Page:Cyclopedia of illustrations for public speakers, containing facts, incidents, stories, experiences, anecdotes, selections, etc., for illustrative purposes, with cross-references; (IA cyclopediaofillu00scotrich).pdf/189



The size of a thing is not always the measure of its destructiveness. We look at a big battleship and exclaim what a huge instrument of destruction. Yet the tiny germ called the tubercle bacillus is so small that it is said that 900 can find room on the point of a small sewing-needle, and these germs destroy more lives each year than the mightiest warship could possibly do in action.

(751)

Sins and faults gradually ruin character, once they begin to ravage, as the bee-moths ruin the hive of bees:

Death and destruction of the community follow in the train of the bee-moth. From the eggs hatch little sixteen-footed grubs that keep well hidden in the cracks, only venturing out to feed on the wax of the comb nearest them. As they grow they need more and more wax, but they protect themselves while getting it by spinning a silken web which prevents the bees from getting at them. Wherever they go they spin silken lines and little webs until, if several bee-moths have managed to lay their eggs in the hive and several hundred of their voracious wax-eating grubs are spinning tough silken lines and webs through all the corridors and rooms of the bees' house, the household duties get so difficult to carry on that the bee community begins to dwindle; the unfed young die in their cells, the indoor workers starve, and the breakdown of the whole hive occurs.—, "Insect Stories."

(752)

Character, like corn, may be destroyed, not by the assault of a single great evil, but by many minute sins and faults. Vernon L. Kellogg writes thus of corn-root aphids:

I forget how many millions of bushels of corn were raised in the State of Illinois last year, but there were very many. And that means thousands and thousands of acres of corn-fields. Now in all these corn-fields there live certain tiny soft-bodied insects called corn-root aphids. Their food is the sap of the growing corn-plants, which they suck from the roots. Altho each corn-root aphid is only about one-twentieth of an inch long and one-twenty-fifth of an inch wide, and has a sucking-beak simply microscopic in size, yet there are so many millions of these little insects, all with their microscopic little beaks stuck into the corn-roots, and all the time drinking, drinking the sap, which is the life-blood of the corn-plants, that they do a great deal of injury to the corn-fields of Illinois and cause a great loss in money to the farmers.—"Insect Stories."

(753)

See.

Detachment—See.

DETAILS, PERIL OF

It is said of General Grant, when he was approaching Vicksburg, that his officers, brave enough and willing enough, had so little military experience that his orders to them were not mere directions as to what they should do, but instruction in detail as to the manner in which it should be done. It is said that a collection of those orders would form a compendium or hand-book of the military art. The man of liberal training with us has always much of that experience. The sculptor in America can confide nothing to his workman. The editor often needs to know how to set type. Many a time will you have to instruct your bookbinder. Wo to you if you expect to hire a competent translator! The educated man in America is only a helpless Dominie Sampson if he can not harness his own horse, and on occasion shoe him. He must in a thousand exigencies paddle his own canoe. And the first danger which comes to him is that in all these side duties he will forget the great central object to which his life is consecrated.—

(754)

Detected, Loss—See.

DETECTION

One M. Le Roux demonstrated the value of the X-ray in detecting smuggled goods recently at the New York custom-house:

With every country using the X-ray at the custom-house and post-office smuggling would soon cease, for there seems to be no way to fool this little agent. Every means of baffling it were tried at M. Le Roux's test. Articles were wrapt in many thicknesses of paper and woolen fabrics, and they were hidden in all sorts of queer places, but once the X-ray got busy they might just as well have shouted out their whereabouts.