Page:Cyclopedia of illustrations for public speakers, containing facts, incidents, stories, experiences, anecdotes, selections, etc., for illustrative purposes, with cross-references; (IA cyclopediaofillu00scotrich).pdf/532



William Duncan, now known as "The Apostle of Alaska," whose missionary triumphs among the Indians of the Alaskan coast have won the admiration of the world.

To win the one is sometimes to win the many. (Text.)

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Open Allegiance—See. Open Door to China—See. OPENNESS OF MIND  The Mediterranean is practically a tide-*less sea, and yet the visitor to its waters is puzzled at the discovery of what appears to be a tide. But the explanation is that there is a connection between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, so that what seems to be a tide at Gibraltar is simply the rolling waves from the tide of the mighty Atlantic into the sea that washes the shores of southern Europe and northern Africa. As long as the channel at the Straits of Gibraltar is open, so long will there be this rolling in, and so there will be a constant influx of blessing while communication with God is unhindered. (2249)  See. OPINION, CHANGED  When General Ewell was asked what he thought of Jackson's generalship in the Shenandoah Valley campaign, he replied:  "When he began it, I thought him crazy. Before he got through, I thought him inspired." —The Sunday Magazine.

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Opinionatedness—See.

OPINIONS

Wesley himself said once to his preachers, "I have no more right to object to a man for holding a different opinion from my own than I have to differ with a man because he wears a wig and I wear my own hair, tho I have a right to object if he shakes the powder about my eyes."—, "Wesley and His Century."

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OPPORTUNITIES, IMPROVED

Whitefield preached under conditions and to audiences known to no other orators. Passing over Hampton Common, he finds a crowd of 12,000 people collected to see a man hung in chains. Here is an audience, a pulpit, a text; and straightway he captures the crowd! He preaches to another vast multitude assembled to see a man hanged, and the hangman himself suspends his office while Whitefield discourses. Some wandering players have set up their stage at a country fair; the crowd rushes together to grin and jest. But Whitefield suddenly appears, turns the whole scene to religious uses, spoils the players' harvest, and preaches a sermon of overwhelming power.—, "Wesley and His Century."

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OPPORTUNITIES UNUTILIZED

The Macon Telegraph says that Macon men in Florida laugh to see natives opening canned tomatoes in sight of tomato plants loaded with ripe fruit. Then the said Macon men go to their own homes and buy Florida shad, at Washington Market prices, altho their own river is full of them; and the Telegraph asks: "Is it not a little singular?" Bless you, no! The same sort of thing is going on all over the country. There is not a year when hams and bacon do not bring higher prices in some great pork-producing counties of the West than they do in New York. There are Southern counties where the watermelon grows so easily that the small boy scorns to steal it, yet in some towns in these counties a watermelon costs twice as much as in any Northern city. There are cattle-ranches in the West where milk, when there is any, brings fifty cents a quart, and great grain farms on the prairies whose owners never in their lives tasted an ear of sweet-corn. And, coming back to the shad, there are times when these fish are running up our own river by tens of thousands that a breakfast of shad costs more than one of beefsteak, altho the shad comes right to town and needs only to be taken from a net, while the beef has to be fed at least three years and then brought half-way across the continent by rail. No, there's nothing singular about it, except in the fact that where food products most abound human nature seems most incompetent to make full use of its opportunities. America is, above all others, a land of plenty, but no one would imagine it after looking at a price-list of family supplies.—New York Herald.

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OPPORTUNITY

Senator J. J. Ingalls wrote the first of these poems not long before he died, the only poetry he is known to have