Page:Cyclopedia of illustrations for public speakers, containing facts, incidents, stories, experiences, anecdotes, selections, etc., for illustrative purposes, with cross-references; (IA cyclopediaofillu00scotrich).pdf/181



At a laymen's meeting of Southern Baptists held in Richmond, Mr. R. E. Breit, president of a Texas oil company, was called upon for an address. He said, "Brethren, I never made a speech in my life and I can't make one now; but if Brother Willingham (secretary of the missionary society) will send ten men to China, he can send the bill to me." (Text.)

(711)

DEEDS VERSUS WORDS

A boy was pushing a heavily loaded barrow up a steep hill, using every ounce of energy. "Hi, boy," called out a benevolent-*looking old gentleman, "if you push that zigzag, you'll find it go up more easily." "That's all right, sir," responded the boy, rather crisply, "but if you'd give me less advice and more shoving, I'd like it better."

(712)

DEEP-DOWN THINGS

Sam Walter Foss, in "Songs of the Average Man," is the author of this assuring verse:

The deep-down things are strong and great, Firm-fixt, unchangeable as fate, Inevitable, inviolate, The deep-down things.

The deep-down things! All winds that blow, All seething tides that foam and flow May smite but can not overflow The deep-down things.

The surge of years engulfs the land And crumbles mountains into sand, But yet the deep-down things withstand The surge of years.

Behind the years that waste and smite, And topple empires into night, God dwells unchanged in changeless light Behind the years. (Text.)

(713)

DEEP THINGS

It is folly to think that only those things are of value to us which we can intellectually understand. Is the vast deep of the ocean nothing to me, since I can not move about freely and closely examine its depths? And if I must confess that 'way down are untold mysteries which human eye has never seen, what matters it? Can not I rejoice in the roar of the waves, in the ebb and flow of the tides, and in the flight of the clouds? Why will men insist, with their poor, finite reasoning, on fathoming the deep things of God, instead of drinking to the full from the inexhaustible source of assurance and consolation? (Text.)—, "The Glory of the Body of Christ."

(714)

DEFACEMENT OF SOUL

If a drunkard knew that a certain number of drinks would make his face permanently black, how many men would drink? And shall we be less careful about the face of our soul?

(715)

DEFEAT

This incident corroborates the truth of the poet's thought, "We rise on stepping-stones of our dead selves to higher things."

A young Englishman once failed to pass the medical examination on which he thought his future depended.

"Never mind," he said to himself. "What is the next thing to be done?" and he found that policy of "never minding," and going on to the next thing, the most important of all policies for practical life. When he had become one of the greatest scientists of the age, Huxley looked back upon his early defeat and wrote:

"It does not matter how many tumbles you have in life, so long as you do not get dirty when you tumble. It is only the people who have to stop and be washed who must lose the race."

(716)

See.

Defective Memory—See.

DEFECTS OF THE GREAT

Handel, whose seraphic music lifts us to the gate of heaven, and whose faith was so clear that when he was dying, on Good Friday, said that his wish was fulfilled, and that he looked forward to meeting his good God, his sweet Lord and Savior, on Easter day, was yet a man with a very earthly, irritable temper—so much so that he had a quarrel with a brother composer which ended in a duel.

(717)

Defense—See.

DEFORMITY

There died recently in Stockerau, Bavaria, at the age of twenty-eight years, a dwarf, Maria Schuman, who was at one time a