Page:Cyclopedia of illustrations for public speakers, containing facts, incidents, stories, experiences, anecdotes, selections, etc., for illustrative purposes, with cross-references; (IA cyclopediaofillu00scotrich).pdf/536

 There is ever a gem in the path of life, Which we pass in our idle pleasure, That is richer far than the jeweled crown, Or the miser's hoarded treasure. It may be the love of a little child; Or a mother's prayers to heaven; Or only a beggar's grateful thanks For a cup of water given.

Better to weave in the web of life A bright and golden filling, And to do God's will with a ready heart And hands that are swift and willing, Than to snap the delicate, slender threads Of our curious lives asunder. And then blame heaven for the tangled ends, And sit, and grieve, and wonder.

(2265)

Kate Sanborn tells of an old lady of her acquaintance, eighty-three years of age, who is famous among all who know her for her happy cheerfulness. One day when she was choked by a bread-crumb at the table, she said to the frightened waiter as soon as she could regain her breath: "Never mind if that did go down the wrong way. A great many good things have gone down the right way this winter." (Text.)—

(2266)

In answer to the question, "What is optimism?" this humorous instance was recently given:

A man lost his balance and fell from the fortieth story of the Singer Building, Broadway, New York. As he passed each story going down he said to himself, "It is all right so far." That was optimism.

(2267)

Once I got hard up and went down and sold the best suit I had to get bread, and I had my shoes half-soled, and that night some fellow stole my shoes, and the next morning the snow was ten inches deep, and I got up, and looked out of the window, and I said, "I would rather have feet and no shoes than shoes with no feet." I like the fellow that goes along without growling.—"Popular Lectures of Sam P. Jones."

(2268)

Dr. A. E. Winship tells this story:

It was eleven o'clock on as disagreeable a night as Chicago knew last winter that I ordered a cab to take me to the Northwestern Station. Carriages were scarce, and I was asked to ride with another man.

"A good night this!"

"Humph," I replied, "if anybody likes this kind, I don't."

"It is just the tonic I need for my eighty-two years. It blows the blues all out of a man if he ever had them, which I never do."

"Do you often ride nights at your time of life?"

"Nearly every night; it does me good."

"Oh, I beg your pardon. This is Doctor Willetts."

"Certainly, and I would have been nursing old age twenty years ago if I had ever found anything bad in life. A night like this! Why, to growl about it, it would take a year off my life."

Thanks to Doctor Willetts I have not seen bad weather since, and I never shall.

(2269)

See.

Optimists, The, and the Pessimists—See .

ORATORY

There are men in legislative assemblies who speak often, but are never masters of any situation. They have great powers of utterance, but nothing to say. The orator whose burning sentences become the very proverbs of freedom is not he who consumes the most time and employs the selectest paragraphs. I have seen men in Congress often on their legs and buzzing about like able-bodied darning-needles, but they never managed, even by accident, to sting anybody into attention.—

(2270)

Order—See.

Order, The Natural—See.

ORGANIZATION, INDUSTRIAL

The farmer who tills his own soil, the man in the shop who is his own employer, the proprietor of the small factory, as well as the manager of the greatest manufacturing corporation and his subordinates, are each concerned with the problems of organization in their special work.

Thousands of farmers to-day are eking out a scanty subsistence because of a lack of intelligence in the proper organization of the activities of farm life. Thousands of manufacturing establishments are upon the verge of bankruptcy or are reducing dividends for the same reason. Industrial edu