But why have we so abundant a heritage of these cast-off garments? Is not their undurability owing to the fact that truth is dynamic rather than static? We must believe that at every instant of time something is true; but that the same thing, stated just so and no otherwise, is true for all time, is not so certain, and he who depends on a fixt creed, of elaborate pattern, to bear him up through all the stormy seas, is likely to find himself clinging to a very poor life-preserver.—The Christian Register.

(616)

Crime and Playgrounds—See.

CRIME, EPIDEMICS OF

In the days of bank burglaries—now much less frequent, owing to the protections that science has provided for money vaults—it was not often that a single robbery was reported; they "came in battalions." This was not because the same gangs engaged in many different enterprises, but because a universal similar impulse permeated the minds of the criminal class devoted to these forms of guilt. A curious study might be made of the causes of epidemics of crime. In superstitious times all evils were attributed to the influence of adverse stars. This may have been an approach to scientific truth, or its advanced shadow. The causes of meteorological change must be the causes lying back of the pervading disposition at times witnessed to commit peculiar classes of crime. A suicidal atmosphere must have its origin in some of the secret springs of nature. Advanced speculation has recently attributed cyclones, earthquakes, and other terrestrial disturbances to great changes in the surface of the sun or in the superheated ether surrounding it. A theory quite as plausible as this might attribute epidemics of crime to similar influences, by which weak reasons are overthrown and murderous intents are kindled in excitable minds with destructive tendencies. There are causes for all things in life and nature, and no study of such causes is in vain.—Chicago Journal.

(617)

CRIME EXPOSED

Marshall P. Wilder describes a punishment common in China:

The cangue is a large square board that fits about the neck, and besides being very heavy and uncomfortable, is considered a great disgrace, for it has the prisoner's name and crime pasted on it. In order to make the punishment more severe, the prisoner is often condemned to be taken to the place where the crime was committed and made to stand near the store or house where the nature of his crime, as well as his name, is plainly to be read by every passer-by. This is a terrible punishment, for the Chinese are very sensitive about being publicly shamed.—"Smiling 'Round the World."

(618)

See.

CRIME IN FORMER DAYS

Every week a host of young lads were hanged for theft, and the spectacle of a criminal riding through the streets to Tyburn, and getting as drunk as he conveniently could upon the way, was too common to attract attention. London was called the City of the Gallows, for from whatever joint you entered it. by land or water, you passed between a lane of gibbets, where the