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 MAN'S WORKS

Mabel Earle writes of a bridge flung across from a cliff to an opposite shore as a symbol of man's service, improving natural formations:

The cliff stood waiting, silent and alone, After the rending shock which gave it birth; Age upon age the waters wore the stone, And the long shadows wheeled across the earth, Swinging from west to east. Through sun and snow It kept God's secret whispered long ago.

Once from its topmost crag a cable swung, And a face laughed against its frowning strength, The life of man in splendid risk outflung Fulfilling the slow centuries at length; On the bare rock to stamp his signet clear, God's warrant witnessed by the engineer.

Then, with a flash of fire and blinding smoke, A peal that shook the mountain, base to crest, The silence of the waiting eons broke Into the thunder of that high behest, And on the steep where never foot had trod Men wrought a pathway for the will of God.

God of the cliff, from whom the whisper fell Of hope and hope's fulfilment yet to be, Make good Thy promise unto us as well; Yoke Thou our pride in love's captivity; And, tho it come through fire and scar and throe, Give us the crown of service, Lord, to know.

(1969)

The last ten summers have witnessed greater changes than the previous 10,000, for man has learned to work with nature and God. The old manuscripts and the grains and fruits depicted in old frescoes, tell us that the ancient world had all our grains and fruits. Centuries passed, but the same sheaves and boughs were ripened. It could not be otherwise. The wheat had no feet, the flowers had no hands. The tulip needed man. One day man decided to work together with the fruit. He took the most brilliant colors and carried the plants into a glass house and sealed the room tight. Then he went one hundred miles and brought another tulip, being feet thereto, and pollenized the one flower with the seed of the other. When ten years had passed, lo, there were 5,000 new flowers, never seen before, brilliant in hue, and of an unwonted perfume, growing in the fields of Holland. In Minnesota, using similar methods, the scientists have produced 2,000 new kinds of wheat, and three of these wheats have added enormous wealth to Minnesota and Dakota. Out in Illinois a professor selected corn with reference to the increase of the oil that heats, makes muscle and builds tissue. He carried the percentage of oil in a grain of corn from four hundredths to six hundredths, and this added some five hundred millions to the wealth of the great corn States in a single year. And he did it by tying tissue-paper over the tops of his selected corn-stalks, after which he journeyed several hundred miles, to bring pollen with which to fertilize the stalks.—

(1970)

Manual-training and Culture—See.

Many Strings Required—See.

Margin, The, and Character—See.

MARGINS OF LIFE

It is the little greater care of the extra hour, the additional effort that constitutes the margin of advantage of one man over another. President Garfield said:

When I was in college, a certain young man was leading the class in Latin. I couldn't see how he got the start of us all so. To us he seemed to have an infinite knowledge. He knew more than we did. Finally, one day, I asked him when he learned his Latin lesson. "At night," he replied. I learned mine at the same time. His window was not far from mine, and I could see him from my own. I had finished my lesson the next night as well as usual, and, feeling sleepy, was about to go to bed. I happened to saunter to my window, and there I saw my classmate still bending diligently over his book. "There's where he gets his margin on me," I thought. "But he shall not have it for once," I resolved. "I will study just a little longer than he does to night." So I took down my books again, and, opening to the lesson, went to work with renewed