Page:Cyclopedia of illustrations for public speakers, containing facts, incidents, stories, experiences, anecdotes, selections, etc., for illustrative purposes, with cross-references; (IA cyclopediaofillu00scotrich).pdf/288

 even the hero of the exploit. "The saints do help a man in a desperate plight," said an old Creole planter, who had rescued his family from the attack of a brutal negro. The same strength-sustaining influence of fury may explain the almost miraculous victories of small bodies of desperate men over large armies of better-armed foes, as in the three murderous battles which the rustic avengers of John Huss gained against the iron-clad legions of his enemies, or in that still less expected defeat of an entire Russian army by a few hundred followers of the hero-prophet Shamyl. Religious frenzy has often produced a similar effect, and on any other theory only a miracle could explain the almost constant victories of the Saracens, who, in spite of determined resistance of millions of better disciplined and physically superior opponents, succeeded in less than a century in extending their empire from the Ganges to the Bay of Biscay.—, The Open Court.

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FUTURE DISCOVERIES

In view of the marvelous discoveries which the last half century has witnessed no one can doubt that there is quite as much that is marvelous to come. The dweller on the planet in the year 2000 will undoubtedly look back on these times with a good deal of the same feeling that we of the present day have for those who lived in the days of the stage-coach and the weekly mail; and it is quite likely that the philosopher of that period will speak of ours as "the good old times." But however that may be, and whatever the advance they have made in our condition, we may be sure that they will find all their improvements as necessary to existence as we now find the telegraph and railroad and electric. If they have established intercommunication between the planets, they will be just as dependent on those new features as we are on the latest appliances of our civilization. And if the air line to Jupiter should break down in such a way as to cripple the Mars cut-off or the branch to Saturn, the public will be just as much hindered and embarrassed as we are by a wire-disabling blizzard in the commercial metropolis or a fire in a central telegraph office.—Detroit Free Press.

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Future, Forcasting the—See.

FUTURE LIFE

I trace the river, swelling out by degrees from the spring to a rill, from the rill to a brook, from the brook to a mill-stream, from the stream to a river, taking into itself all minor tributaries, and rolling on with a current that bears the ship and the steamboat with the easiest majesty, still cleaving its way through meadow and hill, through forest and mountain, untroubled toward the sea. Shall I believe, then, that when that river has rounded a promontory, beyond which, as yet, I can not follow it, it is all at once dissolved into mist? or emptied into a cavern so deep and obscure that no trace of the stream reappears upon the earth? Nay, but I know—tho I have not seen the end, it is as certain to me as if already my vision embraced it—that that river flows on continuous to the ocean, and mingles its wave with all the waters that gird the globe, and are drawn into the skies!

And so I know that the great soul of man, aspiring from its birth to a nobler development, still matching its companions, still surpassing its circumstances, with ideas within it which no present can unfold, and with a deep self-centered force, to which the body is only an accident, will still go on when this body has decayed, and be only nobler and princelier in each power when mingling with that illustrious concourse of intelligent and pure beings who already have been gathered in the courts of the future! It were to reverse and violently over-ride every palpable probability, to deny or to doubt this! (Text.)—

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Sometime—dear hands shall clasp our own once more, And hearts that touched our hearts long years before Shall come to meet us in the morning land; And then, at last, our souls shall understand How, tho He hid His meaning from our sight, Yet God was always true and always right; And how, tho smiles were often changed for tears, Along this tangled pathway of the years, Yet only so these lives of yours and mine Have caught the likeness of the life divine. (Text.)

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Future Life, Pledge of—See.

FUTURE POSSIBILITIES

The field of mental effort is not measurable, and so far as we know, is unlimited. To fix its bounds would be to set an arbi-